6 influencer marketing brand safety considerations to bake into your strategy

Last April, Australian influencer Emma Claiir went viral for all the wrong reasons when she admitted to two incidents of past animal cruelty. Claiir drew so much backlash in the weeks that followed, she eventually stopped influencing altogether. But what made this event even more unsettling was Claiir’s then-ongoing partnership with vegan, cruelty-free brand, MCoBeauty.

Soon after she made the admission on her podcast and issued a half-hearted apology, the internet was quick to express their outrage to both Claiir and MCoBeauty. When the brand found out about the crisis, they released a statement condemning Claiir’s actions and announced that their partnership was terminated—a move that protected the brand from further outrage.

This incident serves as a potent reminder of how much brand safety continues to be a hot button for marketers, especially when it comes to influencer partnerships. Despite some of the risks, brands are still investing a significant percentage of their marketing budgets into influencer marketing, a testament to its effectiveness.

In this guide, we break down how marketing leaders should be thinking about influencer marketing brand safety in today’s divisive online era, and steps you can take to avoid a crisis.

Why influencer brand safety is more important than ever

Spending on influencer marketing is a massive part of overall marketing budgets—and is continuing to grow. More than half of brands put more than 20% of their budgets toward influencer marketing. By 2029, influencer marketing ad spend is expected to reach $56 billion—a 60% increase from 2024. As influencers become a bigger piece of the overall marketing equation, the potential losses of an activation gone wrong—from a misaligned partnership to a brand safety crisis—could be catastrophic to your brand’s health.

But investing in influencers does significantly translate to revenue, making it worth the risk for many businesses. According to The 2024 Influencer Marketing Report, almost half of all consumers (49%) make purchases at least once a month because of influencer posts. The appetite for influencer content is fueled by its ever-growing legitimacy in the eyes of consumers. The same report found that nearly half of all consumers trust influencers just as much as they did six months ago, while close to 30% trust them more.

This deep-seated trust is a double-edged sword for your brand. While it creates a deeper emotional connection with your audience, it can also expose you to more brand risk if an influencer negotiation goes south or if an influencer falls out of favor with their audience (and your brand gets dragged down by association). A Q2 2024 Sprout Pulse Survey found that 87% of all consumers expect influencers to speak out about causes that align with their values and take a stand on social. At any given moment, there are many social issues influencers may be pressured to speak about, which can pose a major brand safety threat.

Even long-term partnerships carry risks

So how should brands protect their influencer marketing investments and the health of their company? Many are forging fewer, longer-term influencer partnerships in hopes that established relationships will be less risky. About 39% of brands worldwide have only worked with 10 influencers (or less).

Influencers themselves are keen to forge these stable partnerships. A majority (71%) offer discounts when partnering with brands on multiple posts, while another 25% would consider it in the future—suggesting that long-term relationships are as valuable to influencers as they are to brands, according to the Influencer Marketing Report.

Yet, even long-term partnerships carry risk. Especially when brands dive into collaborations too quickly, and don’t thoroughly vet influencers or craft legal protections. In the next section, we break down the steps to take before, during and after influencer campaigns to manage them with care.

Steps to maintain brand safety during and after influencer marketing campaigns

To forge influencer marketing campaigns with brand safety at the forefront, it’s critical to understand your audience, investigate an influencer’s complete online footprint, and create contracts and crisis plans that protect your brand.

Know your audience

Before conducting research to find your next influencer partner, learn more about your audience. Have an accurate sense of the topics and issues they do—and don’t—care about. You can’t protect your brand if you don’t intimately understand who you’re talking to.

For example, how does your audience define their values? Their standards for influencers might be even higher than their expectations of brands, as 42.5% will unfollow an influencer whose content doesn’t align with their personal values, according to a Q2 2024 Sprout Pulse Survey. Clarifying the moral standards your audience lives by will help find influencers who mirror them and align your campaigns accordingly.

To conduct scalable, real-time audience research, tap into social listening. With AI-driven technology like Sprout’s Listening solution, you can easily build queries to track millions of conversations happening around key topics and current events. This makes swift work of pulling the insights you need to thoroughly examine your audience’s preferences, areas of interest and values.

Define your brand safety criteria

Some brand safety measures are consistent across industries—hate speech, unsafe content, false advertising claims, etc. But, in almost all industries, there are other sector-specific regulations and sensitivities that will impact who you partner with.

In the alcohol industry, if an influencer has so much as a toe in the water and it’s implied they’re consuming your product, that would be a major violation. For power tool brands, influencers need clear guidance on what kind of clothing or jewelry is appropriate on-camera, or they would violate safety best practices that could put your brand in hot water. Healthcare brands need to be extremely careful about influencers making health claims without lengthy, legally-vetted disclaimers, or risk being fined and further reprimanded by the FTC.

Work with your legal team to define a comprehensive list of all brand safety criteria influencers must follow when promoting your business and products. Use that to inform the contracts you craft, and keep these safety guidelines in mind when drawing up campaign plans.

Develop a thorough process for vetting influencers

More than 50 million people across the globe describe themselves as influencers. Narrowing in on those who offer everything your brand is looking for requires a systematic process and intentionality. Merely looking at follower count and engagement rate isn’t enough. You need a deeper understanding of audience make up, past brand collaborations and the types of content they create. Doing that much research manually is inefficient (and probably impossible).

With Sprout Social Influencer Marketing (formerly Tagger), you can use smart filters to sort through thousands of creators and influencers whose content and audiences are right for your brand. You can review influencers’ previously posted content and audience demographics at scale.

Once you find influencers who fit your criteria, you may also need to work with your legal team to finalize vetting. Getting legal’s stamp of approval in the beginning will help you spot red flags early, and save you from major headaches in the future.

Put your standards in writing

Make sure there is documentation in your contracts that clearly communicates your expectations and protects your brand in the event of future fallout. That could include things like:

• Logistics: Clarify the scope of work, the content approval process, which platforms and accounts the content will be posted on, your payment terms and intellectual property ownership.
• Brand guidelines: Outline the content style you expect to receive (while leaving room for flexibility and creativity) and your brand values. Emphasize how important it is to adhere to your values, and specific guidelines you’d like the influencer to follow.
• Disclosure agreements: Spell out all of your general compliance and industry regulatory standards. List specific scenarios, and explain what would and what wouldn’t be acceptable.
• Termination clauses: Describe what would happen in case either party had to terminate or cancel the agreement. Clarify what would be grounds for termination of an agreement, and how you will regularly review the terms of your partnership.

You should include other provisions as necessary by working with your legal department.

Remember: Always assume your influencer communications and contracts will be screenshotted and shared out of context. Write them with a public audience in mind.

Measure everything

Be equipped to track reactions and sentiment (around not only your campaign but your brand as a whole) once a new partnership launches to keep a pulse on your brand health. An influencer could affect your brand in unexpected ways, so you need to be able to zoom out and see the big picture.

Sprout’s sentiment analysis tools make it possible to explore customer feelings and opinions on specific topics, products, competitors and influencers. Which gives you a bird’s eye view of change in sentiment trends before and after an influencer post goes live. If an incident were to come up, you’d be able to act fast and prevent a crisis from spiraling.

Have a crisis plan ready—and hope you won’t need it

As the adage goes, “Plan for the worst. Expect the best.” Even if you thoroughly vet influencers and craft iron-clad contracts, you should still have a crisis plan ready.

The key elements of an influencer crisis plan include:

• Risk scenarios: List all of the potential crisis scenarios you could encounter during an influencer marketing campaign (e.g., negative publicity or offensive content unrelated to your brand/products, influencer misconduct that violates your contract, etc.).
• Crisis team: Assemble your A-team, and detail all of their roles and responsibilities in the event of a crisis. Also include who your key decision makers will be.
• Communications plan: Outline your internal and external communication protocol and channels, and have pre-drafted statements prepared for each risk scenario.
• Influencer coordination: Make a plan for communicating with the influencer(s) related to the crisis about any required actions or guidance.
• Legal recommendations: Include potential legal actions that might be necessary in each crisis scenario. But remember to work with your legal team in the event of an actual crisis.

Minimize risk in the influencer marketing equation

There will always be inherent risk involved when it comes to influencer marketing. But by implementing robust strategies for vetting partners, defining clear influencer brand safety criteria and leveraging advanced tools for tracking sentiment and engagement, you can mitigate the dangers and de-escalate real-time crises.

These steps also make it easier to find the right influencers and create more successful campaigns. Shielding your brand from potential pitfalls today paves the way for successful and rewarding partnerships tomorrow.

Read next: The 2024 Influencer Marketing Report dives into the evolving expectations of consumers and influencers alike, and what it takes to yield content that resonates.