Produces a complete influencer marketing strategy whose tiers, engagement screens and outreach norms reflect Uganda/East African market realities, not global averages. It covers strategy and execution guidance only; formal influencer agreements go to a lawyer.
Use When
- A brand wants local content creators or influencers to promote a product and needs who to pick, tiers, fit criteria, outreach, briefs, usage rights and measures.
- Creators need vetting (are their follower numbers real?), pricing, deal terms and a term sheet with ad disclosure before any offer is made.
- The client wants AI tools to find influencers, screen out fake followers and bot engagement, or weigh a human creator against a virtual CGI influencer.
- The client wants customers posting photos, videos and reviews of its products (UGC) that the brand can reshare: a branded hashtag, testimonial collection, a permissions log and reposting rules.
Do Not Use When
strategy-creator-monetisationfor a creator's own rate card, revenue streams and brand partnerships.09-campaign-strategyfor the wider campaign that a creator activation sits inside.strategy-ewom-reviewsfor reviews, referrals and word-of-mouth programmes.- Stop before contacting, contracting or paying any creator without client authority and a signed disclosure and rights agreement.
Required Inputs
| Artefact | Source/provider | Required? | If absent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Client name, industry and sub-sector, country/city | Client brief or 01-client-brief |
Yes | Default the location to Kampala, Uganda; return the intake questions for the rest. |
| Target audience (age range, gender split, location, key interests) | 03-audience-personas or client |
Yes | Describe a provisional audience and score creator audience fit not assessed. |
| Campaign objective (awareness, product trial, event, sales or community growth) | Client lead | Yes | Stop tier and fee decisions; ask for the primary objective. |
| Budget per month or per campaign, in UGX by default, split into barter value and cash fees | Client | Yes | Plan nano and barter options only and draft fee ranges without figures. |
| Platforms in scope (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, X/Twitter, WhatsApp) | Client or channel plan | Yes | Default to where the persona spends time and label it provisional. |
| Creator long-list with dated audience-insight screenshots | Research, rosters, inbound pitches | For selection | Build the list by manual discovery; hold any shortlist until insights arrive. |
Workflow
- Ask the intake questions in influencer-strategy-document-sections § Intake questions; route to
09-campaign-strategywhen the activation sits inside a wider campaign. - Define the tiers with EA characteristics, including WhatsApp community admins, and label engagement figures as screening heuristics.
- Find and vet creators: audience match and location, the manual engagement-rate formula, content quality, platform fit and brand safety, then the due-diligence scorecard in creator-due-diligence-and-pricing; set the brand-suitability floor and tiers with programmatic-and-brand-safety; stop on any red line.
- Price each shortlisted creator from distribution fee plus talent fee, with usage, exclusivity and season priced explicitly.
- Plan outreach by tier, then complete the term sheet, creator brief and disclosure checks in influencer-term-sheet-and-disclosure before any offer.
- Set usage-rights terms, lawyer triggers, performance metrics and at least two attribution methods before the campaign starts.
- Check the strategy against the quality standards; correct failing sections and rerun the check.
- Run the anti-slop and legal release gates and hand the strategy to the client lead; withhold release while a disclosure, rights or evidence defect remains.
Outputs
| Artefact | Consumer | Acceptance condition |
|---|---|---|
| Influencer strategy document (seven sections plus creator-economy principles) | Client lead | All seven sections present and client-specific; engagement figures labelled as heuristics. |
| Vetted creator shortlist with scorecards and fee build-ups | Client lead; campaign owner | Each creator has a dated scorecard, no red line breached, and a fee split into its component lines. |
| Term sheet and creator brief per micro or macro creator | Client's lawyer; creator | Term sheet complete before lawyer drafting; brief fill-in-the-blanks ready with disclosure and usage terms. |
| Measurement plan | Client lead | Targets set before launch; UTM links and unique discount codes assigned per creator. |
Evidence Produced
| Evidence | Format | Acceptance condition |
|---|---|---|
| Creator vetting record | Table: creator, dated insights, engagement calculation, red-flag checks | Every figure is dated and calculated from the creator's own posts, not self-reported. |
| Disclosure and jurisdiction register | Table citing register IDs (AD-09, AD-10, KE-01, UG-01, TZ-01) | Unverified jurisdictions stay NOT_ASSESSED; no disclosure claim passes without a cited row. |
Capability and Permission Boundaries
Read and search only; analysis is read-only. Publishing, spend, live account changes, outreach and personal-data processing need explicit, action-specific client authority. Contacting, contracting, gifting product to or paying any creator needs that authority plus a signed disclosure and rights agreement.
Degraded Mode
Without dated creator audience insights or a confirmed budget, return the narrowest qualified result and mark the affected checks not assessed. Tier definitions, selection criteria, outreach and brief templates and a measurement plan can still be delivered.
Decision Rules
| Condition | Action | Failure or risk avoided |
|---|---|---|
| A creator's engagement falls below the tier's red-flag threshold (nano below 3%, micro below 2%, macro below 0.5%) or looks bought | Walk away; cross-check with HypeAuditor or modash.io only if budget allows. | Paying for purchased audiences. |
| The creator's audience is mainly outside the campaign geography | Do not commit; ask for audience location data first. | Spend reaching people who cannot buy. |
| Creators are found or vetted with AI tools, fraud is suspected, or a virtual influencer is proposed | Apply the tool tiers, fraud thresholds and Parasocial Interaction Scale in ai-assisted-influencer-discovery-and-virtual-creators. | Paying for purchased audiences or an uncanny-valley virtual character. |
| The programme uses customer-created content | Run the audit, collection tiers, permissions log and curation and republishing workflow in ugc-creator-and-customer-content. | Republishing customer content without documented consent. |
| A macro deal with cash fees above UGX 1 million, paid-ad usage rights, a multi-month retainer or an exclusivity clause | Complete the term sheet and involve a lawyer before signing. | Unenforceable or disputed rights and fees. |
| Content goes live | Require an up-front "Ad" or "Paid partnership" label plus the platform's branded-content tool; keep Rwanda, Kenya BCLB and UCC items as NOT_ASSESSED checks. |
Undisclosed advertising and regulator or platform action. |
| Content is not posted within 48 hours of the agreed date | Apply the brief's catch-up clause: reclaim product or withhold payment. | Paying for undelivered content. |
| The activation belongs to a wider campaign | Route to 09-campaign-strategy and hand over the verified inputs already collected. |
Neighbour collision and duplicated work. |
Quality Standards
- Tier definitions label EA engagement figures as unsourced screening heuristics, not benchmarks, and WhatsApp group admins are explicitly identified as a nano-influencer category relevant to the EA context.
- Selection uses the creator due-diligence scorecard (bought audience, undisclosed past ads, hateful content and safety risk are red lines); the 3R check is not attributed to Hennessy.
- Pricing is built from distribution fee + talent fee, with usage, exclusivity and season priced explicitly; the term sheet is completed before lawyer drafting.
- Disclosure guidance cites the register (AD-09, AD-10) and keeps Uganda/Kenya items as checks.
- Audience match criteria include a clear instruction to verify audience location before committing, and the engagement rate calculation method is specified and can be performed manually without paid tools.
- The outreach message template sounds personal and human, not corporate, and the campaign brief template is complete and fill-in-the-blanks ready for immediate use.
- Usage rights guidance explicitly notes it is not legal advice and specifies when to involve a lawyer.
- Performance metrics include at least two trackable attribution methods (UTM links and discount codes), and the red flags section addresses bought followers with a concrete detection method.
Further checks (British English, UGX) are in influencer-strategy-document-sections § Quality checklist.
Anti-Patterns
- Choosing a creator on follower count alone. Fix: screen in Hennessy's order and score authentic fit and the five influence mechanisms (Falls, 2021).
- Sending a generic campaign brief as the first contact. Fix: open with a short, personal message that names a specific post; use WhatsApp or Instagram DM.
- Chasing a silent creator repeatedly. Fix: send one brief follow-up after 5 days, then move on; never more than two contact attempts.
- Boosting creator content as a paid ad under a post-only deal. Fix: negotiate and pay for paid-advertising usage rights separately.
- Buying one sponsored post and expecting endorsement. Fix: where budget allows, plan 3–4 touchpoints across 4–6 weeks.
- Promising that micro-creators will outperform larger ones. Fix: test with tracked codes and links and let the client's data decide.
- Contacting, gifting or paying creators during planning. Fix: hand over the plan; outreach and payment need separate authority.
References
- Influencer strategy document method: read when asking the intake questions or writing the tier, identification, outreach, brief, usage-rights, metrics and red-flag sections and the creator-economy principles.
- Creator due diligence, typology and pricing: read when shortlisting, vetting or budgeting creators.
- Influencer term sheet, brief and disclosure register: read before any offer, brief, contract hand-off or go-live.
- ai-assisted-influencer-discovery-and-virtual-creators: read when using AI discovery tools, screening fraudulent engagement, or weighing a human against a virtual influencer.
- AI transparency and provenance: read when a virtual or AI-generated influencer is used; label it in every appearance (§3).
- ugc-creator-and-customer-content: read when building a customer UGC programme, permissions log or curation and republishing workflow.
09-campaign-strategy: read when the creator activation sits inside a wider campaign.- Creator monetisation: read when the work is the creator-side counterpart (rate card, revenue streams).
- Legal, privacy and market release gate: read before go-live and whenever disclosure or rights claims are made.
- Creative review gate: read when approving creator drafts.
- Anti-AI slop production gate: read during production.
ai-slop-audit: read at the release checkpoint.