Before you sign a beauty influencers service standards agreement

What to take away

Most teams write the brief before the standard, then argue about quality after delivery. Write the rubric first.
Every standard needs a number, a source and a date. Without them, it is an opinion.
Score creators on the same rubric you use for your own team.
Keep the rubric to five or six criteria. Longer rubrics get gamed or ignored.
Put the rubric in the contract schedule, not an appendix nobody reads.
Beauty influencers and brand teams sign one agreement, and the schedule is only half of it. Check exclusivity, usage and licensing, payment terms and termination in the same pass.

Standards start with a score you can defend

The mistake most teams make is treating service standards as a tone-of-voice note. A standard is a threshold someone can fail. For example, a brand might require 90% of a creator's posts to go live within two hours.

What a defensible standard needs

A number someone can fail
A named measurement source
A review date
One source that counts
Two scorers agree on the same post

Name the measurement source inside the standard. Platform analytics, a manual screenshot log and a third-party tool will disagree, so pick one. If two people score the same post differently, the standard is not finished.

If your standards live only in a shared document, they drift. Our beauty creator partnerships operations and delivery guide sets out where that schedule sits in the wider delivery chain.

Build the rubric before the brief

A rubric forces you to decide what good looks like before you invest in a creator. Draft it against your last three campaigns. If the rubric would have failed a campaign you called a success, either the rubric is wrong or the campaign was.

Objective setting comes first: decide the pass mark, then brief to it. For UK beauty partnerships the sources to cite in the schedule are the CAP Code and the ASA's guidance, and both sides should see them before the brief goes out.

A five-criterion scoring rubric

Use the same weights across every creator in a campaign. Adjust them between campaigns, never mid-campaign.

Five-criterion scoring rubric

Criterion

Brief accuracy: Talking points, claims, disclosures
Timing: Posts live in agreed window
Asset quality: Resolution, framing, sound, caption
Engagement integrity: Comments and saves from real accounts
Reporting: Metrics in agreed format and window

What you measure

Brief accuracy: 25%
Timing: 20%
Asset quality: 20%
Engagement integrity: 20%
Reporting: 15%

Weight

Brief accuracy: 100% disclosures
Timing: 90% of posts
Asset quality: No rework needed
Engagement integrity: No purchased signals
Reporting: Within 5 working days

Pass mark

Brief accuracy
Timing
Asset quality
Engagement integrity
Reporting

The five criteria are disclosure accuracy, timing and slot adherence, brief accuracy and messaging, reporting quality, and engagement integrity. Example pass marks are illustrative; set yours from the campaign brief.

Criterion	Definition	Example pass mark
Disclosure accuracy	Label every paid partnership as CAP Code and ASA require	100%, no partial pass
Timing and slot adherence	Posts go live in the agreed window	90% within two hours
Brief accuracy and messaging	Agreed messages appear without distortion	95% present
Reporting quality	Evidence uploaded to shared folder on time	100% within 24 hours
Engagement integrity	No bought or bot engagement	Verified organic only

Disclosure accuracy never carries a partial pass. Treat a failure as a stop. Your legal team will want the CAP Code and ASA guidance, and the Appropriation (No. 3) Act 2008 shows the plain form statutory texts take on legislation.gov.UK.

The UK rules the schedule should name

Disclosure is regulated, so the agreement should name what both sides are complying with instead of gesturing at best practice.

CAP Code Section 2 on the recognition of marketing communications, including rules 2.1, 2.3 and 2.4.
The ASA's Influencer's Guide to making clear that ads are ads, the document to hand to both sides.
The CMA's guidance on hidden ads, its influencers' guide together with the companion guide for brands, which sits behind the consumer law on misleading commercial communications.
The label itself'#ad' at the start of the caption, with the platform's paid partnership tag as an addition, not a substitute.

Say who checks the label and when. Under the CAP Code the advertiser and the publisher each carry responsibility, so the agreement should name the brand as advertiser, the creator as publisher, and set out who signs off before a post goes live. The ASA publishes its rulings, so a disputed call has a public record behind it.

Weight the criteria to the campaign

A launch campaign and an always-on programme should not share identical weights. A launch needs timing and brief accuracy to dominate. An always-on programme can trade timing flexibility for reporting quality and engagement integrity. Write those weights into the brief.

For example, a launch might weight timing 30%, brief 25%, disclosure 25%, reporting 10%, engagement 10%. Always-on might use timing 15%, reporting 25%, engagement 25%, disclosure 25%, brief 10%. Illustrative only; set yours from the objective.

The same logic applies to weighting, and the UK source is the ASA's Influencer's Guide to making clear that ads are ads, which sets out what a clear label looks like on each platform. Check the current version before you brief, because platform labelling changes.

Make the numbers auditable

Every score needs an evidence trail: a screenshot, a timestamp, a platform export or a signed-off asset. Build a folder structure per creator per campaign and require evidence within the reporting window.

Store that evidence where the creator can see it. Shared visibility removes arguments about timing and turns the final score into a record.

A sample contract schedule clause might read:

Schedule 3: Service standards

Disclosure accuracy100%. No label means a stop.
Timing90% within two hours. Evidence: timestamp screenshot within 24 hours.
Other criteria and weightssee Appendix A. No mid-campaign changes without written agreement.

Run a review after the first two deliverables, not at the end. Our beauty creator partnerships launch review explains why early checkpoints catch drift while there is still budget to fix it.

Before you sign: the rest of the agreement

Service standards are one schedule. Signing commits the brand to more than the rubric, so check the following in the same pass.

Exclusivitywhich categories, competitors and time windows the creator is locked out of, and whether exclusivity carries its own fee.
Usage and licensingwhich assets the brand may reuse, on which channels and for how long, and whether paid media use is included or charged again.
Paymentthe fee, the invoicing route, the payment window and the fee-hold mechanic, including what triggers a hold and what releases it.
Terminationnotice periods on both sides, what happens to work already delivered, and whether the fee still stands.
Conduct and moralitywhat counts as reputational risk and what remedies follow if it happens.
Disclosure liabilitywho warrants the label, who checks it before a post goes live and who carries the cost if a ruling goes against the campaign.

If any of these sits in a separate document, say so in the schedule. A standard in one file and a payment term in another is how disputes start.

Common questions

How many criteria should a service standards rubric have?

Five or six. Fewer misses material; more becomes a negotiation about wording.

Should creators see the rubric before they sign?

Yes. Share the rubric with the brief and confirm evidence requirements in writing.

What happens when a creator misses a pass mark?

Define the consequence before the campaign. Common options are a rework window, a partial fee hold, or removal from the next wave.

Can we change the rubric mid-campaign?

Change weights only with written agreement from both sides. Changing a standard after delivery makes future scores suspect.