A Brand Safety Checklist for Influencer Partnerships

What brand safety is — and what it isn't

Brand safety vetting is about assessing whether an influencer's public conduct and content history could damage your brand's reputation if you attach yourself to them — legally, commercially, or simply in public perception. That's a different question from whether their audience is real (see how to spot fake followers) or whether it matches your target market (see how to check an influencer's audience before you pay). A creator can pass both of those checks and still be a bad bet for your brand, if their own public history holds something that could blow up in your direction.

The term brand safety originates in programmatic advertising, where industry bodies — including the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) — use it to mean avoiding an ad being shown next to inappropriate content. In influencer marketing, Make Influence applies it in a related but inverted sense: it isn't about where your ad appears, it's about who you're attaching your brand to. It's one of several filters that belong to the broader selection process covered in how to choose the right influencers — but important enough to deserve its own checklist.

Why it matters commercially

Influencer content keeps existing long after the campaign ends — especially if you reuse it in ads or on your own channels. That means a creator's public history isn't only relevant while the collaboration is live; it stays attached to your brand for as long as the content and the association remain visible. A problem that happened to the creator eight months ago can resurface later, precisely because your campaign reminds people you chose to work with them.

It's also a different kind of risk from most of the other checks in this category. Follower count and engagement are about what you get for your money. Brand safety is about what you could end up wearing the consequences of, even if the campaign itself performs well.

The eight things to check

Step by step in practice

1. Search the creator's name alongside words like "controversy" or "backlash". Two minutes, and it catches most of what's already publicly known.
2. Scroll six to twelve months back through the feed. Look for patterns, not just single posts — one controversial post two years ago carries different weight than a repeated pattern.
3. Read the comment section on three to five recent posts. Is the tone constructive, or toxic regardless of what the creator themselves posts?
4. Check for competitor conflicts by scanning for sponsored-tagged posts from the last couple of months.
5. Weigh tone and values against your own brand — not whether the creator is "controversial" in a general sense, but whether the specific content and subjects they raise fit what your brand can stand behind.
6. Decide: approve, approve with a written morality clause in the contract, or move on to another candidate.

For a nano gifted collaboration worth a few hundred euros, steps 1 and 3 are often enough — five minutes of work. For a large macro or ambassador deal, the full list is relevant, and doing it properly should take twenty to thirty minutes.

Decision framework

In Make Influence's experience, this is a useful rule of thumb — not an industry standard, and not a verdict on its own:

Contractual protection: the morality clause

Even a thorough vetting process is a snapshot — it tells you something about a creator's history, not about what happens after you sign. That's why any contract of meaningful size should include a morality clause (sometimes called a morals clause, or a brand safety/conduct clause): a provision giving you the right to end the collaboration and demand content removal if the creator subsequently engages in conduct that damages your brand's reputation. Clauses like this originated in the film and sports industries and have since become standard in influencer contracts too. See What to Put in an Influencer Contract for how the morality clause fits alongside the other 12 terms a full contract should cover.

A morality clause is a legal backstop, not a substitute for vetting. It protects you if something goes wrong after you've signed. The checklist above is what reduces the odds you'll ever need it.

A hypothetical example: why two minutes pays off

The example below is invented and for illustration only. It is not a real Make Influence customer.

A brand finds a micro-influencer with 45,000 followers for a DKK 12,000 campaign. The audience matches the target market well, and engagement looks healthy — both checks described in how to check an influencer's audience before you pay pass without issue. But a two-minute search would have surfaced a public conflict from eight months earlier, where the creator became the centre of criticism that hit another brand partner hard at the time. The brand skips the step, signs, and the campaign later gets swept up in a fresh wave of the same criticism, because the old story resurfaces in the comments on the new partnership. The two minutes saved during vetting cost far more in the clean-up afterward.

What to do if something goes wrong after you've signed

Even the most thorough vetting doesn't catch everything — some problems only surface after the partnership has already started. If that happens:

1. Pause planned content until you have a clear picture of the situation. Avoid posting new content while the story is still developing.
2. Assess the severity internally before reacting publicly. Is it an isolated incident or a pattern? Does it directly connect to your brand, or is it the creator's private matter?
3. Use the morality clause to decide whether to pause or fully end the collaboration — that's exactly the decision the clause is written to support.
4. Avoid a rushed public reaction before you have the full picture. A too-fast, imprecise statement can create a second story on top of the first.
5. Document the decision and the reasoning — both for your own record and as part of the history you're building on the partnership.

Common mistakes

• Only checking the audience, never the creator's own history. The two checks answer different questions.
• Applying the same level of scrutiny regardless of deal size and visibility. A large, public ambassador deal needs more than a small test.
• Skipping the morality clause because the vetting check found nothing — the clause protects you against what you couldn't see in advance.
• Reacting too fast and too publicly if something does go wrong, before the situation is clear internally.

Make Influence's operational perspective

In Make Influence, brand safety assessment is a standing part of our own vetting process, not a separate step brands have to remember themselves. Our experience is that most real problems are caught by simply spending two minutes on a search engine and reading the comments on a couple of recent posts — the more time-consuming parts of the checklist (a deep content review, competitor analysis) are less often necessary, but matter more for larger, more visible partnerships where the cost of getting it wrong is higher.

We recommend scaling the depth of the check to both spend and visibility — a small, short-lived nano collaboration carries a different risk profile than a long-running ambassador deal with a macro profile appearing in your own ads for months.

FAQ

Is brand safety vetting the same as checking for fake followers?

No. Fake followers is about whether the audience is real — see how to spot fake followers. Brand safety is about the creator's own public conduct and content history, regardless of whether the audience is real. A creator can have a 100% genuine audience and still be a brand safety risk.

Should you always require a morality clause in the contract?

In Make Influence's experience: yes, for any collaboration of meaningful size or visibility. For a small, one-off gifted collaboration, insisting on a formal clause is often disproportionate, but for ambassador deals and larger paid collaborations it should be standard.

What if the creator has shared political or religious content?

That's not on its own a reason to reject the collaboration. Instead, assess whether the tone and frequency create a risk specifically for your brand and audience — some brands can comfortably sit alongside it, others should stay clear.

How far back should you check the content history?

Six to twelve months as a starting point for most collaborations. For larger, longer-running deals it can be worth going further back, particularly if the initial review raises questions.

Can you use a third-party tool for brand safety checks, the way you can for audience verification?

Tools exist that scan content for risky subject matter, but they aren't as widespread or standardised as the audience tools described in how to check an influencer's audience before you pay. For most brands, a manual review following the checklist above is both faster and more reliable than relying on automated scanning alone.