Dozens of TikTok creators are adding a new element to their typical “Get Ready With Me” videos: revelations of “shady” or ethically dubious things that brand partners have asked them to say or do in sponsored videos.

Both macro- and micro-influencers on TikTok have been divulging questionable creator marketing practices, often while filming themselves applying makeup or skincare products. Allegations range from brands and influencer agencies dismissing creators’ illnesses or family emergencies to brands asking creators to refrain from disclosing that their video is sponsored content—which goes against a warning issued by the FTC in November. 

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Beauty influencer Abbey Yung kicked off the trend at the end of January with a TikTok video labeled “SHADY BRAND DEALS.” In her nearly two-minute video, Yung details a series of “shady things brands have tried to get [her] to say in exchange for a sponsorship that [she] has refused to say.”

“I realized VERY early on in my influencer career that many brands will try to push influencers as far as they can,” Yung wrote in the caption of her video, which has since garnered nearly 200,000 likes and over two million views. “And I think they’re able to get away with it because so many creators don’t realize that they can say no. So, I hope this helps any creator who feels like they’re being pushed to say things they don’t want to say.”

Yung’s video opened the floodgates for dozens of other content creators to reveal unethical requests from potential brand partners, as well as mistreatment they’ve faced from brands they agreed to work with. 

Also read: Creator and influencer trends brand marketers need to know

“We’ve been seeing this trend of [creators] being more open and kind of detailing their experiences from a pay standpoint, and now we’re getting into this situation where they’re kind of just talking about the brand deal process overall,” said Brittany Bright, an influencer marketing consultant and founder of influencer marketing education platform The Influencer League. “And I feel like it's opening up a can of worms.”

Below are four questionable influencer marketing practices repeatedly brought up across these creators’ videos, how brands can avoid these practices and how creators can respond when encountering them. 

Pushing creators to make false claims

Almost any discussion of influencer marketing will inevitably touch on the “authenticity” that makes creators’ content so appealing to their audiences. But, according to several creators, those same marketers touting the importance of “authentic” sponsored content are urging creators to lie to their viewers about their experiences using various products or services. 

Lifestyle creator and vlogger Taryn Lamb recently shared a TikTok video where she described turning down a deal from a haircare brand because they “straight up asked me to lie to” her followers.

Lamb said the undisclosed brand asked her to replicate a video she posted last year about how she repaired her heat-damaged hair—but to replace the actual products she had originally used with the brand’s products instead.

“People are smart enough these days to know when an influencer is lying about something and when they’re just doing it for a cash grab,” Lamb told Ad Age. “I just think it would be really obvious if I started working with brands that I don’t believe in—and if I did, why would anyone ever listen to me for anything when it comes to [haircare] ever again?” 

On top of being dishonest, sponsored videos dedicated solely to peddling a product never perform well anyway, she said. Viewers “catch on right away” when a creator is simply reciting brand talking points, and are quick to scroll past a sponsored post when that product isn’t organically integrated into the creator’s normal style of content, said Lamb. Lamb often saw brands making that mistake when she worked at TikTok as an account manager from 2022 to 2023, she added.

Also read: 5 TikTok trends that brands can follow

“Every time I get asked about a product or people are interested in buying a product, it’s always when it’s naturally integrated into something and they’re just curious about it,” Lamb said. “Because I’m not pushing it on them—and no one wants things to be pushed on them.”

Cy Nguyen, whose content revolves around trying different foods and sharing recipes, said that an  frozen food brand asked her to edit a video she made for them to exclude a line about the product being frozen, despite the fact that it’s stored in the freezer and needs to be microwaved to be eaten.

“I don’t feel comfortable with not saying that and not displaying that I'm taking your items out of the freezer … I don't want to lie by omission to my audience,” Nguyen recalled telling the brand, which she declined to identify. ​​​​​​

Creators said brands also ask them to exclude indications that the brand is sponsoring their post—whether maliciously or because they’re unfamiliar with FTC guidelines around influencer marketing disclosures.

Bright, the consultant, recently had a production team she was working with on an influencer campaign tell her the creator’s sponsored video didn’t need to include a text overlay disclosing the sponsorship because the caption indicated the video was an ad. But, according to the FTC’s latest influencer marketing guidelines, that on-screen disclosure is required in addition to the “paid partnership” label or hashtag disclosures, she said. 

“I believe that there’s still a lack of understanding between brand, legal and production teams on the proper ways to disclose an ad,” Bright wrote in an email. “I also think that more creators need to take it upon themselves to get educated on FTC guidelines and feel empowered to push back when necessary."

Setting unreasonable deadlines or not adjusting them for creators’ personal emergencies

Several creators also bemoaned what they described as unreasonably short deadlines some brands give them to produce sponsored content—which can be as short as just 24 hours, according to Nguyen. 

“I just had a brand two days ago say, ‘We need your [video] concepts by tomorrow,’” she said. “Ultimately, it only took me like two or three hours to do, and it’s easy to just be like, ‘Okay, I’ll just suck it up and work at the brand’s pace,’ but, ideally, you want to have good boundaries, or good representation that will be able to kind of correspond with the brand for you and be like, ‘Hey, that’s a little unreasonable. Why don’t we [spend] a couple of days on it?’”

Often, these tight turnaround times stem from brands’ or agencies’ unfamiliarity with the content creation process, said Lindsey Gamble, associate director of influencer innovation at Later Influence, an influencer marketing platform. “They haven’t created content [themselves], they don’t understand the nuances—they’re just approaching it as the marketer,” he said. 

Other creators have had brands or agencies stand firm on content deadlines when the creators experience a family emergency or fall ill. Parissa Kamal, a beauty micro-influencer, described in a TikTok video how an influencer agency demanded she meet a deadline to submit eight videos, despite Kamal communicating to them that she had been at a hospital for the past several days due to a family emergency.

When she told the agency she was “in no mental state” to produce the videos by the original deadline because she had been “crying all day, all night” in her family member’s hospital room, the agency continued to hound her for the content—first through emails, then direct messages on WhatsApp. The agency even asked her to re-record her voiceover of one of the eight videos knowing she would be doing so from the hospital, Kamal said in her seven-minute TikTok video. 

Creators should ensure their contracts with brands include stipulations that allow them to push back their deadlines in case of emergencies or other issues, Bright said. Brands and agencies often include “ghosting clauses” that ensure “the creator responds to them in a timely manner and meets all their deadlines,” she added, and some of those clauses will also knock off a portion of the creator’s pay for each day their content submission is past the deadline. 

“Whenever I have a creator that has a problem, a lot of the time my first response is ‘Let’s go and review the agreement and see what you agreed to,’ because if it comes down to it, and there’s a, you know, a dispute or a conflict, I can guarantee you the brand or the agency are gonna go back to their contract and enforce it if they need to.”

Indeed, beauty creator @Sophdoeslife said in a video that a brand forced her to attend an event when she had tonsillitis because her contract with the brand required her to be at the event. Another brand tried to include a clause in her yearlong contract with the creator that would prohibit her from gaining weight or essentially “chang[ing] anything about [her] physical appearance” for the duration of their partnership—though she then worked with her talent manager to get that clause removed from the contract.

Agencies should be adding a buffer between the deadline they give to creators and the date they promise a brand they’ll deliver the creators’ content in anticipation of any emergencies or other unexpected situations, Bright said. 

Bright also says creators should have “at least two weeks to turn around content” as a rule of thumb. If a brand demands content sooner than that, the content can be considered “quick-turn” and creators can charge them additional “quick-turn fees” on top of their standard rates. 

Using creators’ content without their permission and/or payment 

Both Nguyen and Lamb described experiences of having brands repost their content on the brands’ social channels, websites or other mediums without paying them in exchange.

Lamb had an athletic apparel brand she frequently featured in her social content reach out and ask if it could repurpose the content for its own Instagram posts and website—and she agreed, on the condition that the brand would add her to its ambassador program. But the brand never made good on that promise, even after Lamb and her manager followed up with multiple people on the brand’s team several times. 

“I wasn’t looking for anything paid, necessarily,” she said. “I wanted to be affiliated with the brand because I loved it so much. But now, I’m probably never going to buy things from them or promote them anymore.” 

Nguyen said she and other creators have received “constant emails” from Yitty, Lizzo’s shapewear brand, asking them to create multiple posts about the brand in exchange for one or two items of clothing or underwear. Yitty often tries to convince them that payment isn’t necessary by arguing the creators are actually the ones getting the better end of the deal, saying things like, “We’re such a big brand name that you’ll benefit from just wearing our brand,” according to Nguyen. 

“Getting ‘paid in exposure’ doesn’t pay the bills,” she added. Nguyen has also had brands—especially “smaller, indie” ones that “are big, but aren’t at the level of a huge conglomerate”—put paid support behind her videos without writing that into her contract with them, or use sound bites or clips from her sponsored posts for other content without her permission.

Yitty did not respond to a request for comment. 

Nguyen has also had several agencies try to manipulate her into producing additional deliverables not outlined in their contract with a brand, she said. “They’ll be like, ‘It would look really good for the brand if you crosspost this from your TikTok to your [Instagram]. It was such a good ad—it would be amazing if other audiences and platforms got to see this video. And the brand will definitely want to work with you again in the future if you do, wink wink.’” 

Not paying creators until several months after they post 

It is the norm for brands or agencies to wait anywhere from 90 to 120 days after a creator uploads their sponsored content to pay them for that partnership is the norm, according to both creators and influencer marketers.

“That’s hard [for creators], and it’s a huge pain point for anyone in this industry,” said Ali Grant, the co-CEO and chief marketing officer of influencer marketing firm The Digital Department. “There are some partners that pay on time, consistently, and then there are others that just don’t. We have a whole team that basically just chases these invoices down.” 

Those lengthy wait times can be extended even further when brands or agencies work additional clauses into their contracts with creators that push the payment date until after analytics on the sponsored content have been collected, said Saheedat Abdul, an influencer marketing specialist who previously worked in influencer marketing at companies such as Airbnb and Google. 

Also read: How influencer marketers can better ensure pay equity

Brands often create analytics reports based on anywhere from three days to 30 days after the creator’s post is uploaded, though a period of seven days is the standard, she said. “But add those seven days to the [90-day payment terms], and Net 90 can easily turn into Net 100,” she added. “Guys, 100 days for payment is ridiculous.” 

Abdul also worked with a brand that wanted to pay creators based on the overall views their sponsored videos received, “as if people can control the algorithm,” she said. “Their pricing structure was like, ‘If you reach your view average, we'll pay you 100% of your rate, but if you miss that mark, we’ll only pay you 75% of your rate’ … And they thought that would incentivize [the creators] to create better content and also get them to be more involved in promoting the post.” 

Some creators, such as Kamal, are simply never paid for their sponsored content. In the same video where she discussed an influencer agency hounding her to submit her videos despite a family emergency, she also described a “big makeup brand” requiring her sponsored video to adhere to a strict, nearly frame-by-frame creative brief and putting her content through several rounds of editing, only to never pay her for that video. 

Ultimately, this TikTok trend of content creators divulging negative brand experiences or brands they would never partner with is a natural outcome of the growing transparency sweeping through the influencer industry. It’s only emphasized by the development of platforms such as F*** You Pay Me and Canopy, which allow creators to gain insight into how much brands are paying their peers and ask fellow influencers about their experiences working with specific brands.

It also reflects many creators’ increased familiarity with navigating the intricacies of brand deals after having been full-time content creators for months or years. Nguyen, Lamb and several creators who shared TikTok videos about “shady” brand practices agreed they likely wouldn’t do or say some of the things brands asked them to do when they were first starting out as creators if asked to do so today.

“Frankly, the reason most creators I know have management is because brands are kind of a pain in the ass to correspond with, because they are constantly trying to take advantage of creators who maybe might not know better,” Nguyen said. “Earlier on, I was pushed around by a lot of brands for way too long before I said no, and very much felt I had to people-please and bend over backwards to make sure everyone was satisfied. But I'm a lot more confident in myself as a creator now.”