A Marketing Agency Between the Brand and the Influencer: What Is It Really Responsible For?

Legal status as of 15 September 2026. Translated by the Blogger Bank editorial team from the Polish original.

The agency is in the middle – and that is exactly why it sees the most

The brand knows the product. The influencer knows their audience. The agency usually connects both worlds: it translates the client's needs into a brief, selects the creator, agrees the fee, watches the deadlines, collects revisions and reports the results.

It is a convenient operational position, but not necessarily a comfortable one legally. When a campaign runs into trouble, the question is not only "who published the material?", but also "who prepared the message, who approved it and who had the chance to catch the mistake?".

UOKiK states explicitly that correct labelling of advertising content is an area of responsibility not only for influencers and advertisers, but also for advertising agencies. In practice, an agency should therefore build the campaign process so that legal compliance does not depend solely on the creator's memory on the day of publication.

The first problem: who is actually the party to the contract with the influencer?

In some campaigns the influencer signs a contract directly with the brand, and the agency only coordinates the project. In others it is the agency that orders the service in its own name and then settles with the client. Sometimes the communication looks as if the agency represents the brand, but the documents do not confirm it.

This detail affects many further issues: who has to pay the creator, who can demand revisions, who holds the rights to the content and who is responsible if the campaign is cancelled.

The worst option is a model in which the relationship was planned operationally but not legally. Then, at the first dispute, each party starts describing the agency's role differently.

The second problem: copyright has to pass through the whole chain

Let's assume the client wants to use the influencer's reel for six months in paid advertising. The agency promises the client such a right, but the contract with the creator only covers publication on the creator's profile. A gap appears: the agency has sold the client more than it obtained itself.

That is why rights should be designed backwards. First you need to establish what the brand wants to do with the material, and then check whether the influencer-agency contract really allows the agency to pass the appropriate scope of licence to the client, grant a sublicence or transfer the rights.

Particular care is needed with paid media, whitelisting/partnership ads, use on a website, in e-commerce, in sales materials and when passing content on to group companies. One standard "all rights" clause does not automatically solve each of these cases.

The third problem: labelling advertising should be part of the process

An agency should not limit itself to sending the influencer a link to the UOKiK recommendations and assuming the topic is closed. The way of labelling can be agreed in the brief, checked at the material approval stage and verified after publication.

In practice, a simple checklist helps: the platform's paid partnership feature, the creator's own unambiguous label, the name of the promoted brand, the label being visible from the start of the material. These are a few points that can be built into the standard campaign QA process.

Such a mechanism protects not only the brand. It also protects the agency from a situation in which, after a few months, nobody remembers whether the influencer removed the label themselves or whether those were the client's instructions.

The fourth problem: "the client approved it" does not always close the topic of claims

Particular caution is needed with regulated products: medicines, dietary supplements, medical devices, alcohol, financial services or some health and beauty services. Here it is not only about the #ad label, but about what may be said in the advertisement, to whom it may be shown and what warnings must appear.

An agency often receives a list of claims from the client and treats them as approved. That is a reasonable starting point, but the process should also specify who is formally responsible for the legality of the message and who approves the final material from that angle.

In B2B contracts, responsibility can be split between the parties, but a contractual clause will not make the supervisory authority lose interest in an entity that actually took part in running the campaign. That is why the procedure is just as important as the clause.

The fifth problem: revisions and the approval flow

In a campaign with an agency it is easy to create an endless chain of comments: the account manager sends the material to the brand manager, who sends it to the legal department, five comments come back, and then another department changes the brief. The influencer only sees yet another round of revisions.

It is good to describe who has the right to approve material on behalf of the brand, how many rounds of changes the collaboration provides for and when the material is considered approved. If the client's comments contradict the earlier brief, the agency should have a change-of-scope mechanism rather than trying to shift all the extra work onto the creator.

This is not only a matter of relationships. A clear approval flow makes it possible later to reconstruct who approved the disputed slogan or shot.

The sixth problem: responsibility should match real control

Marketing contracts often contain broad clauses in which one party is responsible "for any violations of law related to the campaign". It sounds safe until it turns out that this party had no influence over most of the elements it is responsible for.

A better model assigns duties to areas of control. The brand is responsible for product information and approved claims. The influencer for their own statements, the accuracy of data about their profile and the elements of content they add themselves. The agency for the correct running of the process, passing on instructions, the scope of rights obtained and the actions it performs itself.

Of course, in a specific campaign this split may look different. What matters is that it follows from the real working model, not from a template copied from another project.

What should an agency have apart from a contract template?

A good contract template is only the beginning. With a larger number of campaigns, a whole mini-system is more useful: modular clauses on content rights, paid media rules, a labelling checklist, a list of red flags for regulated products, an approval flow standard and a simple form for collecting from the client the information needed before the campaign starts.

Thanks to this, the team does not have to solve every campaign from scratch, and the lawyer does not become a bottleneck approving every comma. It is worth knowing, however, when the standard process stops being enough – e.g. with a non-standard licence, a creator from another country, advertising aimed at children or a product subject to special restrictions.

For an agency, the greatest value lies not in a contract that looks professional, but in a process that makes it possible to run campaigns quickly without generating risk with every publication.

About the author

Natalia Łukawska – attorney (adwokat), founder of Influ na Legalu. She advises influencers, marketing agencies and brands on contracts, advertising, copyright and running influencer marketing campaigns, including in regulated industries and the beauty sector.