With a ban on the horizon, TikTok creators are changing their approach to brand partnership contracts

By Alexander Lee • January 8, 2025 •

Ivy Liu

As a potential U.S. TikTok ban grows near, creators are adjusting their approach to partnership contracts to avoid being left holding the bag if — or when — the platform goes down.

Although the United States’ impending TikTok ban is not slated to take effect until Jan. 19, it’s already threatening some creators’ brand partnership business. As the deadline approaches, TikTok has become an increasingly risky prospect for advertisers, some of which have said they have slowed their spending on TikTok content accordingly.

“We have refused to sign any new clients on TikTok at all — and that’s been a little concerning, from a business perspective,” said Nicole Rechtszaid, the head of creator partnerships and social strategy for the creative agency Ghost Agency, who told Digiday that her company’s pre-existing TikTok campaigns will continue to run until they are unable to deliver on them. “We’re trying to figure out where else brands can still participate, and it’s been very uncertain terrain for us. As we’ve been navigating it, we do not want to encourage any brands to start that activation there.”

Force majeure

Creators’ caution around TikTok is a result of the force majeure clauses that are often standard for branded content work. Creators’ contracts with prospective sponsors typically include this type of clause, which specifies that creators will keep branded content on their pages for a set duration, often six or 12 months, before taking it down. But with no guarantee that TikTok or any of its content will be available to U.S. users in the coming months, some creators are pushing to remove this line from recent brand partnership contracts, fearing that they could be found in breach if users lose access to TikTok.

“We always have our account managers or contract specialists remove that, because we don’t have control over it,” said Samantha Hicks, the managing director of the influencer talent agency Shine Talent Group. “Yes, we can say Talent X is not going to proactively delete this from their feed because it just doesn’t fit their aesthetic anymore — but we have no control if Instagram ceases to exist, and we don’t want our talent to be liable for something they have no control over.”

Another way creators are altering their brand partnership contracts to ensure their safety post-ban is by avoiding language that specifies that they will only get paid if they post their deliverables to TikTok. Instead, some creators are pushing to add contractual clauses that outline alternative posting plans on other platforms in the case of a potential TikTok ban.

Ghost Agency, for example, signed a contract with one client at the beginning of the month that specified that it would post its content to other social platforms if a ban goes into place on January 19.

“If I were drafting an agreement and that was an issue — which, of course, it is right now — I would just have it in the Services section. Whenever we say content will be posted on TikTok, we’ll say ‘TikTok, or pursuant to,” said Ghost Agency senior director of business and legal affairs Rebecca Rechtszaid. “And then we’ll have another paragraph that says, in the event that TikTok shuts down, we will mutually agree on a different platform that works for us, or something along those lines.”

Deliverable over platform

For both TikTok creators and the agencies that work with them, it’s become imperative to adjust the scope, terms and objective of their brand partnerships to place more of a focus on the deliverables themselves, rather than the platform on which they are posted. This shift away from a platform-specific focus was the result of reports of the impending TikTok ban last year, but has gradually become an increasingly standard practice for brand partnership contracts across different social channels.

“Now, you are 100 percent seeing all the brands recognize this as a reality: If it could happen to TikTok, it could happen anywhere,” said Jake Webb, founder and CEO of the talent management firm Slash Management. “So let’s hedge our bets, and let’s be aware that while social media is never really going away, the social media of the moment might.”

Regardless of the potential contractual issues sparked by a TikTok ban, TikTok creators are confident that their brand partners will continue to find ways to work with them as they expand to different platforms, rather than cracking down on creators for any theoretical breaches caused by the ban. Even if brands are legally allowed to do so, punishing creators for a platform ban outside their control would risk hurting a brand’s reputation within the creator community.

“The creator technically hasn’t taken down the content; it’s really just that the app exploded, right?” said the TikTok creator Xevi, who requested anonymity to avoid being doxxed by his fans. “So, I would assume most companies will just take that as a loss and let it go — because if they don’t, that would be a bad look.”

With a ban on the horizon, TikTok creators are changing their approach to brand partnership contracts

Although the United States’ impending TikTok ban is not slated to take effect until Jan. 19, it’s already threatening some creators’ brand partnership business.