What is a Seeding Brief?

What is a Seeding brief?

A Seeding brief is built for product gifting at scale. You send gifted product to a group of creators, and in exchange they post about it on their social channels — the modern version of sending out PR boxes, run inside Cohley.

Seeding briefs are product-only for creators (creators aren’t paid a fee) and support Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube posts. They’re designed to run with very little manual work: Finn accepts creators for you, and content is cleared to post automatically once it passes AI Asset Analysis.

Deciding between brief types? See How do I choose the right brief?

How a Seeding brief is different

To keep seeding lightweight, a few things work differently than they do in UGC, Influencer, or Professional briefs:

• Finn accepts creators for you. You set how many creators you want and describe who you’re looking for. After your apply-by date, Finn automatically accepts matching creators — up to the number you chose. There’s no Applicants tab and no manual vetting step.
• There’s no back-and-forth with creators. You’ll still see automated updates from Cohley inside the brief, and you can push a message out — ask Finn to send a mass message to the brief — but creators can’t reply, and two-way direct messaging is turned off for Seeding briefs.
• You don’t pick the channel — and creators can post to more than one. Seeding briefs don’t require a posting channel. Creators post at least once, on whichever of their authorized channels they choose, and they’re free to post the same content to more than one (cross-posting). You can point creators toward a channel — say it in your goal, and target on that channel’s follower count (for example, creators with 1,000+ TikTok followers) so everyone you accept is set up to post there — but it isn’t enforced. If you need a guaranteed channel, or approval over what gets posted, run an Influencer Partnership brief instead. Cross-posting doesn’t change your cost: the $35 fee is per completed creator, not per post.
• AI Asset Analysis is automatic — and so is posting. Every submission is scanned against your AI Asset Analysis requirements. When content passes, the creator is cleared to post. You don’t approve each asset, and you can’t send change requests in a Seeding brief. You can always view what was flagged. (More on AI Asset Analysis requirements.)

What a Seeding brief costs

There are two things to budget for:

• Cohley’s seeding fee — $35 per completed creator. This is in addition to your Cohley license; it isn’t covered by your subscription. A creator is completed once they’ve linked at least one post, so accepted creators who never post aren’t charged. Billing is in arrears — at the beginning of each month you’re invoiced for the creators who posted the prior month. You agree to this pricing when you launch the brief. No additional agreement is necessary — simply pay as you go. Full billing detail: Seeding Briefs: Matching, Requirements & Pricing.
• Your product and shipping. You cover the cost of the product itself and getting it to creators.

Creators are not paid a fee. The gifted product is their compensation — that’s what “product-only” means, and it describes creator compensation, not your total cost. Product-only doesn’t mean no money ever changes hands: if creators buy the product themselves, you can still reimburse them from inside the brief — see Reimbursing creators for product, just below.

Sending creators to a specific retailer

Seeding works for in-store campaigns. If you want creators to buy your product at Target, Walmart, Ulta or anywhere else it’s stocked, you set that in the Product step.

Set how creators receive the product to Creators to purchase in store, then add:

• Store locator — the retailer’s store-finder URL. This is what tells creators which retailer to visit.
• Product image — a clear shot so creators can identify your product on the shelf.
• Product link — helps creators confirm the product is in stock at their local store.

No store locator because it’s a limited-location release? A link to a Google Sheet or a custom Google Map of locations works just as well.

Creators see the retailer instruction in the brief overview before they apply, and again in the automated acceptance message. See How will the Creator receive the product(s)?

The instruction isn’t enforced — but your requirements are. Setting the retailer tells creators where you want them to buy; nothing checks where they actually shopped. What you can enforce is what shows up in the content. Add AI Asset Analysis requirements for the evidence you need:

• “Show the outside of the Target store”
• “Show the product in its position on the shelf”
• “Include a call to action to buy at Target”

Every submission is scanned against your requirements and only clears to post once it passes, so content shot somewhere else doesn’t clear. You get 1–5 requirements on a Seeding brief — spend them on the evidence that matters most. More on AI Asset Analysis requirements. If you need a person signing off on retailer-verified footage, run the campaign as an Influencer Partnership brief — see How to Run a Path to Purchase Campaign on Cohley.

Optional: have applicants confirm up front. Write the requirement into your ideal creator targeting in plain language — “must go to Target to purchase” — and Cohley generates a question that applicants answer before they can apply. 

Reimbursing creators for product

Reimbursement is your call. Creators buying in store are spending their own money, and you can reimburse them from inside the brief — but nothing requires it. If you do plan to reimburse, pick a flat amount and put two numbers — what the product costs and what you will reimburse — in the Product step, in the field explaining how creators should use the product. Seeding has no receipt step, and while you can send creators a mass message through Finn, they can’t reply to query it. 

When you’re ready, use Reimburse Creator on each creator in the brief, or ask Finn to reimburse a set amount per creator. There’s no upfront budget to set, no field to record what you expect to owe, and no receipt upload.

How much should you reimburse? Pick one flat amount that covers every creator — the product price plus enough headroom for sales tax, rounded up. Because there's no receipt step in a Seeding brief, a flat, slightly generous number is the only approach that works at seeding volume; reviewing individual totals doesn't scale past a handful of creators. State the amount in the brief so creators know what to expect before they buy. More on both approaches: Reimbursement Options.

If you’d rather not manage that, ship product yourself or through your Shopify integration and skip reimbursement entirely — see How to run a Seeding brief.

Measuring results

Performance for Seeding posts shows up just like your other briefs: organic post performance for Instagram and TikTok is available in Social Performance. YouTube posts are supported, but aren’t measured in reporting yet

Ready to set one up? 

See How to run a Seeding brief.