Can an Influencer Break Their Management Contract?
Can you break an influencer management contract? One thing that I find kind of gets confused is when someone considers breaking a contract, meaning, breaching it, or just simply terminating a contract, and let’s go over the difference between the two. If you’ve signed an influencer management contract with an agency or a manager, there will be clause in that contract that states how the influencer can terminate the agreement, meaning, end it. And for the most part, there’s four ways that you can terminate a contract. If it’s for a fixed period and it doesn’t renew, let’s just say it’s a year, either party wants to renew, the contract ends, it’s terminated and that’s it.
You could terminate it by mutual agreement. At any point, even if there are clauses in the contract that state a certain amount of notice that must be given, you can just say, you know what, it’s not working out. Let’s just move on. If both parties agree, then you can move on. The third way is for cause termination, meaning, one party has breached the contract. Let’s just say you’re an influencer, your management company continues to pay you slowly, or they’re not paying you the correct amount, you’d send them written notice they’re in breach of a contract. Then normally, they’d have time to fix that breach, called a cure. And then if they haven’t fixed the breach at the end of that cure period, you could terminate the agreement immediately.
And then the last way to terminate a contract and the most common way is without cause termination. And that just means either party can terminate the agreement at any time, for any reason, with a certain amount of notice to the other party. Somewhere between 30 to 120 days is kind of a standard amount of notice in a management contract. If you are the influencer, the shorter amount of time, the better. I mean, if you decided to end your relationship with a manager, you don’t want to work with them anymore, the longer that you’re forced to work with them, or kind of sitting there waiting to find a new manager is not great. So, you want to keep that as short as possible. There are a couple of things that can also happen after you terminate the contract. Once again, breaking a contract also just means terminating the agreement. There will usually be a provision in almost any exclusive management contract that states the influencer will have to pay whatever the agreed-upon percentage of commission after the contract is terminated for a period, usually, one year with any brand that the management company has brought the influencer. Let’s just say the influencers brought a deal with the skincare company, from the management company, they agreed to it, they’ve been working with them for years. Other topics of interest include:
Well, even if you terminate the contract with the management company, that doesn’t mean you have to stop paying them the percentage with that skincare brand. You would have to continue paying, let’s just say it’s 20% for the entire year after the contract ends, because they brought you that deal. I mean, the management company, the biggest fear of them is they bring an influencer deal, it’s a great deal. And then the influencer terminates the agreement, leaves, and then doesn’t have to pay any commission to the management company. That’s standard as well. Now, what happens if you sign a management agreement with a company and then you don’t want to go forward with it? That’s where I would consider breaking the management contract. Well, you still have to follow through with the notice provision.
So, if you sign the agreement, and you don’t want to move forward, you still have to give them notice. Now, obviously, you’re not forced to accept any sponsorship opportunities by somebody. If they were to say, hey, we have all these deals that we want to bring you. But if you’ve already given them notice that you’re going to leave, you don’t have to take them. But there may be language in there that states you can’t contract with any other management company until after that notice period is ended and the contract is officially terminated. That’s what I would think of breaking a contract. I do a lot of work with physicians and so physicians all the time will sign a contract and decide not to go through with the job. And then there’s a whole discussion of, alright, well, what are the repercussions here?
It’s a little simpler for an influencer because for the most part, not a lot of time, money, or resources have been expended if they’ve signed the agreement but haven’t even started working yet. Whereas with other professions, sometimes there’s licensure, you have to go through credentialing and insurance and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, that’s how you would break an influencer management contract.
Influencer Management Contract Questions?
Contract Review, Termination Issues, and more!
