We’ve been running influencer partnerships in Russia for a few years and we’ve got a solid playbook. Brand guidelines, content approval workflows, crisis response protocols—all documented and actually followed.
But when we started moving into cross-border partnerships with international creators, we hit a wall. Our playbook assumes Russian business culture and Russian regulatory environment. We have specific rules about what creators can and can’t say, specific response times for crises, specific ways we escalate issues. None of it directly translates.
I started out thinking I could just translate the guidelines and enforce them universally. That was naive. A creator in the US has completely different expectations about approval workflows. A regulatory issue that’s serious in Russia might not even be noticed in the US, and vice versa.
So we had to split. We have core brand guidelines that everybody follows, no matter where they are. Like: no false health claims, no explicit content, no competitor trashing. That’s non-negotiable across all markets.
But then we have regional overlays. In Russia, we’re stricter about political content because the regulatory environment is different. In the US, we’re stricter about copyright and intellectual property because the legal risk is different. Creators understand why these rules exist in their market, so compliance is actually higher.
The crisis response piece is the one I’m still learning. Recently we had a creator make a statement that was fine in the US context but would’ve been problematic in Russia. We had to act fast but also think about the cross-market implications. Who decides what’s actually a crisis? What’s the escalation path when you have people in different timezones and different regulatory environments?
We’ve set up a response team with people who understand both markets, and we lean heavily on judgment calls rather than rules. We also have standing meetings twice a week where we review any flagged content or incidents, specifically cross-market stuff.
But I’m not sure we have the right system yet. Sometimes we’re too slow because we’re deliberating. Sometimes we’re inconsistent because different team members make different calls.
How do you actually handle brand alignment when you’re running campaigns across very different regulatory and cultural contexts? Do you try to maintain one global playbook or do you accept that you need regional versions? And how do you keep crisis response from becoming a bottleneck?