The year-end shopping season is one of the biggest commercial moments in Southeast Asia, and 11.11 influencer marketing is how many brands take part in it. Shoppers across the region wait for Singles’ Day deals, and creators are the voices they trust before they buy. This is the checklist we use to brief creators for 11.11 and 12.12 campaigns, from concept to boosting.
Why 11.11 and 12.12 matter in Southeast Asia
Singles’ Day on 11 November and 12.12 on 12 December are two of the biggest online sales moments of the Southeast Asian calendar, and the numbers keep growing. The e-Conomy SEA 2025 report by Google, Temasek and Bain projects e-commerce GMV in the region at USD 185 billion in 2025, counts three in five people in Southeast Asia as online shoppers, and notes that video commerce, fuelled in part by “the influence of trusted local creators”, now accounts for about a quarter of e-commerce GMV.
Creators shape individual buying decisions too: over 80% of consumers in Southeast Asia have bought something through an affiliate link, according to the Cube Asia and impact.com study published in July 2025.
Official data confirms the peak. Singapore’s Department of Statistics reported that online retail rose to an estimated 16.9% of total retail sales in November 2025, up from 14.5% in October, attributing the increase mainly to Singles’ Day and Black Friday. The market keeps expanding: DBS projects Southeast Asian e-commerce to more than double from USD 184 billion in 2024 to USD 410 billion by 2030.
For brand marketers, two things follow. The audience is primed to buy, and creators are already part of how they decide. Every brand with a budget activates for these dates, so the creators with the strongest communities in your category get booked first. Planning ahead is what separates a campaign from a scramble.
We work with brands and creators across six Southeast Asian markets: Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines. That is the footprint the rest of this checklist assumes.
Your 11.11 influencer marketing checklist
Work through the eight steps below in order. Each step becomes a section of your campaign document, and the order matters: the decisions at the top shape everything under them.
Campaign ideation: start with the big idea
Before you shortlist creators, decide what the campaign is about. A sale date is not a concept. Pick one big idea that connects your product to the season: a gifting angle, a self-care ritual, a format your category can own. Then build content angles around it: a first-impressions review for TikTok, a haul edit for Reels, a product explainer for YouTube.
Keep the idea native to the platform. Content that looks like it belongs in the feed earns the watch time; content that looks like an ad break gets scrolled past.
For more on how TikTok is shifting its focus from reach to creator relationships, read our take on TikTok’s Creator’s Cut newsletter.
Define the influencer persona and the audience you are targeting
An influencer persona is the kind of creator your audience already trusts, defined beyond a follower count. Write it down: market, language, content style and tier mix. The same product often calls for different creators in different markets. A skincare brand in Singapore might brief a dermatology-style explainer creator, while the same campaign in Vietnam might use a relatable student creator.
Match the persona to the buyer rather than to the algorithm. Before you commit, read the comment section under the creator’s product content: it shows you how their audience actually shops.
Execute in-house or with an influencer agency partner
Both routes work; the comparison is capability and time. In-house keeps the margin but needs people who know which creators matter in each market, speak the languages and can run outreach, contracts and moderation in parallel. An agency partner brings those roles as a standing team, plus existing creator relationships, in exchange for a service fee.
Narrators is one example of the second route: a Singapore-based campaign team combined with our own platform for discovery, moderation and reporting. Whichever route you choose, decide early: your partner needs as much runway as your creators do.
Usage rights: agree them before content is made
Usage rights define what the brand can do with a creator’s content after publication: how long it stays live, where it can be reused (owned channels, website, retail screens) and whether it can carry paid media such as Spark Ads on TikTok or partnership ads on Instagram and Facebook. Agree this before content is made, and write the duration, channels and paid-use permission into the contract.
Sorting rights out after the fact is where campaigns stall: late requests take longer and some creators decline them. Deciding early also means editors can plan clean video versions without platform captions baked in, so the content can travel between formats.
Influencer outreach and negotiations
Outreach starts well before the sale date, because the creators with the most engaged communities fill their November calendars first. Build a shortlist from your persona, then reach out with a campaign summary covering the concept and platform, the deliverables and timeline, and the disclosure expectations. Keep negotiations in writing: confirm revision rounds, usage rights and go-live dates, then lock it in a contract.
Two practical notes. Lead times compress fast in Q4: if you are briefing in early November for an 11.11 launch, treat that as a risk to manage, not a plan. A campaign brief also travels: by the time it reaches a creator, it may have passed through an agent, so reconfirm that the final version everyone works from is the one you approved.
Content moderation: review, brand safety and disclosure
Budget time for review rounds in the timeline, and give feedback once in a structured pass rather than in drips. A moderation pass should cover the factual claims about your product, the required disclosures and the overall fit with your brand standards. In regulated categories, route the content through your compliance reviewer while there is still time to re-shoot.
Disclosure is non-negotiable: paid or gifted content must carry #ad or the platform’s paid partnership label in every market we work in, and we recommend placing it at the start of the caption so it is visible without expanding it. Build the requirement into the brief so creators are never left guessing.
Performance tracking: set it up before launch day
Decide what success looks like before content goes live, then tag every element. Unique promo codes tell you which creator drove a sale; UTM links show which post sent traffic; platform insights show reach, watch time and audience saves. Keep the definition of each metric in your report so nobody has to guess what a number covers.
For a sale campaign, track three layers: delivery during the launch window, commerce outcomes (code redemptions, link clicks, attributed sales where your stack allows it) and post-campaign audience signals (saves, follows, comments about the product). Report while the campaign is still live so you can shift boosting budget toward what works.
Boosting: amplify the creator posts that already work
The most efficient paid budget goes behind the organic posts already performing. Check the first hours of engagement, then amplify the strongest posts rather than boosting everything evenly.
On TikTok, Spark Ads let a brand run a creator’s organic post as an ad. The creator generates an authorisation code in the app’s ad settings; once the post is authorised, its caption can no longer be edited. The caption therefore has to be final and compliant before the code is issued; confirm disclosure is in place at this step, not after.
On Meta, partnership ads let a brand run a creator’s content as an ad on Instagram and Facebook. Both the creator account and the brand account appear in the ad’s header, and the creator grants permission inside the app before the ad can run.
Agree the boosting plan during outreach, not after: creators need to know which posts are candidates for paid amplification, because both routes require their authorisation and one of them freezes the caption. Set spend limits and review points in advance so boosting decisions happen on the campaign’s schedule, not on an approval delay.
Your next step for 11.11
The checklist is about sequencing. Lock in the idea and the audience early, sort rights and contracts while the calendar has room, build disclosure into the timeline, and let tracking tell you where to push paid budget. The brands that do this in October run measurable campaigns in November.
If you are planning your 11.11 influencer marketing campaign, or a 12.12 one, and want a second pair of hands, talk to our team.
FAQ
When should brands start briefing creators for 11.11?
Treat October as your working window. The best creators get booked first, so early-October outreach gives you the widest choice, time for contracts and review rounds, and the platform authorisations boosting needs. Briefing in early November is possible for simple formats, but lead times compress fast and the strongest creators may already be committed.
What makes a good 11.11 creator brief?
One document covering: concept and content angles, platform and format per deliverable, posting dates, review rounds, usage rights, disclosure requirements and tracking setup (codes or UTM links). If codes differ by market or platform, each creator gets the relevant version. Add the boosting expectation early: it changes what the creator needs to approve and finalise.
How do creators disclose paid content during 11.11?
With #ad or the platform’s paid partnership label, placed at the start of the caption so it is visible without expanding it. The same applies to gifted content, in every market. Put the requirement in the brief, check it in the review rounds, and remember that a Spark Ads authorisation locks the caption: disclosure has to be right before the code is issued.
Should you boost creator posts for 11.11, and how?
Boosting is worth it when the budget goes behind posts that already perform organically. Watch the first hours of engagement, pick the strongest posts, then amplify: Spark Ads on TikTok (authorisation code, caption frozen on issue) and partnership ads on Instagram and Facebook (creator-granted permission, both accounts in the ad header). Agree the plan during outreach so authorisations are not a scramble on sale day, and cap spend per post so decisions stay manageable.
What is the difference between an 11.11 and a 12.12 campaign?
The mechanics are the same; the planning window differs. 11.11 comes first, so it is when brands compete hardest for creator time in October. 12.12 benefits from what 11.11 taught you (which creators, formats and markets worked) but follows within a month. Brief 12.12 creators while 11.11 results are still coming in, and you keep both the momentum and the best available calendars.
