"It's not because of low reach or high rates", Anirudh Sridharan elaborates on why creators are losing brand deals

Anirudh Sridharan, Co-Founder & Head of Product at HashFame, shares how fake reps and broken communication silently cost creators big opportunities and why the future of influencer marketing depends on one thing: Clarity.

In the last few months, I’ve heard this story more than I should have. A brand decides to work with a creator, they send out a brief, wait for a quote, maybe even start discussing timelines. And then suddenly, silence. Or worse, confusion. Another person shows up claiming to represent the same creator. Rates change. Expectations shift. Everyone steps back. And in all this chaos, the creator is unaware. The brand moves on. And the deal quietly dies. We’ve grown used to thinking creators lose campaigns because of pricing, reach, or performance. But what if the real reason is something far more avoidable? Something as simple and as damaging as being unreachable?

This year, we surveyed over 32,000 creators. Not just emerging voices, but well-known names across categories. We didn’t ask them how they felt about algorithms or engagement rates. We asked them a more basic question: “Do you know how many brands tried to reach you last year?” Most didn’t. Many were shocked. Some were angry. More than half said they’d lost brand deals simply because there was no clear path for communication. Nearly two-thirds didn’t even know a brand had tried to get in touch. A significant number revealed something more unsettling: that people had been quoting prices to brands on their behalf, without their knowledge or approval. Not pricing differently or negotiating hard, but just pretending.

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Fake representation is not new, but its impact on the creator economy is growing. As influencer marketing matures, budgets grow, and more teams get involved, the layers grow too. Somewhere in that fog of middlemen, freelancers, “I know someone” messages, and unverifiable contacts, the original connection between the brand and the creator gets lost. This isn’t just about numbers about trust.

A creator’s reputation is built slowly and carefully through a body of work, a voice, and a point of view. When someone misrepresents them, not just in price but in presence, that trust is silently eroded. And once a brand feels misled, it rarely comes back. The cost isn’t only to the creator. It is shared by everyone in the system. The brand that wasted budget and time, the team that built a campaign roadmap that never launched, the agency had to redo the entire strategy in two days and the audience that never got to see something great.

What makes this harder to fix is that it’s invisible. There’s no dashboard for lost intent. No notification for “someone tried to reach you and couldn’t.” It just slips through and for an industry that lives on the energy of collaboration, that’s a quiet kind of tragedy.

I’m not writing this to suggest a sweeping solution. The creator economy is too big, fragmented, and lethuman for easy fixes. But I do think we need to start asking better questions. Not just “How many followers does this creator have?” or “What’s their engagement rate?” But: “Is this the real person we’re talking to?” “Do we know who manages them?” “Are we reaching them, or a version of them someone’s selling us?” We’re at a point where creators are businesses. They need the same clarity of communication we expect from vendors, partners, and service providers. Brands and agencies need to know who they’re dealing with. Creators need to know who’s speaking for them. And both need a system that doesn’t confuse silence with disinterest. This isn’t a debate about access. It’s about accountability. Because here’s the truth: creators aren’t losing deals because they aren’t good enough. They’re losing deals they never even knew were on the table.

In a world full of noise, where performance is measured in likes and reach, maybe the most valuable thing we can offer is something quieter: clarity. Clarity on who you are. Clarity on who you’re working with. Clarity on what’s real. That’s not a product feature. That’s a mindset shift. And maybe, that’s where the real work begins.

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