The FTC recently released a set of guidelines informing influencers of how they should disclose branded content. They range from some of the more obvious points (definitely disclose that you’re being paid to promote something) to more stringent ethical concerns—for example, influencers can’t talk about an experience with a product you haven’t tried, nor can they praise a product that they don’t think is good.

These guidelines are not only useful to maintain transparency with consumers. In fact, they remind us how brands and influencers can—and should—form more meaningful partnerships that benefit them both. Doing so achieves a truer sense of authenticity, authority and integrity, exactly what a brand seeks to infuse in their story when working with influencers. Here’s how to make that happen.

Adopt a Community-First Mindset

The surest way to build authenticity into an influencer campaign is to center the story around the community you hope to connect with. Consider, for example, how many leading content creators interrupt or introduce their content with a scripted spiel about a product that doesn’t have anything to do with the content itself. For many in the audience, these ad reads might have a “it’s what pays the bills” kind of vibe, rather than a reliable endorsement from the influencer.

While such a tactic might increase reach and awareness, it doesn’t go far enough in creating a meaningful connection with the audience. “A lot of companies think about influencer partnerships like they would a media spend,” says Claudia Cameron, Head of Digital Marketing at IMA, a digital influencer agency that merged with MediaMonks in August. “Get at the heart of what the influencer means for their audience, rather than focusing on getting in front of as many people as possible.”

In an ANA presentation on how brands can retain relevance through influencer partnerships, Hot Wheels Sr. Marketing Director/Head of Brand Marketing Ricardo Briceno discussed the toy brand’s strategic, long-term partnership with vlogger Tanner Fox. As an automotive enthusiast, it was clear how Fox’s content overlapped with the brand’s mission to ignite a challenging spirit in children through cars. “What is the shared value between what Hot Wheels stands for and what the creator stands for?” Briceno asked rhetorically, demonstrating key questions that brands should consider in forming their approach to partnership.

Allow Creative Control for Added Authenticity

Defining this shared value and goals does more than ensure a brand’s goals and influencer’s audiences are aligned. It can also help build confidence and comfort in giving the influencer freedom to create content how they choose. Cameron advises that brands provide influencers this flexibility.

This enables the brand to achieve authenticity and relevance by building the story around the influencer’s audience. “Set the campaign to fit the feed, rather than the other way around,” Cameron says. “You can give influencers parameters in how you want to position the brand, allowing them to connect strategically with the audience.”

And no niche is too small or obscure to make a meaningful connection. In promoting its new navigation device, electronics company TomTom faced a challenge: how could they reach an audience of truck drivers, who are notoriously hard to reach with so much time spent on the road? Inspired by the insight that truckers combat loneliness through social media connection, IMA tapped into an online community of drivers and discovered 18 of its most influential users, paving the path for TomTom to engage with the community in a genuine way. It shows how the value of influencers extends beyond the glossy image that the term “influencer” commonly conjures up—and that even those without big followings can earn big user engagement.

Build Lasting Relationships and Trust

Brands can do more than give up some creative control to maintain authenticity. Cameron suggests they achieve a higher quality relationship with influencers by moving away from short-term campaigns and cultivating longer-term partnerships instead—at least six months at minimum. “You need an understanding of how the influencer talks with their audience, then apply that with your strategy,” says Cameron. “When connecting with niche audiences, this becomes very specific.” Nurturing a longer-term relationship helps build that understanding.

This also helps influencers feel more involved with the brand. “If you’re a makeup brand and there’s a new release, make sure your influencer gets it before anyone else,” says Cameron. She notes that gifting products alone is no longer an effective strategy for building social buzz, though brands can build involvement by offering influencers—and their communities—with an exclusive experience.

Keep Up with Evolving, Cross-Border Guidelines

Regardless of how deep your relationship is with an influencer, it’s important to keep abreast of regulations and guidelines like those recently released by the FTC. But this offers a challenge to global brands: each market has different rules to follow. A global partner like IMA can help brands and influencers alike ensure their message is within local guidelines while maintaining a global brand standard.

Cameron also notes that disclosure is quickly getting better on social platforms like Instagram, which offers a paid partnership tag that clearly labels branded content. Far from harmful to branded content’s effectiveness—“We don’t see any negative ramifications yet,” says Cameron—the tag offers greater visibility for the brand by highlighting its role in creation of the content.

With greater visibility for the brand, added authority for the influencer and transparency toward the user, it’s easy to see how improved disclosure offers a net positive for everyone and builds stronger relationships. And that’s what influencer marketing is about: forging a meaningful connection and offering real, relevant value to the audience.

Has your design fallen out of style? Get the year off to a good start by taking stock of your brand identity and preparing for new opportunities by updating your style guide with a digital-first focus.

From redesigning a website to pivoting to video, forward-thinking brands are always looking for opportunities to reinvent themselves or try something new. But before making such a big move, brands must take a long, hard look at their identities and how they put that face forward. Devising a brand guide is a great first step to this: you might think of it like a style guide, but one that includes guidelines beyond just visual design (things like brand voice, interactive elements and more). With a solid brand guide in place, your organization becomes more flexible and adaptive to whatever the future throws at you.

Prioritize Interactivity

With the ever-increasing importance of digital, it’s essential that you consider how interactivity fits within your design philosophy and to integrate that into the brand style. Interactions should augment and build upon the user experience—for example, allowing users the ability to expand or ignore content for usability.

And that’s really what the challenge boils down to: the push-and-pull in a sense of brand ownership on today’s digital platforms. Organizations will find themselves beholden more and more to fitting themselves within the overall visual or functional designs of third-party platforms (like a social media profile, which ironically is designed for users’ identities to shine through), requiring them to remain flexible in how they present themselves. Don’t fall out of fashion by losing sight on new possibilities afforded by today’s digital platforms. Instead, treat your style guide with a sense of flexibility that can accommodate those innovations for a better user experience and stronger identity.

We were fortunate enough to help Viacom develop a punchy, new corporate website right when they were in the middle of launching a rebrand. Corporate websites often play it safe, but we wanted to make Viacom’s site just as much fun to explore as Viacom’s networks are to watch, which often push envelopes with a playfully rebellious attitude. “We bring a mirror into the room and show companies how we see them,” says Rogier van Orden, Operations Manager at MediaMonks. A big part of this process was to highlight Viacom’s massive library of great content.

To achieve this, we implemented several fun interactions and tactile elements into the design. We call this “cherry content,” named after the “cherry on top” of a cake or sundae: the small thing that makes a lasting and important impact on the overall experience. This unobtrusive content serves to prove and support the value proposition that brands put forward, allowing users to choose to scroll by or dive deeper by interacting with it directly. Brands will have to consider how cherry content can integrate into other marketing efforts in the digital experience—for example, content users interact with could help you personalize the content they see—or support the types of interaction the brand offers.

Be Bold, but Not Inconsistent

One of the big trends in design is to focus on modern, clean formats that focus on functionality first and foremost without the visual flourish. Consider the abundance of websites built from templates with drag-and-drop elements, leaving us with a trend of clean and uniform sites that all end up looking, well, a bit the same. This results in a “suburbanization” of design: safe, but without personality. “As designers, we almost forgot there’s an identity to portray” says Jouke Vuurmans, Executive Creative Director at MediaMonks, on this trend of clean design. “But bold design and actions are so crucial to digital identity.”

This can be an especially tough challenge for organizations that fit multiple brands within a family. How do you offer a unique design across brands that have their own personalities and audiences? And with the fractured environment of digital platforms—including blogs, social networks, microsites and more—brands of any size might struggle to pull off the balancing act between consistency and having a unique voice. But by taking a more modular approach, you can develop a design framework that remains consistent across your brand family.

For paint brand Parex, we took a more modular approach that would allow the brand to translate its existing components to other brands in the Parex family. This ensures a level of uniformity across the organization’s digital presence while also allowing some wiggle room for unique design elements and characteristics that help them stand apart.

Be More Flexible

Previously, the style guide was treated like a sacred text: something that couldn’t be messed with. And if it were revised, it would be a big deal. But in today’s environment, things change quickly. New formats and platforms crop up each day, and what works with one doesn’t necessarily work with another. For example, is your signature font legible on each platform offered? Every new format should prompt a revision to your style guide, so don’t be shy about shaking things up. This flexibility also helps in opening the brand up to collaborative opportunities or for streamlining your content across platforms and local markets. This includes transcreation for regional-specific campaigns or assets at scale.

Few mascots are as classic or identifiable as Pac-Man, the iconic, pie-shaped arcade character known for gobbling up pellets in an eternal chase from ghosts. When Red Bull collaborated with Bandai, who retains the Pac-Man IP, we created a microsite for the campaign to celebrate the partnership in a way that payed homage to the character’s roots. On the website, we implemented tactile elements that invited users to navigate the character through the content just as Pac-Man navigates a maze in the games he calls home, marrying game-like elements with the typical actions you would encounter on web platforms. To be fair, Pac-Man is no stranger to reboots and redesigns, though it’s easy to imagine how other brands might be more guarded about how they—or even partners—might handle their IP.