How NOT to Run a Collaborative Social Media Campaign: Just Do It Better Than GloMelanin

How a Brand Collab Fail Became Your Marketing Lesson

It’s funny how a terrible experience with a brand can turn into a marketing lesson.

When you see a brand collaboration online, it looks seamless—engaging content, aligned messaging, and a well-coordinated timeline across multiple channels. What you don’t see is the meticulous planning, approvals, and months of communication that go into it.

I’m saying this as someone has and still is doing social media campaign collaborations between podcast brands, pharma companies and other marketing agencies at her 9-5.

But in my experience with GloMelanin, a small black-women-owned skincare brand with effective products that I’ve used for nearly a year, it felt like none of those things happened.

So let me tell you what went down (with receipts) so you can learn how NOT to run a collaborative campaign with other small businesses—and what you SHOULD do instead (with receipts btw).

The Brand Collab Gone Wrong

GloMelanin put out an application for small Black women-owned businesses to be featured on their social media for Black History Month. Naturally, I applied with my portfolio, official logo, and details about Marketing Moonie.

I got an email from Katarina, the head of influencer partnerships, saying my application was accepted. Bonus: I’d have a chance to win a $1,500 grant. I was hyped!

Spoiler Alert: The grant didn’t go to any of the brands that were featured during the campaign. 

Then the posts started rolling out. And immediately, I noticed something off—every business’s logo had been altered to fit GloMelanin’s branding (grey, black, and orange). My logo was technically correct, so I let it slide… at first.

Then they sent out a marketing email about the campaign—and used an image that was not the logo that I submitted in my application.

I emailed Katarina to flag the issue and asked her team to use only the assets I had submitted. Her response?

Part 1: “The email team took the ‘wrong logo’ from your portfolio. It wasn’t on purpose.”

Hold up. Why would they *screenshot* my company name from my portfolio when my actual logo was right there? And why was “wrong logo” in quotes? IT’S WRONG.

Part 2 (the real kicker): “If you don’t like how we’re promoting you, we won’t feature your business anymore.”

NANI!?

I responded professionally, explaining why that was disrespectful: Any brand from a small business to an international corporation, even GloMelanin itself, would not appreciate their branding be misused in any shape or form. 

I even offered to send more branded assets to ensure they got it right.

Her next email? The most professional f*ck you I’ve ever read: “Wish you all the best in the future.”

So I waited to see if they’d still include Marketing Moonie in the campaign. The entire month passed. Nothing.

Two days before the end of Black History Month, they posted a carousel featuring more businesses. I swiped through…

Marketing Moonie was nowhere to be found.

After some depressive doomscrolling and a nudge from my husband, I DM’ed them, letting them know I’d be posting about my experience.

An automated response that would send me right back to the person who mistreated me.

At first, I felt like it was partially my fault. 

I got myself into this situation because I defended a brand that I built from my own identity and love for anime.

Maybe I should’ve just stayed quiet.

At least my brand would’ve gotten more exposure.

But after thinking about it more I realized that I wasn’t wrong for not accepting anyone posting about my brand however they want just so they can get more engagement.

Lessons Learned: How NOT to Run a Collaborative Campaign

Since they clearly need a case study on what *not* to do, here’s a guide for anyone looking to collaborate with small businesses and up and coming creators.

DON’T:

❌ Modify the branding of the businesses you collab with to fit your own.

As I’ve said previously this is a huge no-no. Change the “D” in Disney…LAWSUIT. So don’t do it to other brands no matter how small they are.

❌ Give one collaborator more visibility than the others.

For example, only two out of the eleven brands that were featured in the campaign had Instagram Live interviews that involved giveaways of their products in addition to the regular in feed posts that every brand received.

All this communicates is that you value the engagement of your own brand over that of the brands that you’re collaborating with. It also discourages brands from engaging with each others’ posts.

❌ Surprise them with random features that weren’t pre-discussed.

The probability of there being an error or brand misalignment  goes up and it’s downright inconsiderate. Just don’t do it.

❌ Dismiss concerns when an error is flagged—own it and fix it.

Accountability is key to fostering positive relationships with other businesses for future partnerships.

❌ Run a campaign without gathering the necessary assets and messaging upfront.

If more marketing assets are needed to properly feature each business in the campaign to avoid misrepresenting a brand that someone worked hard to establish, just ask.

❌ Pit your collaborators against each other in a competition.

Encouraging black-women owned businesses to compete for a grant during a heritage month that is supposed to be encouraging unity within the Black community is paradoxical.

DO:

✅ Connect directly with collaborators via virtual or in-person meetings.

Brands and creators can learn more about each other, ask more detailed questions about the campaign and simply build a more trustworthy relationship with the leader of the campaign.

✅ Come prepared with at least the basic parameters of the campaign.

It’s difficult to have everything figured out right away before meeting with your collaborators, but it’s important to come with a basic plan so they know what to expect and can give you the details that you need to fill in the blanks.

✅ Be transparent about how, when, and where their business will be featured.

Besides building trust, your collaborators will know exactly when to shift their own content schedule to share the campaign in their channels, engage and reshare that content and accept collaboration requests immediately.

✅ Collect all assets and messaging *before* launching the campaign.

You will be able to create all of your campaign content more efficiently without scouring websites and taking screenshots of headers (I’m looking at you GloMelanin) and your collaborators can rest assured that their feature posts are going to look great and want to reshare them.

✅ Keep collaborators updated on changes or additional asset needs.

Anyone who works in the social media marketing knows that plans change very quickly. Please keep your collaborators updated if anything comes up. Synergy is important.

✅ After the campaign goes live, send them the post dates and links.

This is a courtesy tactic that gives you even more brownie points.

✅ Say *thank you* and consider working with them again!

Hopefully, by the end of your campaign a few of the brands that you featured will want to work with you in the future because your were professional, organized, proactive, considerate and welcoming.

All things that GloMelanin’s head of influencer partnerships was NOT.

The Takeaway

If you truly want to uplift small businesses, expand your online community, and build lasting partnerships, just do it better than GloMelanin.

The bar was in hell with Solo Leveling’s Demon Castle, so you can only go up from there.

And to the small, starter businesses out there just trying to figure things out and pursue their passions, always stand up for the brand identity that you’ve worked hard to establish. That is the heart and soul of your business and must nurture it and protect it as much as you can. 

Follow The Marketing Moonie on Instagram and stay tuned on My Marketing Moonie Yaps for more marketing hot takes.

Because if there’s one thing I’ll always do, it’s tell the truth about bad marketing. 👀