Influencer marketing in Vietnam: KOLs, KOCs, and what a foreign brand is actually paying for

A foreign brand preparing its launch in Vietnam asks its agency for a social plan and receives an influencer proposal: three KOLs, fifty KOCs, a livestream with a well-known seller, and a total budget. The plan looks complete. It is also very hard to compare with anything, because it lists people rather than the things the brand will be paying for.

Influencer marketing is a large part of how products are discovered in Vietnam, and few launches leave it out. This piece is about buying it well: what the labels mean, what a fee should include, how the money is usually paid, what Vietnamese law now expects, and how a head office can tell whether it worked.

KOL, KOC and the rest: the labels describe a job

The terms used in Vietnam are less about audience size than about the job a creator does for the brand.

A plan usually combines them. KOLs open the campaign; KOCs make the product look widely used; live sellers convert the attention into orders on a set day. The question for the brand is not whether the mix is fashionable, but which job each line in the budget is meant to do, and how that job will be checked.

What a fee actually buys

Two quotes with the same total can buy very different things. The differences sit in lines that are easy to skip:

• Deliverables. The number and format of posts, videos, stories or livestream minutes, on which platforms, by which dates.
• Usage rights. Whether the brand may run the content as paid advertising, on which platforms and for how long. On TikTok and Meta, a creator’s post can be promoted from the brand’s account with the creator’s authorisation, which is often worth more than the post itself.
• Exclusivity. Whether the creator agrees not to promote a competitor, in which category, and for how long. It is valuable for a KOL and rarely worth paying for with a KOC.
• Revisions and approval. How many rounds of changes are included, and whether the brand sees the content before it goes live.
• Raw files. Whether the brand receives the original footage for its own edits.
• Data. Whether the brand receives the platform’s own statistics for each post, from the creator’s analytics, rather than a screenshot chosen by the agency.

A quote that does not mention usage rights or data usually does not include them. Adding them after the campaign is either expensive or impossible.

Choosing creators: five checks before the list is approved

Most influencer proposals arrive with the creators already chosen, usually from the agency’s own roster. A head office does not need to pick names, but it should ask for five things on each one before approving the list.

• Who the audience is. Age, gender and city split from the creator’s own analytics, not a description. A creator based in Ho Chi Minh City with a large audience abroad, or among teenagers, may be the wrong reach for a product sold to working adults in Hanoi.
• Whether the engagement looks real. Sudden jumps in followers, comments that repeat the same few words, and views far above the creator’s usual level on one paid post are signs worth asking about. The creator’s last twenty posts show more than the best one.
• Which brands they have promoted recently. A creator who promoted a direct competitor last month carries that competitor’s message into yours. One who promotes a new product every day carries very little weight with any of them.
• What they have claimed before. Past posts show how a creator talks about products: carefully, or with promises the brand could not repeat. Under the 2026 rules that habit becomes the brand’s risk as well.
• How they sound in Vietnamese. A foreign brand’s message usually arrives as a translated brief. Ask a Vietnamese speaker on your own side, not only the agency, whether the creator’s tone fits the brand and whether the brief survives the translation.

None of these checks needs a tool. They need the creator’s analytics, an hour of scrolling, and someone on the brand’s side willing to say no to a popular name that does not fit.

Three ways the money is paid

A fixed fee buys content and reach regardless of sales. It suits KOLs and awareness work, and it makes the brand responsible for judging whether the reach was worth it.

Commission pays only for orders recorded through the creator’s link or code. It suits KOCs and live sellers, and it shifts risk to the creator, but it also pays for orders that would have happened anyway. How marketplace commission programmes work, and why their reported cost per order flatters them, is covered in affiliate marketing in Vietnam.

A mix of a smaller fee plus commission is common with mid-sized creators. It is reasonable when the fee covers the content and the commission rewards sales, and when both are recorded in the same place.

What matters for a head office is that all three appear in one budget view. Fixed fees often sit in the marketing budget, commissions in the marketplace settlement, and free product in the stock record. Unless someone adds them up, nobody knows what the programme cost.

What Vietnamese law now expects

The amended Advertising Law, Law No. 75/2025/QH15, in force since 1 January 2026, added rules for people who carry advertising content, with additional obligations for influencers. They must check the advertiser and the product’s documents before promoting it, must not promote products they do not understand, and must announce that the content is advertising immediately before and while it runs. They are responsible for the content they carry.

None of this removes the brand’s own responsibility. The brand provides the product information, writes the brief and benefits from the content. The risk is not theoretical. In April 2025, two popular livestream sellers, earlier fined VND 70 million each for the advertising, were arrested over a candy they had promoted with the claim that one candy replaced a plate of vegetables; state testing found 0.51 grams of fibre in a box of thirty, according to VnExpress International.

For a foreign brand, three practical rules follow:

• The brief lists the claims a creator may make, and the evidence behind each. Anything outside the list needs approval.
• Content is reviewed before it goes live, including the spoken script of a livestream, which is where claims drift.
• Regulated categories get legal review first. Health supplements, cosmetics, medical products and food carry their own advertising rules in Vietnam. This is a matter for counsel, not for the agency’s account team.

Measuring it: reach is easy to report, effect is not

Influencer campaigns produce many numbers, and most of them are reported by the people being paid. A measurement plan written before the campaign keeps the report useful.

Two habits make the numbers more trustworthy. Ask for each post’s platform statistics directly from the creator’s analytics, on a fixed date after posting. And decide in advance what comparison the result will be judged against: a period without the campaign, a city or product not included, or the brand’s own ads. Without a comparison, every campaign looks like it worked.

The wider question of which numbers to trust, and from which system, is the subject of marketing measurement.

A worked example: two quotes for the same budget

The figures below are illustrative, invented for the example, and are not market rates.

A brand has USD 18,000 for the influencer part of its launch and receives two quotes.

On the headline number, the two quotes are close. Once usage rights are counted, Quote B costs less than half as much per thousand views, because it also replaces part of the ad production budget. Quote A still has a role: a known name and an exclusivity window can matter in a crowded category at launch. The point of the table is that the decision is made on what the brand receives, not on the creator’s fame or the number of names in the plan.

Both quotes are compared on estimated views. After the campaign, the same table should be filled in with the platform statistics each creator provides, and with the result of the comparison agreed beforehand.

Running it from head office

A head office does not need to choose creators, but it should control six things:

• The brief and the approved claims, signed off before any creator is contacted.
• The creator list, with the job each creator does and the reason for choosing them.
• The contract terms: deliverables, usage rights, exclusivity, approval, raw files and data, and the disclosure the law requires.
• One payment log covering fees, commissions and free product, by creator.
• The platform statistics for every post, collected on a fixed date.
• The comparison the campaign will be judged against, written down before it starts.

When a distributor runs the programme, one more question matters: whose name is on the creator relationships. Creators who have worked well for the brand are an asset that builds up over several campaigns. If every contract, every payment and every message thread sits with the distributor, that asset leaves with the distributor. Ask for the creator list, the contract terms and the results by creator to be shared with the brand each quarter, and write that into the distribution agreement before the first campaign rather than after the relationship has cooled.

If an agency or a distributor runs the programme, those six can still be asked for each month. They take an hour to review and show quickly whether the money is buying reach, credibility, sales or content, or only names.

Where the figures in this article come from

• Advertising Law: Law No. 75/2025/QH15 amending the Advertising Law, passed on 16 June 2025 and in force from 1 January 2026, Article 15a on the rights and obligations of people who carry advertising content.
• The 2025 case: VnExpress International, 5 April 2025, on the arrest of two livestream sellers over a candy product, the earlier fines of VND 70 million each, and the state test result of 0.51 grams of fibre per box of thirty.

Where this work stops

MWY does not book creators, run influencer campaigns or take commission from creators, agencies or platforms.

When a brand is planning its entry, deciding where influencers fit in the launch, and how they will be measured, is part of Go-to-Market Strategy. Once the brand is selling, reviewing the creator programme each month, including the payment log, the contracts and the comparison, is part of Vietnam Marketing Advisory & Oversight.