This was the first influencer who ever reached out to us wanting to collaborate. We were early, we were excited, and I said yes immediately. That was stupid. But that's where we were.
She messaged with what felt like a warm, personal pitch. Clean page, minimal aesthetic, genuinely aligned with what we were building. Looking back it was probably a mass message sent to dozens of brands. But at the time it felt considered. We sent the products. And then nothing.
Six months of silence
I messaged a few times. Each time she replied. Yes, posting soon. Yes, by end of the week. Yes, next week for sure. And then nothing. Complete silence for six months. She didn't know what soon or tomorrow or by end of this month actually meant. Or she did and just didn't care.
After a while I stopped trying and moved on. It happens. You write it off and keep going.
Then six months later, a message arrived.
"Hi, I'm so sorry. I had cancer. That's why I couldn't post anything. But I'm better now and ready to shoot."
I sat with that for a moment. Getting cancer is genuinely serious and I did hope she was okay. I replied that she should focus on her health and that we no longer needed the post.
But something stayed with me. Not the illness. The silence. Six months without a single update. One line would have been enough. "I can't do this right now." That's it. Most people would understand immediately. Instead the assumption was that everyone would simply wait, indefinitely, without knowing why. That tells you something about how someone sees the people around them.
"Whatever the circumstances, silence is still a choice."
The diva reveal
She replied saying she had many clients waiting but would do ours first. Generous of her.
About a month later, she posted. The content was completely off-brand. Dark, chaotic in tone, suited for a completely different kind of brand. We never asked her to post, never chased her, never set a deadline. She came back entirely on her own terms and delivered something that had nothing to do with what we built.
A polite sorry, a thank you, and one line that the style didn't quite match. That was the entire message. And somehow that became a full attack on our brand, our aesthetic, our communication skills, and our taste. Everything except the actual issue.
And when I tried to explain calmly that the style simply didn't match, she had a response for that too. We have a communication issue. But I'm an English teacher so the problem is on your end. Not mine.
I had no words. You don't understand me. Do you know how many people are waiting for me. You're so annoying. And then she threatened to block us.
So I blocked her first.
This is a type you encounter more than once in the creator world. Someone who has spent so long surrounded by their own audience, people who only praise and never push back, that any honest feedback reads as an attack.
Most brands don't tell creators the truth. They ignore or they thank quietly. So when a brand actually says this doesn't work, the creator has often never heard that before. The response is outrage. Because in their world, that has never happened.
She reached out to us. She pitched to us. She asked us to trust her with our brand. We didn't go looking for her. And when we gave her an honest response, that was apparently unacceptable.
There's a pattern with this type. They reach out to brands not because they've thought carefully about whether the collaboration makes sense, but because they want the product, the validation, and the association. The brand is a prop in their own story. When you realise that, the fury at being told no makes complete sense. You didn't just reject the content. You rejected the narrative they had built around themselves.
And the pitch itself tells you everything. So many creators lead with their own numbers. How many followers they have. How high their engagement is. How many brands they've worked with. All of that is about them. What they rarely say is: I understand what you're building, here's why my audience would actually care about it, here's how I would present it in a way that fits your brand. That's what a collaboration actually is. Two sides getting something real from it.
The whole point of reaching out to a brand is to say: I can bring you something. Not: look how impressive I am. But many creators have spent so long being told how great they are that they've forgotten which direction the value is supposed to flow. They come to you for a collaboration and somehow make it feel like you should be grateful they showed up.
Not everyone is like this. There are creators who genuinely get it, who think about the brand, who deliver something that actually fits. Those ones are worth keeping. But this type was never there for the collaboration. They were there for the product and the association.
What it actually cost us
Almost nothing in the end. Some products, some time, a lot of patience. But it was the first one. And the first one is the one that shapes how you screen everyone after.
Honestly, looking back, I'd rather she had just ghosted and stayed gone. The silence for six months was manageable. It was the dramatic return, the off-brand content, and the fury at being told no that made it memorable. Until the very end she never stopped being exactly who she had shown herself to be from the start.
From the start, how someone frames themselves, how they handle a simple no, that's who they are. You learn to read it faster over time. This one taught us to start reading it at all.
