The conflict policy is the product

Every brand-and-talent shop has a conflict of interest. The structural problem is the same wherever the model is run: you represent brands on one side and creators on the other, and sooner or later a brand wants to do a deal with a creator you also represent.

What changes between shops is not whether the conflict exists. It is how the shop handles the conflict.

Most shops handle it privately. The conflict is treated as an internal matter. The affected creator and brand discover the conflict mid-negotiation, when neither side has the room to step back. Sometimes the shop pushes the deal through because the deal is profitable. Sometimes it doesn't, but the creator and brand never know they were in a conflicted negotiation in the first place.

We handle it publicly. The policy is on the website, in writing, at /legal/conflict-policy, before anyone signs anything with us. The policy is not boilerplate. It is the rule we operate under, codified, and binding on us.

Why publish

Publishing the policy does three things that the private-handling model can't.

It makes the rule the rule

When a rule exists in writing and is public, the rule is the rule. There is no negotiating around it inside a single deal because the rule predates the deal. Both the brand client and the managed creator can read the procedure before they sign, can ask about it during the engagement, and can hold us to it if we ever wobble.

Private rules drift. Public rules don't, because the drift would be visible.

It establishes trust before trust is needed

The brands and creators who sign with us know that the dual relationship exists and how it gets handled. That knowledge is part of the engagement from day one. When the conflict arrives (and it will arrive, eventually), nobody is surprised, nobody is reaching for the contract trying to find out what was promised, nobody is in the awkward position of trying to renegotiate trust mid-deal.

Trust that exists before the moment of pressure is real trust. Trust that has to be manufactured under pressure is something else.

It changes who applies

The policy filters applicants on both sides. Brands that don't want their creator-deal terms read by us in writing don't sign with us. Creators who don't want a clean separation between their interests and the brand client's interests don't sign with us either.

The applicants who do come through are the ones who actually wanted this rule to exist. The engagement quality is higher from day one.

What the policy actually says

The full text is at /legal/conflict-policy. The short version, in five steps:

1. Disclosure to both sides. The moment a conflict is identified, both parties are told in writing. Negotiation cannot start until both have acknowledged the conflict in writing.

2. Decision rights. The creator decides whether to consider the engagement. The brand decides whether to engage a creator we represent, knowing our standard practice tilts toward the creator's interest in a tied negotiation.

3. If both sides want to proceed. We represent the creator. The brand can either negotiate directly with the creator or accept our representation of the creator. We do not represent both sides of the same deal.

4. After the deal. Both sides are owed our continued, separate representation. We do not abandon either party because the deal got hard.

5. Appeals. Raised in writing to hello@mainstagestudio.in. A senior person who was not involved in the deal reads the complaint and responds within five business days.

And four things we never do:

• Reveal one party's commercial terms to the other without explicit written consent.
• Accept a referral fee from the brand for facilitating a deal with our creator.
• Accept a higher commission on this deal than our standard rate for the creator's tier.
• Pressure either side to proceed.

What other shops object to

Three common objections to the policy from people inside the industry.

"You're showing your weakness"

The argument is that a public conflict policy advertises the structural problem of running a brand-and-talent shop. Better to keep quiet about it.

We disagree. The structural problem is already visible to anyone who looks for ten minutes. Every brand-and-talent shop in India runs the same model. Pretending the problem isn't there does not make it not there. It just means we're the only shop willing to address it openly.

The "showing weakness" argument is also a bet that brands and creators don't ask hard questions. Our experience is that the brands and creators worth working with always ask the hard questions, and they always notice the difference between a shop with a written answer and a shop without one.

"The policy will be used against you"

The worry is that the policy itself becomes a weapon — a creator or brand citing the policy to escape a deal that was otherwise going well, or using the appeals procedure to apply pressure.

Possible, in theory. Hasn't happened, in practice. The policy is structured so that misuse would be obvious to a third party reading it. The appeals procedure is real but slow (five business days, senior reviewer); it isn't a usable tool for short-term pressure.

"Nobody will read it"

This one is partly true. Most people who sign with us never read the policy in full. They read it in summary, decide it's reasonable, and trust that we'll follow it.

But the people who do read it — and there are some, on both sides — are the people who care most about this dimension of the work. They read it, sign anyway, and become some of our most reliable long-term relationships. Their feedback over time is what keeps the policy honest.

The deeper claim

The conflict policy is the most obvious form of transparency we run. It is not the only one.

We don't publish public pricing because we don't sell standardised packages; tiers vary by brand and creator situation, and pricing has to come out of the audit conversation. But we publish the operating model, the conflict policy, the talent-agreement principles, the privacy and data handling, the refusal list ("what's not in the room"), and as the journal grows we will publish the playbooks we use internally too.

The bet is that transparency, run consistently, is a competitive moat. Most shops cannot copy it without restructuring how they run, which would expose their existing operations in ways they aren't ready for.

The conflict policy is the most visible piece of that bet. It's the place where transparency costs us something (lost deals, harder negotiations, occasional conflict-related exits) and where the cost is worth paying.

Read the full policy at /legal/conflict-policy. If you find a clause we missed or a scenario the procedure doesn't cover, write to hello@mainstagestudio.in. The rule gets better when readers push on it.