الالتزام في تسويق المؤثرين بالكويت: قائمة للعلامات

Influencer marketing compliance in Kuwait: a brand's checklist

Kuwait is moving to require Ministry of Information licensing for paid influencer advertising, and the liability does not sit only with the creator. If you are a merchant paying for promotion, this is the part of the brief you cannot delegate.

What is changing

Under Kuwait's new media framework, influencers must obtain a licence from the Ministry of Information in order to run paid promotions, endorsements or advertisements on platforms including Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat. Gulf News reported that the Ministry of Information issues these licences working jointly with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and that the draft contains dedicated chapters on advertising conditions and on the sanctions for breaking them.

The reported application process is an electronic submission with identity documents and a signed pledge to comply with commercial advertising rules, with accounts assessed by reach and impact. Certain categories need clearance from a specialist body before promotion — health and medical products require Ministry of Health clearance, and real estate promotions require Ministry of Commerce and Industry approval. The Ministry of Information also gains authority to monitor social platforms and refer suspected violations to Public Prosecution.

Two caveats worth stating plainly. First, published reporting has not carried a specific effective date, article number or transition deadline — sources refer to a window to adjust before enforcement. Second, implementing regulations are where the operational detail will land. Treat the summary above as the reported shape of the rules rather than as professional guidance, and have a qualified adviser in Kuwait review your programme before you scale spend.

Why this is a brand problem, not just a creator problem

The instinct is to treat licensing as the creator's paperwork. That instinct is wrong for three reasons.

The product must itself be licensed. Reporting is consistent that a licence establishes the advertised product or service is legally registered with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. A creator cannot cure a gap in your own registration. If your commercial licence, trade name or product registration is not in order, no amount of creator compliance fixes the campaign.

Category clearances are yours to obtain. A creator cannot get Ministry of Health clearance for your supplement. You can. If your category needs pre-clearance, that clearance is a precondition of the brief, not a step in the creator's workflow.

Your brand carries the claim. Whatever a creator says about efficacy, pricing, availability or results, it was said to sell your product. Misleading promotion is precisely the harm the framework is aimed at. Vague briefs are how brands end up owning claims they never intended to make.

Writing disclosure into a discount-code promo

Discount-code promotion is still paid promotion. A creator posting your code and earning commission on redemptions is advertising, whether or not cash changed hands up front.

Practical wording rules for the Gulf market:

• Disclose in the language of the content. An Arabic clip needs an Arabic disclosure. An English tag under an Arabic video does not communicate to the audience who actually needs the information.
• Put it where it is seen, not only where it is filed. Platform paid-partnership toggles are good and you should require them, but the disclosure should also be visible in the caption's first line or as on-screen text, before the fold.
• Say the commercial relationship, not a euphemism. "Paid partnership", "advertisement", or a plain statement that the creator earns commission on the code. "Thanks to my friends at" is not a disclosure.
• Disclose the commission, not just the gift. If the creator earns on redemptions, that is a material connection even when there was no upfront fee.
• Keep it in the video, not only in the description. Clips get re-shared, cropped and downloaded. On-screen text travels; a caption does not.

Write the exact required wording into the brief so it is not left to interpretation. On Coodooo, that is what the collaboration brief attached to each programme in [Academy](/en/academy) is for — the mandatory disclosure line, the claims that are off-limits, and the assets a creator may use all sit in the brief the creator reads before posting.

A vetting checklist before you pay anyone

Run this before the first payment, not after the first complaint.

1. Confirm your own house is in order. Valid commercial licence, correct trade name, product registered where registration applies.
2. Confirm category clearance. Health, medical, cosmetic, financial and real estate categories carry additional approval requirements. Get the clearance in writing before briefing anyone.
3. Ask the creator for their licensing status. Ask directly whether they hold, or have applied for, the Ministry of Information licence for paid promotion, and keep the answer on file with a date.
4. Check the creator's own registration. A creator invoicing you as a business should have a commercial registration. A creator being paid as an individual should be documented as such.
5. Give a written brief every time. Approved claims, prohibited claims, required disclosure wording, approved assets, and the go-live window. Verbal briefs are unprovable briefs.
6. Require pre-approval for regulated categories. For anything touching health or finance, review the actual cut before it posts.
7. Screen for prohibited content categories. Alcohol, gambling, tobacco, unlicensed financial advice and unregistered health claims are not negotiable regardless of platform reach.
8. Keep the record. The brief, the approval, the published link, the disclosure as it appeared, and the payment record. Screenshots of the live post, because posts get edited.
9. Write a takedown clause. Agree in advance that you can require removal or amendment, and how fast.
10. Re-check periodically. Rules are actively changing. A quarterly review of your brief template is cheap.

What this means for how you structure spend

Compliance pressure tends to push brands toward fewer, larger, better-documented relationships. That is not the only option and often not the best one.

The alternative is to keep the compliance layer in the programme rather than in each negotiation. When the disclosure wording, prohibited claims and approved assets live in a brief that every participating creator reads and accepts, adding the twentieth creator costs the same as adding the second. That is the structural argument for running a code-based affiliate programme or a funded rewards campaign rather than twenty bespoke deals: one brief, one set of rules, one audit trail.

A note on what we are and are not: Coodooo is a platform where merchants list programmes and creators promote them. Merchants pay commission on the sales they receive, and campaign budgets buy marketing services from creators. We are not an agency, we do not hold anyone's funds for them, and nothing here is professional guidance. Licensing obligations rest with you and with the creator.

Start on Coodooo

List a programme with an attached collaboration brief at [/en/programs](/en/programs), or fund a reviewed pay-per-view campaign at [/en/rewards](/en/rewards). If you are setting up attribution from scratch, start with [how to launch a creator affiliate programme in Kuwait](/en/blog/launch-creator-affiliate-program-kuwait).