Melvin Cotton III
Creative operations manager at the Smart Marketer agency (3.5+ years as of 2026), responsible for sourcing, contracting and briefing UGC creators and keeping hundreds of paid ad creatives a week moving through production. Background in psychology, an entertainment-business master’s, and consulting work at Charles Schwab. He and his family are creators themselves (House of Mels), so he sees creator deals from both sides.
Strong on: finding creators, outreach emails, pay rates, contract essentials and usage licensing, creative “menu” of formats, briefing creators as talent-only.
Bias to keep in mind: describes his agency’s process for paid-ad footage (raw files, edited in-house) — not organic creator programs; numbers (response rate, pay) are his own experience.
Sources: sources/youtube/smart-marketer/ (SM Podcast Ep 287).
Notes citing Melvin Cotton III
- Finding and recruiting UGC creators for ecommerce adsHow the Smart Marketer agency sources UGC creators for paid ads at scale — a creator "roster" built like a portfolio, a "creative menu" of formats, direct hires vs JoinBrands vs TikTok Shop, nano-tier targeting, email outreach with a stated $150–400 rate and >90% response.
- UGC creator contracts, usage rights and raw footageWhat Smart Marketer puts in every UGC creator contract — scope, deliverables, platform-agnostic "paid advertising" usage, a 4-year license, raw unedited files, 5-day production with a revision day, product value + fee as the package — and why.