DJI opened a Campus Creators program on Monday, offering college students cash rewards, free DJI products, and early access to new releases in return for social media content about campus life shot on DJI gear. The pitch went out on the company’s YouTube, Facebook and Instagram accounts, with applications taken by email and results promised within seven business days.
The poster lists a start date of August 18, 2026, and its application instructions use “US Campus Creator” as the example subject line. That puts a recruitment drive aimed squarely at American students two weeks ahead of the September 2 comment deadline on an FCC proposal to end US sales of part of DJI’s already-approved lineup, and eight months into a Covered List designation that keeps every new DJI product off American shelves.
I have tracked every FCC Covered List notice since December 22, 2025. This is the first time in that stretch DJI has gone recruiting on American campuses.
DJI Wants Students Who Own Its Gear And Students Who Don’t
DJI is recruiting two groups. The first is college students who already own DJI gear and post content about it. The second is students who own none of it but are active on social media and want to try it. Both apply by emailing a name, school email address, university and social profile link.
The reward list on the third card of DJI’s YouTube announcement runs cash rewards, free DJI products, early access to new DJI releases, official guidance, and a chance to become a DJI Campus Ambassador. The caption tells students to “See your campus from a whole new angle.” Selection results arrive by email within seven business days, and the poster adds that students can join at any time.
DJI has run a campus play before. In October 2016 the company launched a Campus Stories short film contest for students at US colleges, with a four-week entry window and Phantom 4 and Ronin MX hardware as prizes. That was a contest with a deadline and a finished film at the end. This one has no closing date, pays for ongoing posting, and dangles an ambassador title. It is an influencer network with a .edu address.
The FTC Names Every Reward On DJI’s Poster As A Material Connection
Federal Trade Commission Endorsement Guides require creators to disclose connections that could change how much weight viewers give a recommendation. Free products, cash payments, early access to a product, and the chance to win a prize are each named in the rule itself as connections that must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously.
The relevant section is 16 CFR 255.5, rewritten by the FTC in 2023. It states that material connections include free products “regardless of whether the advertiser requires an endorsement in return,” and that other benefits such as early access to a product, the possibility of being paid, or the possibility of winning a prize count as well. Every line of DJI’s “What You Can Unlock” card is on that list.
The Guides put the advertiser on the hook too. The FTC’s own guidance for businesses says a company can be liable for hiring endorsers who fail to disclose, and the Guides direct advertisers to instruct their influencers and monitor compliance. The FTC’s long-standing illustration of the principle is a college student who gets a free gaming system and reviews it on his blog. Swap the console for a Mini and that example is DJI’s program.
None of the three poster cards or the caption mentions disclosure. Whatever DJI sends accepted applicants by email is not public, so it is possible the onboarding covers it. A student who posts “my campus from above” with a free drone in hand and no #ad is DJI’s compliance problem as much as the student’s.
DJI Can Offer Early Access To Products Americans Cannot Buy
Since December 22, 2025, the FCC’s Covered List has blocked new equipment authorizations for every foreign-made drone and, for DJI specifically, all of its communications and video equipment. Without that authorization, a new DJI product cannot be imported or marketed in the United States, whatever a campus creator posts about it.
DroneXL covered the Covered List addition the day it landed. The effects have compounded since. The Osmo Pocket 4P launched globally on July 30 with American buyers excluded, a detail we reported in the HOVERAir VERSA clearance story. DJI’s SDR Transmission 2 goes on sale September 1 with US buyers blocked. For a US campus creator, “early access to new DJI releases” means early access to hardware their classmates cannot legally buy in the country, unless the release is a model authorized before the December cutoff.
The second front is PS Docket 26-189, which proposes ending the importation and marketing of already-approved foreign drones across seven capability categories. Comments close September 2. DJI called on American pilots to file on August 7. That docket does not reach consumer drones or Osmo cameras, so a student’s Mini posts are untouched by it either way. What it reaches is the enterprise gear that pays for the consumer marketing.
DroneXL’s Take
DJI is building a grassroots base of American Gen Z creators at the exact moment it is losing the legal ability to sell them anything new. My read is that this is not a coincidence and not a contradiction. It is a company deciding that its US future gets argued in public, on TikTok and YouTube, rather than in an FCC docket it has already asked its customers to fight for it.
The FTC point is real, and it is DJI’s to solve. The 2023 Guides were revised precisely because brands were seeding free products to young creators and letting the disclosures fall where they may. If the acceptance email spells out disclosure rules, this is a non-issue. If it doesn’t, DJI has handed a compliance headache to a few hundred 19-year-olds and kept the liability.
What DJI has not published is any of the terms. There is no landing page, no dollar figure behind “cash rewards,” no list of eligible countries, and no statement of whether US applicants qualify for the early-access tier at all. The only application path is an email address. I could not find a program page on DJI’s newsroom or its creator sites. For a company that documented a four-week contest window to the day in 2016, that silence is the most interesting part of the poster.
The FCC’s own economic analysis in Docket 26-189 says recreational consumers are unlikely to fly the equipment it wants to pull. The students DJI is recruiting this week are those consumers. Whether they show up in the docket before September 2, or only on Instagram after, tells you which audience DJI thinks actually decides this.
Sources: DJI Campus Creators announcement (YouTube), DJI newsroom, 16 CFR Part 255, Federal Trade Commission, FCC Public Notice DA 26-758
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.
