One page telling a creative team who the work is for, what it must say and what's due when.
A creative brief is what a creative team reads before they make anything: who the work is for, the single thing it has to say, and what's due when. This one is a single page for a made-up hardware chain launching tool rental. Most of the skill is in the cutting, so read it for what it leaves out as much as for what's there.
Who it's for
Strategists and account leads at agencies, and client-side marketers handing a job to a studio or an in-house team. It goes out before the first idea, usually a day ahead of a meeting to talk it through.
A page won't replace that meeting, and it can't gather the team's questions. The sample gives a name and a date to ask by. If all you need is a banner resized or a caption written, a message will do and a brief is too much.
What a good one contains
- Background in two short paragraphs. What happened and why now. The sample gives the trial's result, 1,912 rentals in twelve weeks, then the fact that creates the job: outside one town, almost nobody knows.
- A person with a tension. Age and housing only locate them. "They resent buying the equipment" gives a writer something to push against, and a real customer's sentence beside it does more.
- One thing to say. A single sentence with no "and" in it. If you can't choose between two messages, the team will choose for you.
- Reasons to believe it. Three facts that make the message true: from $12 a day, a five-minute lesson at the counter, bring it back dirty.
- Deliverables, counted and sized. Four posters at 24 × 36 inches, six 15-second vertical videos, and so on up to fourteen. Nobody can plan a shoot around "some social content".
- Mandatories and a "leave out" list. What must appear on every piece, and what this job is not: no discounts, nothing aimed at contractors.
- Dates, money and one approver. Six dates with their weekdays, $38,000 and what it covers, and one person who gathers everyone's comments into a single list.
What to cut
Leave your own ideas out. A brief that suggests a headline gets that headline back, slightly improved. Describe the problem and the person, then stop.
Cut the brand history, the competitor review and the media plan as well, or link to them. If the brief runs past one sheet, something on it is there to protect you and not to help the team.
Test the one sentence on someone outside the project. If they need the background section to understand it, rewrite it until they don't.
How to send it
To named people. A brief holds a launch date and a budget before either is public. Open it to the studio's domain and to the few people on your side who approve the work.
Every page you publish gets one link that opens in any browser. You choose who can open it: anyone with the link, anyone with the password, or only the people and company domains you name, who sign in with Google or Microsoft. Change the page later and the link stays the same.
