How to use a creative brief

A creative brief is a contract between the account team or project “owner” and the creative team. It quickly defines a marketing project so the creatives know what it is all about, what it’s trying to accomplish, and what are the budget and other parameters—no coming up with a web video when the brief calls for a small space ad.

I’ve worked with creative briefs from several dozen marketers and agencies over the years. Although there are variations, most follow the same outline—a series of questions which are answered by the account folks, approved by the client, then handed off to creatives:

1. What is this project about in a sentence?
2. What are we trying to accomplish?
3. Who is the audience?
4. What do they think about our product or service now?
5. What do we want to think? Is there a specific action we want them to take?
6. How are we going to accomplish this?
7. Is there a specific offer?
8. What are likely objections and how can we handle them?
9. Are there any delimiting budget or production considerations?
10. What sacred cows, legal mandatories etc. should we be aware of?
11. What is the schedule?

As a copywriter and creative director, I like working with a creative brief very much. It reduces the element of surprise, tells me my clients will act professionally (and not pile on deliverables or insist “that’s not what I asked for”), and helps me organize my own thinking. In fact, if a creative brief isn’t provide I’ll write one for myself as a way to jumpstart my diminishing brain cells. (But I don’t tell anyone… this is a private and personal exercise. And I never write a creative brief on behalf of a client—something I’ve been asked to do—because that defeats the whole purpose of the document.)

In my copywriting class, I ask the class how many of them have worked with a creative brief and the “yes” group is always under 50%. Then we do an exercise in which we divide into teams and each group follows a prewritten brief to come up with a concept for a space ad. (The class is primarily about writing email and direct mail, but the space ad gives us something to show.) This is a very popular activity. Afterward most of the students say they will demand, or write (if  they’re managers), a creative brief for their next project.

Not everybody I work with personally gives me a brief. Almost without exception the clients who provide a brief are more organized, better funded, and less likely to self-destruct in the middle of a project. Yet it doesn’t cost anything to write a brief, just time and thinking you should invest anyway toward a successful result.

If you’re not now using a creative brief, give it a try on your next project. You will be pleased.