Recently, а former colleague reached out asking whether I could recommend a good template for a creative brief. His team needed to brief a local event agency about some promotional activities. At first, I couldn’t understand what he meant. But during our conversation, I realised the confusion between an initial, marketing brief and a creative brief – and that we were both talking about different things. 

I tried to find a resource online so we could start from common ground. But based on what I’ve learned through decades of experience in creative direction, the information out there was more confusing, or just plain misleading. So, I will try to explain in this blog the following: 

• What’s the difference between a general marketing brief, and a creative brief? 
• Who creates a marketing brief? Who makes a creative brief?
• Who are these two types of brief for? 
• What should you include in each type of brief?

What is a marketing brief?

In general the marketing brief can be anything, from a filled brief form through an email to a Slack message. Such a brief can be created by the marketing team when they want to request a certain creative input from the creative team. And if for day-to-day tasks, a Slack message works just fine, for more complex projects it is highly recommended to use a brief form – get a free template here.

The purpose of the brief is to educate the creative team on the assignment, but also to inspire their creativity. There is no perfect brief, but a good one helps the creative teams to unleash their powers. The main things that need to be covered in those (initial) marketing briefs are:

The company & brand

• Brand  information – name, what product/service it offers, values, mission, positioning, tone of voice, links to a brand style guide, etc.
• Product/Service information – what it does, how it works, what problem it solves, who the main competitors are (this could be another product or company, or it could be another opposing force), and why it is better than the competition.
• Target audience or Ideal Customer Profile – What is the persona’s role, and seniority? What are their identifiers? Could be firmographic characteristics like their company size, or job title on LinkedIn, or their digital behaviours like downloading certain content or attending certain events; What are their business and career goals? What are their work-related challenges? How can this campaign help overcome them? What could their objections be? And how do we address them? What touch points do you have with them?
• Competition and marketing landscape – who is the competition, what’s the market situation, what’s your product/service positioning, are you a major player or a new comer, etc.

The campaign

• The campaign problem/challenge – what do you need to solve with this campaign? What is the goal? What is the problem you are helping your audience solve? What marketing challenge are you solving for your company? Think of one particular goal and how you will measure if it has been achieved; what are the KPIs?
• The message – what do you want your target audience to remember or know once they’ve engaged with your campaign? 
• The budget – how much will you spend on this campaign? What channels will you use, and how will you distribute the spending?
• The duration – is this a campaign that will be developed for a single event, a quarter, or a whole year?
• Other important info – whatever you think should be considered during the creative work, like restrictions, learnings from previous campaigns, current industry trends or context, or nice-to-haves if there are any.

Why is a marketing brief important?

Besides serving the needed information to the creative team, it also helps marketers to structure their thoughts and make sure they don’t miss something important. The goal of this initial marketing brief is to make even a new creative team aware of the company and its marketing goals. But what if you already work for a long time with a creative team? Shouldn’t they already know all the background information? Well, the short answer is “Yes”. But, particularly in the B2B tech space, things and people change fast. Internally at your company, and externally among entire markets. So, in my humble opinion, better to stay on the safe side, get the creative work that you hoped for, and over-inform. At the end of the day it saves time and makes the work more efficient.  

After you gather this information, send it to your creative team and schedule a kick off meeting for debriefing. Once it is done, your creative team is the one who should produce the creative brief and to share it with you, translating the general marketing information into creative deliverables and requirements. The creative brief should be written in understandable common language, without too much technical terminology, and minimum room for misinterpretation. It is short, and gives answers instead of raising more questions. This is the road map which creatives will use during their work on the campaign. Based on the creative brief, they will develop the so-called “Big idea”, around which they will build the campaign. That’s why it is very important you all agree on the information in the creative brief before starting the actual creative work.

OK, what does this Creative brief look like? 

The creative brief always comes as a form. There is no standard how exactly it should look like, but there are few fields which are mandatory:

• Title and short description – What is the name of the project, why are we doing this campaign. E.g. sales are down, new competitors entered the market, etc.)

• Objective – A key factor for a successful campaign is to have a single objective, one problem to be solved. If you have more marketing challenges to address – better make a separate campaign for each one of them. The objective also should be clear and straight to the point. E.g. “Sales are flat and we need to increase sales from existing customers.” is good, “Increase sales with 20%” is not, it is too generic and not focused.  

• Target audience – There should be only one specific target audience, backed with insights, not raw data. It is a crucial factor for success to know exactly who you are talking to. Imagine you are thinking of a particular person – what are their habits, what media they are using, what is important to them. That’s why your target audience should be as specific as possible. Broader target means less chances. On the other hand – knowing exactly who is the target helps to address the problems they have and how your product/service will help to solve them. You will also know how these particular people behave and what are the best ways to influence them. 

• Desired result or consumer response – Based on the strategic objective, we should focus on only one desired response. Our target audience should do one thing at the time. This also will help us to set the KPIs.

– Feel: What do we want our audience to feel?

– Know: What do we want them to learn, understand, or remember? 

– Do: What action do we need them to take? 

• The Message/ Story Arc – It speaks for itself, but in a campaign we should deliver only one and clear message to the target audience, which shows what’s the target’s benefit here. Keep in mind that at the end of the day you always talk to people. And even when we want to talk about the rational benefits of using the product/service we offer, the message should play on the audience’s heartstrings. 

• The main reasons why the consumer should believe us – Think of two points, which support the message. One is not enough, three are too much. Their role is to convince the audience that the product/service we offer will solve their problems, by supporting the logic of the campaign (the message). Those points could be some proven facts or emotional consumer insights.

Bitobi’s Creative brief form

The creative brief also can include other information about the brand idea, assets, communication channels, etc. That’s OK. But the real musts are from the list above. And the golden rule is keep it short and simple. That translates into a better focus, clear goals and good chances for success.