How to Write a Creative Brief in 11 Simple Steps [Examples + Template]
Updated: April 27, 2023
Published: April 26, 2023
The first step in any successful project is drawing up a game plan with a clear objective. It's one of the reasons marketers love creative briefs.

A creative brief acts as a roadmap that takes a project from ideation to completion. It ensures the scope, timeline, key stakeholders, and purpose of the project are communicated clearly. The creative brief is the single source of truth for everyone working on a project. If questions come up or tasks become unclear, the creative brief will steer things in the right direction.


What is a creative brief?
A creative brief is a short document that sums up marketing, advertising, or design project mission, goals, challenges, demographics, messaging, and other key details. It's often created by a consultant or a creative project manager. The goal of a brief is to achieve stakeholder alignment on a project before it begins.
The Purpose of a Creative Brief
Whether you’re a consultant pitching a creative brief to a client, or a project manager presenting a brief to your team, start by speaking with the project stakeholders. These discussions will help you understand the company's mission, project goals, and challenges your team faces. Then, you’ll have enough information to write a compelling brief that focuses on what’s really important to your company or client.
The idea of a creative brief sounds simple, but it can be hard to wrap a lot of important details into just a few pages. Therefore, a creative brief is typically comprised of eight sections that can fit on one to two pages.
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Three customizable templates designed to serve as the blueprint for your next campaign.
- Campaign brief template.
- Video brief template.
- Client brief template.
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How a Creative Brief Works
Creative briefs are pretty standard documents within just about every marketing, advertising, or design team. For smaller projects that live in-house (like designs, templates, marketing assets, etc.) the brief is owned by the team who will be executing on the information in the brief. This is usually the creative team, but this team can fall within the brand department or even live within marketing.
For more advanced, long-term projects that involve an agency, the creative brief is owned by the creative team or agency who will be executing the work. This is because they'll work closely with the stakeholders on the project to understand what is needed, plus they'll bring their own expertise and competitive research to the brief that the internal team may not have access to.
These types of creative briefs aren't rare, but they are created infrequently due to the nature of the projects they support. So for this post, we'll focus mostly on the day-to-day creative briefs that you're likely to use often. Here's how they work.
Creative Brief Outline
- Project Name
- Company Background
- Project Objective
- Target Audience
- Competitors
- Key Message
- Key Consumer Benefit
- Call to Action
- Distribution
Step 1. The teams who need assistance from the creative team will retrieve the creative brief template from a repository like OneDrive, Google Drive, or an online form.
Step 2. The team that is requesting the project will complete the brief according to their team's needs and goals. The completion of the creative brief starts with the team requesting the project so that they can explain their vision and goals clearly to the creative team.
Step 3. From there, the brief is sent back to the creative team to review. They'll be looking for timelines, resources, and budget requirements.
Step 4. If they have any questions, they'll go back to the team who wrote the brief and finalize the details.
Step 5. After that, the project is kicked off, sometimes with the help of a project manager, who will check-in with stakeholders on the project and keep everything on schedule, within scope, and within budget.
Step 6. Once the project is complete, both teams will review the deliverables against the creative brief to ensure everything is completed correctly.
The format of every company's creative brief might vary slightly to suit the needs of the project or client. Below is a simple outline that will be the foundation of your creative brief. It includes the most important steps in the creative process and information that'll be relevant to stakeholders involved in the project.
Once you’re fully informed and ready to write, use the following steps to draft yours. To make it even easier, I've included a fill-in-the-blank template in the last step.
How to Write a Creative Brief
- Decide on a name for the project.
- Write about the brand and summarize the project’s background.
- Highlight the project objective.
- Describe the target audience.
- Interpret the competitive landscape.
- Prepare the key message.
- Choose the key consumer benefit.
- Select an attitude.
- Determine the best call to action.
- Draft the distribution plan.
- Share the creative brief with stakeholders.
1. Decide on a name for the project.
The first step in developing a creative brief is deciding on a project name. This might sound simple, but it's one of the most critical components of a creative brief. If you're building a campaign around a brand new product or service, the campaign name will be the first time many members of your team will be introduced to it. Referring to the campaign (and therefore product or service) by the correct name prevents the game of telephone from happening. Without a specific and clear campaign name, people will make up their own terminology which can alter the intent of the campaign .
To create a project or campaign name for your creative brief, keep it creative and brief. A few words or a short sentence should work just fine. If you're launching a product, identify what the call to action will be for the target audience, then center the name around that. Here are a few examples of fictional campaign names:
- The Search for Adventure Campaign- A scavenger hunt-themed amusement park.
- The Don't Forget Your Memories Campaign - A photo frame company.
- The "What's hotter than Pepperco hot sauce?" Campaign - A hot sauce brand.
2. Write about the brand and summarize the project’s background.
Another simple, yet essential section is the company background. If you work in an agency setting, this is non-negotiable as your team is likely handling several client campaigns at once. However, if you're developing a creative brief for an in-house project, you'll still want to include this part. New hires on your team, freelancers, and vendors will appreciate the background that your internal team is already privy to.
The company background shouldn't be a general history of the company or a copied and pasted paragraph from the about page. Instead, tailor this to the project at hand. Set the scene with one or two sentences that sum up the brand’s mission. Follow this with a few sentences that give background on the brand and what led to the development of the project.
While some creatives have put this information all together in a quick paragraph, others separate it with headers like “Brand Statement” and “Background.”
Here are some questions to consider when writing a company background for your creative brief:
- Has the company launched a campaign like this before?
- Why is the company choosing to launch this campaign right now?
- What's happening in the market and how will this campaign respond to it?
3. Highlight the project objective.
Here is where the creative brief gets more specific. The project objective should briefly explain the purpose of the project, the timeline, and the audience it'll target. This can be done in a sentence or two, but you can get creative and stylize it in sections.
This part of the creative brief will be helpful in emphasizing why the project needs to happen. The goal aspects will help you and your team align on the project’s expectations. If the company or client hasn’t identified any major challenges, you can focus this section on goals and objectives. Explain what a successful project looks like and how it will benefit the company.
Pro Tip: Writing a project objective is very similar to writing a goal, so take a look at this blog post for more detail on goal and objective writing.
Here’s an example of a sample creative brief for PayPal that offers separate sections for “The Problem” and “The Goal”:

4. Describe the target audience.
Next, it's time to define the target audience for the project. This is the segment of your market that will directly benefit from the product or service being launched. You can take audience segmentation a step further by identifying a primary and secondary audience. Doing so will give your team more freedom to explore creative ideas that might resonate with one group more than the other.
When crafting the target audience section, be sure to include the following:
- Demographics - Simple demographic information gives your team insight into exactly who the audience is. This includes data points like age, income, education, ethnicity, and occupation.
- Behaviors - Buying behaviors, trends, and other customer history make up the target audience behaviors. These provide important context to the creative brief because they explain where the customer is in their buyer journey.
- Psychographics - This is how the audience thinks and feels about your brand and the product or service you sell, in general.
- Geographics - Digital, physical, and hybrid campaigns will benefit from having geographics stated explicitly in the creative brief so that media buyers can price ad slots in each market.
Pro Tip: Your creative brief shouldn't be too long, and this section can take up quite a bit of space. To make this section more digestible, consider using buyer personas .
Here’s how the sample brief for PayPal noted above thoughtfully explains a new product’s target audience:

5. Interpret the competitive landscape.
Knowing what your competitors are doing is advantageous for the whole team. You can use competitive data to come up with ideas that haven’t been tried yet, learn from their failed projects, or build a project that improves on a strategy they’ve used in the past.
Include a quick list of competitors with similar product or service offerings. Briefly list a few things your company has in common with them, how your brand has differentiated itself already, and a few areas where this project can help you get ahead.Get Your Free Templates
6. Prepare the key message.
The key message can be the most difficult part of the creative brief to develop because just about every stakeholder will have a different opinion of what it should be. To get buy-in faster, try this simple trick. Ask yourself "We're launching this project, so what?" The "so what?" is your key message. It explains why your target audience should stop what they're doing and pay attention to your campaign.
The key message includes the pain point, what the audience's experience might be like without the pain point, and the benefit they'll receive as a result of your company's solution. This framework places the customer in the spotlight of the campaign. Instead of telling them what this product or service could do for them, it positions them as the main character in the journey from problem to solution.
7. Choose the key consumer benefit.
If you're launching a new product, there are likely several features and benefits that the target audience will experience when they decide to purchase it. However, it's very difficult to structure a campaign around several different features. That's why marketers and creatives use something called a key consumer benefit (KCB) in the creative brief to keep everyone aligned on the primary benefit being communicated. To choose the right KCB, you'll want to get input from the project stakeholders and rely on consumer data to guide the decision.
Pro Tip: Your KCB won't always be the fanciest feature of your product. The benefit that solves the biggest problem for your audience is a great choice for the KCB.
8. Select an attitude.
The tone and voice of your campaign create the overall attitude and that should be consistent throughout every creative element that's being developed. Identifying a few adjectives that describe the attitude of the campaign can help copywriters draft copy that sends the correct message within the right context. Graphic designers can use colors and techniques to portray the tone and voice as well.
In this section of the brief, you should also note the appropriate voice for your audience. While some audiences, like those in the business world, prefer more formal language, others might engage more with a casual, relatable tone. To substantiate your decision to choose a particular brand voice and tone, you could write something like, “Our brand voice is a casual and carefree tone because it speaks to younger Gen-Z audiences.”
Pro tip: Use a thesaurus to find specific words that evoke nuanced emotions and attitudes for a hyper-targeted campaign.
9. Determine the best call to action.
Finally, your audience needs something to do once they see your campaign. The good thing about CTAs is that they don't have to be physical actions. A CTA could have a goal to change thoughts and perceptions about your brand which doesn't require the audience to do anything at all.
Your creative brief might include several different CTAs, especially if you have a primary and secondary target audience. But it's a good idea to have one primary CTA that drives the project objective we talked about earlier.
10. Draft the distribution plan.
When the project is done, you’ll need to make sure your audience actually sees it. List a few channels or platforms on which you plan to announce the launch, as well as any promotional content you plan to create.
When drafting this section, think about your target audience. Don’t waste time on a promotional strategy that they won’t see. For example, if you’re promoting a project to Gen-Z, you’ll want to invest in social media rather than billboards or newspaper ads.
11. Share the creative brief with stakeholders.
Once you’ve drafted a creative brief, share it with the team you’ll be working with. You’ll also want to circulate it around the company via Slack, email, or presentations. If you’re a consultant working outside of a client’s company, encourage your clients to share the brief internally.
As you or your clients spread awareness, you should be open to answering questions or taking feedback from colleagues in case they have any great ideas. This strategy will improve team alignment , increase support of the project, and ensure that all of your colleagues are on the same page.
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Creative Brief Template
Having trouble with the flow and organization of your brief? Here’s a simple template that could help. Copy and paste it into a document and fill in the blanks. You can also add to it or adjust it as needed for your project.

Download More Creative Brief Templates
[Inset company or client logo at the top along with the project name.]
COMPANY BACKGROUND:
For ___ years, ______ [Brand Name] has been serving customers in the ____________ [group/job field/geographical area] with ____________________ [product or service].
[Brand Name] has made achievements including __________,__________, and ___________. We have also launched marketing campaigns that have touched on ____________,________, and ____________. With the launch of _________ [project name] they hope to ___________.
PROJECT OBJECTIVE:
With this project, the company aims to solve problems related to ____________________, while also expanding on ___________ and improving on _____________.
TARGET AUDIENCE:
Our target audience is ____ [gender], in the age range of _ and _, and live areas like ____, _____, and ______. They enjoy _____, dislike ______, and might work in fields like _____, _____, and _____. They want more of ________ and their daily pain points include ________.
Their favorite products might include _______ and ______. They learn about these products through channels including ________, _________, and _______.
COMPETITORS:
Our three biggest competitors [are/will be] ________, ________, and _______. These competitors offer _____, ______, and ______. We are ahead of them in _____ and ______, but we are behind when it comes to product offerings like __________ and _________.
KEY MESSAGE:
The target audience is experiencing __________ [pain point], but with our newest project ___________, they'll get to experience _________ [new experience without the pain point]. That's what makes ______ [solution] an unrivaled solution within the market.
KEY CONSUMER BENEFIT:
________ [feature] is the best way for our target audience to experience _____ [benefit].
[Include three to five adjectives that describe the tone and voice of the project.]
CALL TO ACTION:
When the target audience sees our campaign, they will [feel/think/do] _________.
DISTRIBUTION:
We will promote the launch on platforms and channels that our demographic regularly engages with. These will include ________, ________, and _______.
We will also release content including _______, _______, and ________ to gain attention from our audience and inform them of the project.
Below are a few messages we will use:
- _________________________________________________.
Types of Creative Briefs
Creative briefs serve several purposes in the communications field. Marketers, designers, and advertisers use them differently. Depending on your role, your team, and the project you're working on, one might be more effective than the other. Below are some of the most common types of creative briefs used across industries today plus examples of what they might look like.
1. Marketing Creative Briefs
A marketing creative brief is most commonly used to bring campaigns to market. This type of creative brief can be used for both new and existing campaigns. Broad business goals and strategies to accomplish them are usually included in this type of creative brief. It's also not uncommon to see revenue goals and a budget included in a marketing creative brief.
Simple Marketing Creative Brief Example

2. Product Design Creative Briefs
Product design creative briefs outline the go-to-market strategy for a new product or feature launch. Product marketers are responsible for developing this type of brief. Developed in conjunction with the product manager, the product design creative brief will describe the features and benefits of the product and how the audience will benefit from them. Unique features of this type of creative brief include product documentation and product descriptions.
Product Design Creative Brief Example

3. Advertising Agency Creative Briefs
Advertising agencies develop creative briefs often for the various clients they serve. These briefs are concise and include the client's brand guidelines as well as the specific project guidelines. A budget may also be included in the brief so that all teams can make wise decisions about the tactics they recommend for the client. An account manager or supervisor develops the creative brief and shares it with client stakeholders before the agency begins working on the project.
Advertising Agency Creative Brief Example

Creative Brief Examples
1. creative request template.

For the day-to-day management of creative projects, using a creative request template in Asana acts as a dynamic take on a traditionally static creative brief. With a few tweaks to suit your business's needs, this template flows through each stage of the project while specifying tasks, deliverables, and key points that need to be included in the project. Moreover, Asana provides several types of views that make this template easy to look at from a calendar view, list view, board view, and timeline view so you'll always know the progress of your project in relation to the creative brief.
When to Use This Creative Brief:
This creative brief example is great for marketing, brand, creative, and design teams who handle a large backlog of projects with stakeholders on many different teams. Use this brief for both ad-hoc and regularly occurring projects.
2. Creative Brief Presentation Template

This creative brief example was designed by TemplateForest. It's a visual-forward example of a brief that works well for long-term projects like building a business or refreshing a brand. This longer brief includes a variety of information from internal brand insights to an external competitive analysis.
Use this creative brief when you're partnering with a creative agency on bigger projects. They can use this layout to inspire a creative brief that fits the needs of your business.
Streamline Projects with a Creative Brief
Scope creep happens to the best of us. Projects get bigger, stakeholders are added, and the objective of the project seems to morph as time goes on. Streamline your next product launch or marketing and advertising campaign with a creative brief. As a result, you'll find that your team is more aligned with the project's goals. We've even provided free creative brief templates to get you started — download them below.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in July 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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The Creative Brief: Everything You Need to Know

Writing a full creative brief may not always be necessary — but in most cases, entering into a project without a creative brief is like flying blind. With many marketing departments producing high volumes of collateral and needing to be as agile as possible in their delivery, it’s critical that the process is as efficient as possible. And that starts with a well-written creative brief.
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In this creative brief guide you will discover:
What is a creative brief?
- Why you need a creative brief
- How to write a creative brief?
When should you use a creative brief?
Who should fill out the creative brief.
- Creative brief template
A creative brief is a document used to outline the strategy of a creative project. A creative brief contains project details including:
- Project purpose
- Requirements
- Demographics
Usually developed in the project initiation phase, a creative brief will help a creative team better understand a project from the start, and may be presented to key stakeholders and clients.
Although not all creative briefs are created equal, they all share the same basic layout. And since some projects require more detailed planning than others, you’ll waste a lot of time and effort if you try to use one detailed creative brief template for all your work.
This is where electronic creative briefs in marketing work management tools come in handy. If it’s a quality tool, the briefs will be customizable so you can design them to only cover the information necessary for that specific type of project.
Effective creative briefs rely on good questions. Ask the right questions and you’ll write a creative brief that will make your life easier. Essentially, you have to clarify the who, what, where, when, and how of the deliverable . We describe how below.
Why you need a creative brief.
You need a plan.
Obviously, you can’t design something you don’t understand. Your project needs a reason to exist, as well as:
- expectations
In a creative brief, you articulate your vision and justify its benefits, as well as plan how you will target your audience. From the beginning, a creative brief puts everyone on the same page before launching a project.
A well-written creative brief will save you time.
Creative briefing isn’t just cobbling together a document, it’s wielding a tool that facilitates clear and thorough communication from the beginning of the design process. A clear brief can prevent:
- Last-minute changes
- Misunderstandings
- Conflicting objectives
All of which will cost your team valuable time and money.
You’ll maintain accountability and communication.
Agreeing on your scope , deliverables, objectives, the persona and execution of a project will help anchor your team and your stakeholders . Establishing parameters and, perhaps most importantly, building trust at the outset will go a long way toward smoother processes.
Requests and approvals will be processed faster.
Ambiguous goals are difficult to achieve. Consider vague requests such as, ‘I just want a really clean-looking design.’ While some of this is simply a fact of life for design professionals, a creative brief forces clarity upstream, minimizing difficult confrontations during the review and approval cycle.
The creative briefing process is as much about anticipating obstacles as understanding and aligning objectives. Better to get clarification during the planning phase than when you’re in the middle of proofing.
The final product will be higher quality.
This is a direct result of setting clear objectives, aligning with business objectives, and vetting expectations up front. When everyone’s time is valued and expectations are made clear, it’s easier for the team to hit their mark, remain invested, motivated, and proud of their work.
“The brief was always supposed to be a springboard for great work. Not a straitjacket.”
David Trott, author of Creative Mischief
So let the design brief act as your guiding instrument and understand that time spent on a well-designed brief is an investment that pays off in the end with:
- Greatly improved process
- Higher quality of output
And, ultimately, a more trusting relationship between your team and client.
Ebook: 5 Tips to Get Back Time to be Creative Whitepaper: Agile Marketing for Creative Teams
Elements in a creative brief.
Before writing a creative brief, be sure to ask these 10 questions. Some are left out of briefs too often. Believe it or not, covering these bases can make the difference between a struggling content project and highly effective one.
1. Why are we doing this?
Anyone that’s going to create anything worthy of publishing needs to know some context to the assigned project. They need to know:
- The ‘why’ of the project — what’s the need?
- What’s the pain?
- What’s the opportunity or challenge?
Your team may not need to know every nitty-gritty historical detail of the project, so don’t waste time trying to pin down every little thing — only divulge what’s most important to your team doing great work.
2. Who is our target audience?
How will you know how to target your deliverables unless you know who’s going to see, handle, watch, or read what you’re creating? Make sure you know the ‘who’ of the project before beginning. And I don’t just mean writing ‘potential customers.’ What about these potential customers?
- How old are they?
- Where are they from?
- What's their average salary?
- What are their self-interests?
This type of information could be the difference between a successful campaign and huge waste of time and money.
3. Who are our competitors?
After you’ve identified your target audience, include a list of your main business rivals on the brief. Add links to review what they offer and any similar projects to yours they have attempted. Consider:
- How did they do?
- What can you learn from them?
- Did they do a good job?
Finally, consider how can you differentiate yourself from them with your creative content.
4. What do you want us to deliver?
This is the client’s chance to tell you the ‘what’ of the project — what they actually want your team to deliver. This is where the client unveils their overall vision for the project. This can require a little digging, however, because often clients have a picture in their head of what they want.
If you can't get them to describe that picture, the work your team completes, no matter how fabulous, can disappoint clients if it differs from their vision. This is the time to ask questions, get clarifications and manage expectations by communicating what expectations can or cannot be met and why.
5. What’s the big idea?
If this deliverable or campaign could be boiled down to a handful or less of key messages, what would they be? Some agencies call this the ‘big idea.’ What does this project most need to convey to, or evoke from, its audience?
6. How do we want it to look?
This section is especially important for external agencies that may have to learn a whole new brand with every project. This is where the ‘how’ gets answered, where you clarify the:
And any other guidelines related to the project.
7. What is our core business objective?
Before we get into the work of shaping content, we need clarity on its reason for being. Unless it’s meeting a business objective, even the most dazzling projects risks failing at its ultimate goal of creating value.
Discuss this thoroughly with your team and stakeholders at the outset, ensuring that creative projects aren’t just window dressing, but high-contributing parts of a larger strategy . Ultimately, when a creative asset is produced with the business objective top of mind, defending aesthetic choices becomes easier.
8. Who are the stakeholders?
This also addresses the ‘who,’ but from the working side. Who will work on the project from the creative team? Who are the client’s decision-makers? Who should you go to for approval on drafts and in what order?
9. When is the deadline?
This is the ‘when’ of the project. Some of the key timings to ensure you confirm are:
- When is the start date?
- When is the final version due?
- What are the milestones?
- When are subtasks due?
- How many iterations are expected and by when?
When gathering this information, it’s important to determine what actions and dates are required of the client to keep the project on track. For example, do they only have two days to provide feedback without pushing back the deadline? This must be clearly defined from the beginning so the client will understand that any delays on their part will cause overall delays for the project.
You would be surprised how many creative briefs leave out these critical pieces of information, whether because the team is focused entirely on the deliverables or because they’re not asking.
Create an example timeline.
Create a timeline that looks something like this, working backwards from when the content needs to be deliverable if possible.
- Kick-off meeting: Day 1
- Final creative brief due: Day 10
- Content due to client: Day 30
- Content due back from client to action amends: Day 37
- Second review process: Day 40
- Upload online (or see proof in print): Day 42
- Publish: Day 45
- Measure success, govern and maintain: Day 45 onwards.
Remember, the content you’re creating ties into a campaign with concrete launch dates and your delivery date will become a critical component of its success. You need to know and be able to work with this project constraint , setting it out in the creative brief.
10. Where will this content appear?
Context is crucial in content. Different venues carry unique audience expectations and ways of engagement. You’d never, for example, write a print ad the same way you write a social post.
Where your content appears will determine its:
- Size and scale
And how it moves users to the next point on the customer journey. Be sure to hone in on where your end user will engage with your final product.
Learn more: Workfront for Project Management Whitepaper: Process, Creativity, and the Need for Speed
Creative briefs cover projects of different shapes, sizes, and styles. Because of this a tiering system is applied to projects to show what level of briefing is required. We explain Tier 1, 2 and 3 below:
- Tier 1: Non-standard, non-iterative, highly conceptual work — This work is the most prone to being ambiguous, which means creative briefs are a must. Otherwise, team members may not know where to start, or get started with a high risk of going in the wrong direction. Think about a full advertising campaign — you'll want a lot of direction from the client before your team begins work.
- Tier 2: Execution of previous work across deliverables — Deals with already defined and completed work, so doesn't need the detail of a Tier 1 creative brief. But your team will still run a risk if they don’t use one. This could be a website landing page for an internal client. Chances are, you’ve already created dozens of these, so you have a general idea of the expectations. But it’s always good to make sure you have all the information you need before you start.
- Tier 3: Edits, revisions, templated work — This requires the briefest brief of all, but even though it’s simple you'll want a project description. Plus, if you let the little things through with sticky notes and hallway conversations rather than requiring some form of a creative brief, you'll quickly run into problems.
There have long been questions of who should fill out the creative brief. Is it the:
- Creative director?
- Account manager?
- Designer or writer on the job?
The answer is, it depends. If you’re an agency or an in-house agency, the best practice is to have the representative from client services, or the assigned account manager, meet the client to go through the creative brief. It may make sense to include the creative director as well to make sure everyone has a sound understanding of the project requirements .
If you’re an in-house creative services team, you will need to determine what process works best for your team’s unique workflow. Perhaps it makes the most sense for the creative director to meet with the internal client to complete the brief. Maybe your team has traffic managers or production managers that would better fill that role.
At the end of the day, the thing you want to avoid is sending a document to the client to fill out on their own. This can lead to a number of problems:
- Client takes too long to fill it out
- Client doesn’t fill it out at all and gets frustrated
- Client only fills out some of the information
- Your team reads the brief and doesn’t understand.
To save time and frustration, and whether you’re an agency or an in-house team, have an initial meeting with your client to fill out the creative brief together and clarify points as needed.
An alternative is to use a marketing work management software like Workfront with built-in creative briefs where, upon initial request, the client is required to provide certain information for the team. Even in this scenario, as a best practice it’s recommended you take the time to meet with the client and ensure everyone is on the same page before production begins.
Ebook: 6 Dangerous Myths Every Agency Creative Should Reject Ebook: How 5 Creative Geniuses Used Structure to Be More Creative
Creative brief template.
If your creative briefings include these principles, you have effectively implemented creative briefs into your workflow. The perfect creative brief template is not built in a day. It takes continual feedback and fine-tuning to match your organization’s needs. As you write more creative briefs, determine what common fields should be included and add them to continuously improve your creative brief template. To get a head start, download our creative brief template .
Remember though, it’s called a brief for a reason, so keep it short. Only ask for what your team absolutely needs. Also, be willing to adapt your creative brief to the tier your project fits under. Now you’re all set to escape ambiguity and finally get some clarity.
Frequently asked questions about how to write a creative brief.
What is a good creative brief?
To write a good creative brief you need to make sure it’s absolutely clear what needs to be done and by when. It should clarify the objective, make clear any deadlines, and provide as much information about the product or service as possible. Ideally both the agency and the client should have input into the brief.
What is a creative brief template?
A creative brief template is exactly that: a template you can use to make completing a creative brief easier. It should give you a clear structure to follow, with fields to include key information such as objective, target audience, and deadline.
Why is a creative brief important?
A creative brief is important for many reasons. Primarily because it helps to agree expectations, deliverables, and deadlines between the client and agency. Another important reason is it ensures work is done correctly and to the right standard. Often when a client or internal agency stakeholder is unhappy with a piece of work, a poor brief is to blame.
What is a creative brief video?
A creative brief video is a filmed version of a written brief. In the context of a project, a video brief is intended to provide the recipient with information about which actions rest with them and how their work relates to project goals.
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The complete guide to writing creative briefs
Just like any other task, creative work deserves a clear plan and measurable goals before work begins. That’s where a creative brief comes in. Developing a creative brief allows you to take a proactive approach and outline requirements while planning out your creative work. Among other important elements, your creative brief is your opportunity to define the scope, deadlines, and deliverables specific to the creative part of your project.
Overall, a creative brief helps keep everyone on the same page—reducing feelings of frustration or confusion—while making sure no part of the design process is bottlenecked.
What is a creative brief?
A creative brief is used to define any relevant creative requirements, including messaging, audience, and outlining how success will be measured. Once the brief is created, plan to host a kickoff meeting to discuss conflicts or restrictions. That way, you have time to revise and update your creative brief before the work begins.
Remember this—creative briefs aren’t meant to be written and then left stagnant. Before your work begins, your creative brief should be an ever-evolving document that may change as the creative requirements continue to be scoped or tweaked. However, by the time the work starts, your creative brief should be a clear plan and have specific goals that your design, content, and creative teams can refer back to throughout the process, making sure everyone is aligned and making the right decisions.
Essential elements of a creative brief
Understanding what a creative brief is and why you need one is important. However, knowing what to actually put in one will save you significant time and reduce back and forths with your creative team. You can avoid having to circle back to questions and conflicts down the road by putting the appropriate information in your creative brief up front.
Take a look at these “must-haves” for every creative brief. Whether you’re planning a marketing campaign, writing a creative brief for an advertising agency, or preparing a creative brief for your internal team, these nine steps will help you clarify the key information your team needs for success. Keep in mind that your brief may contain more elements—and you can certainly add them as they relate to your work—but the criteria mentioned below should be part of nearly every creative brief.
Title and description
Goals and objectives, messaging and tone, assets and deliverables.
Stakeholders
Distribution process
First, give your creative brief a title. Provide a short description of the creative work so team members understand why they are a part of it. Let them know the intention of the creative work.
Title: Advertising campaign for new product launch
Description: As we prepare to launch Apollo Enterprises newest product, we’ll be putting together a series of advertisements to introduce it to the market.
Why are you working on this? At this point in your creative brief, you want to define the specific business need and what the work will accomplish. What does success look like for this particular body of work? As you’re writing down your goals, make sure they are measurable. At the end of the project, you’ll want to look back on them and clearly know if you’ve met your objectives.
Goals and objectives: Reach 500,000 potential customers via paid search over a one-month period and add 5,000 new subscribers to our email list.
Outlining your target audience will help better tailor your creative to them. Look for specific insights, as those become your gems of valuable information. Get clear on who will be consuming your deliverable (video, ad, etc.). Try your best to define what that person looks like by outlining demographics such as age, gender, income level, marital status, or education level.
Also note what your audience values, along with their interests, wants, and needs. State if you’re trying to reach current customers or potential ones. Answering as many questions as possible about what your audience looks like will help you and your team along the way.
Audience: Men, 30-65, mid-high income, at least a high school diploma. They value time outdoors, working with their hands, tools, and gadgets. They’re not current Apollo Enterprises’ customers.
Now that you know who your audience is, you need to clearly establish what messaging you want to put in front of them. Also, when your target market receives that message, what should they think, feel, want, and do? Are you asking them to take an action?
If you already have brand guidelines be sure to include them in your creative brief, or direct stakeholders on where to find them. Following brand guidelines ensures the tone and voice of your messaging matches that of your overall brand, and keeps your messaging consistent across marketing initiatives.
If you don’t have established brand guidelines, work with the right team members to put together some information about the tone and voice that this particular creative work should follow. Think of your message as a person. It should have a voice (a personality) and a tone (a mood or attitude).
Messaging and tone: We want to empower our audience to be creators and use Apollo Enterprises’ new product as part of their most valued suite of tools. We should celebrate the target audience for working with their hands and make them feel proud of their creations.
Since your team’s work will produce some sort of creative asset (or many), this part of your brief should describe what those assets and deliverables are. For example, if you’re creating an advertisement, the final deliverable would be the actual ad. Make sure you specify asset requirements such as dimensions, number of versions, and design elements.
Assets and deliverables: Three different advertisements, each with a different tagline and image (one version for each of the following sizes: 250x250, 728x90, 120x600).
Creative work usually requires cross-functional team collaboration . Marketing and design are almost always involved, and oftentimes other departments will also play a part. This means several individuals from different teams working together on the same desired outcome.
This is why it’s so important to identify all important stakeholders upfront. Each team member should know who is involved and what they’re responsible for. You’ll save yourself a lot of time fielding questions down the line if you add this to your creative brief.
Stakeholders:
Creative team: Larry (ad copy), Emma (ad design)
Marketing team: Hannah (team lead), Caleb (email marketing setup for campaign), Terry (ad distribution)
Product team: Zach (Product Manager)
Establishing your budget from the start will help you actually stay in line financially and guide your decision-making. Be sure you write down actual numbers and identify costs where you can. Conducting some quick research ahead of time will help. Are there ways you can cut some costs? Giving yourself some time to play with the numbers before you even begin the work will keep you in good graces with your boss!
Budget: The overall budget is $8,000 with $5,000 going to ad spend, $1,500 to design, and $1,500 to copywriting.
Establishing a timeline for your work early on will keep you and your team on track. Decide on a start date and end date, and then fill in as many important dates as you can in between. Knowing the important deadlines from the beginning gives all stakeholders an idea of how long their part of the work will take. They can plan accordingly and let you know of any conflicts. Be as specific as you can with dates and deadlines, and keep in mind that adjustments may need to be made as the work progresses.
Kickoff meeting: May 5
Final creative brief due: May 10
Ad copy due: May 30
Ad designs due: June 10
Ad buy plans due: June 15
Ads are live: July 1 - July 31
Measure ad success: Ongoing
Wrap-up: August 15
Identifying how your media assets will actually get to your audience is a part of your creative brief that can’t be skipped. All the hard work you put into every other step of your creative process culminates with an effective distribution strategy. In other words, how will you communicate your message? Social media, email, blog posts, and paid advertisements are just a few ways to distribute your media.
Distribution process: Google Adwords platform to deploy ads.
Creative brief example
Seeing examples of what great creative briefs actually look like can help you formulate your own. Check out this stellar example and pay close attention to the details. You can tell that the project manager took time and thought to develop this creative brief, and help their team work together smoothly.
Creative brief template
Get started with this creative brief template to outline your campaign goals, creative deliverables, due date, marketing strategy, and more.
Title and description:
A clear name that your stakeholders can easily identify, and a short summary that conveys the intention of your creative brief.
Goals and objectives:
Define the metrics of success for your creative brief.
Who are you targeting in your campaign and what are their values, interests, and needs? This section should include any relevant demographics.
Messaging and tone:
What type of tone are you trying to strike? How do you want your audience to feel when they see your creative assets?
Assets and deliverables:
Asset and deliverable 1
Asset and deliverable 2
Asset and deliverable 3
Stakeholder 1
Stakeholder 2
Stakeholder 3
What is your overall budget? Are there any specific details to how the budget should be spent?
Date: Description
Date: Description
Distribution process:
Specify how you will reach your audience once your assets and deliverables are ready.
Using a creative brief when working with agencies
Sometimes internal stakeholders aren’t the only people you’ll be collaborating with on creative work. Companies may choose to hire an agency to help. If you find yourself working with an agency , here’s how you can use a creative brief to make the most out of the partnership.
Make your creative brief a starting point
When you deliver the creative brief to your agency contacts, take the opportunity to discuss your goals with them and refine the creative brief if necessary. Ask for their input. They are there to help and getting their buy-in will make every part of the overall process easier. Allow your agency partners to educate you on what will work and what won’t.
Create a robust final version of your creative brief
The more valuable information you put it in, the less questions will come your way later. And, remember, while the agency is a partner of yours, they are working with other companies as well. Giving them as much information as you can will make you and your creative brief stick out (in a good way). For example, you’ll want to include any applicable style guides, tone of voice recommendations, relevant internal messaging information, and any brand guidelines the agency should keep in mind while working.
Be open to change
Creative work moves quickly, and some project leaders make the mistake of thinking their creative brief has to be rigid in order to support fast-moving teams. In reality it’s a living document. Until you start executing on the work, it should always be open to conversations and edits.
Write your best creative brief
You’re feeling good, right? Hopefully developing your own creative brief doesn’t seem so daunting after all and you’re ready to get moving on building your next one. After you’ve written your creative brief, manage the next steps in your creative process in a work management tool, like Asana . Not only will it help keep you organized—it will actually help you run the show.
Build a creative brief that makes your life (and those of your stakeholders) easier to execute your creative work successfully.
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How to Write a Creative Brief (With Detailed Examples & Templates)
Haillie Parker
June 15, 2023
As Boromir once said in the cinematic masterpiece The Lord Of The Rings , “One does not simply make a funny video .” 🤌
OK, we took some artistic liberties—but the sentiment rings true! You can’t just whip up a creative project from scratch and expect it to be successful.
Creative projects require careful research, intentional planning, and collaboration to make a splash. And before teams can hit the ground running, these elements must be packaged together in an informative document known as the creative brief. ✨
But how do you know if your creative brief is checking every box?
Follow along to learn everything you need to know to build an effective creative brief including a detailed outline, step-by-step workflow, top examples, and more. Plus, access to customizable creative brief templates!

What Is a Creative Brief?
What belongs in a creative brief , step 1: give the project a proper name, step 2: coordinate your objectives with long-term goals, step 3: identify your target audience , step 4: solidify your messaging strategy, step 5: determine the final deliverables, step 6: budget your time and resources, step 7: set your milestones, then the timeline, step 8: name your key players, step 9: lock in the brief, creative brief examples, 1. creative brief document template by clickup, 2. creative brief demand planning template by clickup, 3. creative brief whiteboard template by clickup.
A creative brief is a short but informative document outlining the main details of any creative project and leads the team from ideation through the final deliverables. It’s the key to creating your roadmap and solidifying must-know information like:
- Project requirements
- Brand guidelines
- Creative assets
- Audience and messaging
- Scope and timeline
And more—depending on your project! 🎨
Creative briefs are standard practice for most agencies and marketing teams . And like a design brief , the creative brief begins with a request from a client, company stakeholder, or another department within your organization.
While the team developing the project ultimately owns the creative brief, constructing it is a collaborative effort between everyone involved.
Start by discussing the request itself. Go into this meeting with the intention of understanding the requestor or client’s vision, mission, and purpose to find the elements that really matter to them. From there, you can address any immediate challenges and offer your industry expertise to bring the project to life.
The goal is to get everyone on board with the project plan—especially your stakeholders. With the requirements set in stone, design teams , writers, and marketers will know exactly how creative to get with your project and what’s expected.
What makes standardizing creative briefs so difficult is the ever-changing nature of each individual project. But that’s also what makes your brief so valuable!
A creative project could be almost anything—from launching a complex advertising campaign to producing a web series. Each project will pose a distinct set of challenges, but the creative brief is there to help creative teams identify and solve those issues as quickly as possible.
Think of your creative brief as a reliable source of truth to refer back to throughout the project process. Whether it’s to provide updates, cross reference your work with the original plan, or double-check your messaging, the brief is your North Star. ⭐️
How to write a creative brief outline
At its core, your creative brief will answer the who, what, where, when, why , and how of the project and grow increasingly more detailed as you move down the page.
But no matter what type of creative project you’re pursuing or how many versions the brief takes on before its stamp of approval, there are a few non-negotiable elements to ensure you’re outlining the top points in your creative brief, every time:
- Project name and overview : Describe the purpose of the project
- Objectives and goals : The problems your project will solve and how it ties back to the company mission
- Target audience : The market segment that will benefit the most
- Messaging strategy : How you’ll reach your target audience
- Deliverables : The final assets
- Budget : How much the project will cost and how much the client is able to spend
- Timeline and milestones : The beginnings of your project roadmap
- Key stakeholders and sign-offs : Every main point of contact and a record of approvals throughout the project
For most creative projects, these eight fundamental elements will start you on the right path. Depending on the complexity of your project, you might include additional sections for clarity like:
- Competitor research to differentiate the project from similar initiatives
- Analyses of past projects to explain why they were (or weren’t) successful
- Company background if your agency with working with a new client
- Breakdowns of every call to action if the project requires multiple CTAs
- Detailed distribution plans for long-term projects
Bear in mind—your creative brief should be, well, brief . Before you load up your document with additional sections for the sake of being detailed, ask yourself what value it’s adding to your creative brief and to everyone involved.
How to Write a Creative Brief
Even with your outline ready to go, there is a strategic approach to completing your brief as efficiently as possible. Follow these steps to ensure your team and stakeholders are on the same page throughout your creative briefing process so no stone is left unturned!
Starting things off strong with one of the most crucial pieces of your project—its name! Your project name should be clear and concise while communicating the intent. It doesn’t have to be flashy or funny, but it should resonate with your target audience and be compelling enough for them to want to learn more. In a sense, the name is your project or business’ first impression.
The overview is where you can dissect the project name a little more for the sake of the team. In a sentence or less, use your overview to answer any questions that may remain from the project name to avoid miscommunication or back-and-forth between stakeholders and the creative team. This could be a brief explanation of what the project will be and its core message.
With your project name and description in hand, you’re ready to outline your main objectives and goals. Your objectives are detailed and project-specific. It’s your opportunity to align the team on potential setbacks before they happen, CTAs, and prove the project’s worth.

All of this starts by defining these key points:
- The problem you’re addressing
- How the project will solve it
- Why it needs to happen
Nailing down the what, how, and why of your project will set the expectation for what a successful outcome will look like when it’s all said and done. From there, you can draw connections between the project’s more granular objectives and the company’s larger goals or mission.

Your target audience is the group that will benefit most from your project or campaign and tells the creative team who they’re connecting with. If you already have user persona profiles created for your business, use those resources and market research to build this section! You don’t have to tell your user’s life story, but be sure to cover basic information including:
- Demographics : Age, job title, education, marital status, and ethnicity
- Behaviors : Buying trends and histories
- Psychographics : Their general interests, opinions, and attitudes)
- Location : Not just physical! Think about where to find your customer digitally
Now that you know who you’re marketing to, you can strategize the best ways to connect with them. Your messaging strategy is all about being in the right place at the right time and speaking to your audience the way they want to be spoken to.
AKA, how will you distribute your creative project to the intended people?

Consider the social media and online platforms your target audience most commonly consumes, and create tailored content for those channels. This forethought will help you make significant decisions like whether to create a video, written post, or series of photos to draw your audience toward your product or service.
But it doesn’t stop there. Once your audience member visits your website, reaches your CTA, or clicks on your link, be sure to greet them with consistent and familiar messaging to guide them all the way through the funnel.
Ahh, now for the good stuff—what the project actually is.
The prior sections of your creative brief are essential for justifying, setting up, and framing your assets for a successful launch. But there are many ways to interpret the project strategy and vision up to this point. Use this section to eliminate any gray area and potential miscommunication by detailing exactly what the creative team will provide.
Your final creative deliverables include all digital or physical media requested, specific design elements, references to similar work, size or format requirements, mockups, and more. To ensure your client or stakeholder is completely satisfied with the final product, it’s better to lean into the details than leave too much for the imagination.
It may not be your favorite part of the job, but it’s so important to be fully transparent about your budget. Your budget isn’t a limitation, it helps the creative team determine how creative they can get with the request.
Be sure to note whether there’s a bit of wiggle room in the budget and when the project has hit the maximum amount. Think of your budget like the bumper rails on a bowling lane. Having these boundaries give the creative team clear guidelines to work within.

If you need help with budgeting your project—try the ClickUp Budget Project Management Template to break down every detail and cost.
And let’s not forget—the creative team members are experts in this! The challenge of crafting projects within a predetermined set of requirements is nothing new for them.
With a crystal-clear budget to lead start the project off on the right foot, no one will be disappointed or met with an unwanted surprise.
When mapping out your timeline, it’s easier to start with the significant dates in your project—also known as your project milestones! These benchmark events include:
- Your project kick-off
- Creative brief approval
- Draft reviews
- Production completion
- Final asset turnover

With these dates, you can flesh out the tasks between each milestone, subtasks, dependencies, recurring meetings, and more.
Your approved timeline and milestones will be the central resource for building a detailed project roadmap and properly delegating the teams’ individual workloads.
To establish full transparency with everyone involved, make sure you identify each major player for the creative project.
For the project manager, this clarifies each point of contact, their titles, and final sign-offs. As for the project itself, this portion of the creative brief also acts as a paper trail documenting whether certain aspects of the project have been approved and when.
Once you’ve taken the first pass at constructing your creative brief, send it back to your client and stakeholders for final approval—then it’s time to put it to use!
After the creative brief has been reviewed and accepted, no further edits should be made. But of course, all projects are different! If changes are made to the brief at any point, be sure to thoroughly document, date, and share those updates with everyone involved in a proper project meeting.

The outline and workflow we’ve covered will fit virtually any creative project. But that doesn’t mean each brief will look the same. Briefs are the starting point for every creative project—no matter how big or small. Some projects will lean heavier into certain sections of the creative brief than others. Here are a few creative brief examples to help you gauge the differences between projects.
Bonus: AI Outline Generators !
Advertising campaign briefs
Advertising and marketing campaign briefs range from somewhat simple to extremely complex, depending on the scope of work. In this creative brief example, you may want to include additional research, multiple visual references, and several draft reviews to ensure the production and delivery goes off without a hitch.
This is also a great example of the type of project that may include more than one CTA. While there will always be one primary purpose behind the campaign, it’s important for the creative team and stakeholders to align on the marketing KPIs , deliverables, and delivery process as quickly as possible.
New to writing campaign briefs? The best place to start is with a customizable template like the Campaign Brief Template by ClickUp !
Content marketing briefs
A content marketing creative brief guides the blog and SEO teams to develop articles, copy, and materials that resonate with the company, its customers, and beyond! The audience, objectives, messaging strategy, and timeline are crucial in content marketing projects , especially if you’re following a tight content calendar .
Content marketing objectives include anything from increasing brand awareness to generating potential sales leads. They are often created for the brand’s own website, social media platforms, newsletters, or content database .
The project’s success is generally determined through website traffic, engagement rates, conversions, and various social media metrics to tie back to the company’s larger goals.
Many companies use these projects to establish their thought leadership by partnering with third-party publications which requires a detailed brief to properly follow a brand-specific tone of voice and style guidelines.
Website redesign briefs
Web design workflows are no small feat and open the door to tons of unique creative elements including UX considerations, functional requirements, creative process needs, and more! Website redesign briefs still follow the same basic steps and structure but must be looked at through additional lenses:
- Are the graphics, typography, and messaging consistent with the brand?
- Can users easily navigate the website and reach the product or services with ease?
- Does the design support the functionality you need?

With so many elements to any website, there can be a lot of back and forth between the designers and the client. To avoid draining your team with constant review sessions and minor tweaks, make sure you as the creative project manager set clear boundaries on the number of edits you’ll allow on the project before the final deadline.
There’s no need to exceed two rounds.
Creative Brief Templates
Even with a clear outline and step-by-step workflow, nothing beats a pre-built and customizable template to streamline your creative brief process.
These tools were designed to include every critical element to avoid errors that may haunt you down the road. Your ideal creative brief template will seamlessly integrate with your creative project management software and be easily tailored to each project’s needs.
ClickUp leads the charge when it comes to templates for creative and design teams with its own vast Template Library . With over 1,000 templates and new ones created every week, ClickUp has you covered—no matter your use case! Here are a few of our favorite creative brief templates to jump-start your next project.

If you’re looking for a carefully curated, beginner-friendly, and collaborative creative brief template—this is it! The Creative Brief Document Template by ClickUp is the secret to aligning the marketing team, stakeholders, and clients on all creative project elements well before the project begins.
From defining your project’s purpose to outlining the budget, this template breaks down every must-have creative brief element in an easy-to-use format with pre-built tables, checklists, and prompts to guide you.
This ready-made ClickUp Doc also comes loaded with every powerful feature ClickUp is known for including:
- Threaded and assigned comments to streamline your editing process
- Slash Commands to embed tasks, third-party websites, rich styling, and media for added context throughout your template
- Nested pages to expand your creative brief into the production process and build a visual hierarchy
- Simple @mentions to call members to your Doc
- Custom sharing and permission settings to control who can edit or view your brief
And more! Access this template in all its glory at absolutely no cost

Use the Creative Brief Demand Planning Template by ClickUp on its own or pair it with the template mentioned above to set clear goals before your creative project. This template takes your traditional creative brief example a step further with features to help you act on your ideas the moment inspiration strikes you.
This intuitive List template is every creative project manager’s dream with five Custom Statuses to visually convey progress, 20 Custom Fields to filter and sort tasks in seconds, and seven custom views to manage your projects from every angle. Among these many views, you’ll find:
- A pre-built List to organize all of your creative work
- A creative brief Form to collect all necessary information from the client
- Every accepted project is arranged in a clean Table view
- A detailed project calendar to stay on top of deadlines and project Milestones
And much more. Especially if your agency juggles more than one creative project at a time—this template is for you.

We’re not saying we saved the best for last—but it’s certainly the most interactive! The Creative Brief Whiteboard Template by ClickUp bridges the gap between business and design to effectively communicate ideas and requirements from the same highly visual canvas.
Unlike your typical digital whiteboard software , ClickUp Whiteboards connect instantly to your workflow with the power to convert any text into actionable tasks. This isn’t just a pre-structured diagram .
This template stays with you long after your own creative brief is approved with workflow Automations , seven Custom Statuses, and nine Custom Fields to take the edge off of your creative process. Plus, there are four ready-to-go project views to help craft your timeline and workflows.
Take Your Creative Briefs Further in ClickUp
OK, we covered a lot of material there. Let’s regroup, shall we? By now, you’ve got:
- The must-have elements of any creative brief
- A detailed outline to craft your own
- A step-by-step workflow
- Three creative brief examples
- Multiple creative brief templates
All that’s left to do is log into ClickUp and watch your creative brief transform before your very eyes!
ClickUp is the only productivity software powerful enough to centralize all of your creative work in one collaborative platform. With over 1,000 integrations , a vast Template Library, hundreds of project management features , and flexible pricing , ClickUp is the one-stop-shop solution for teams across industries.
What’s not to love? Try ClickUp for free, today !
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A creative brief is a short document that sums up marketing, advertising, or design project mission, goals, challenges, demographics, messaging, and other key details. It's often created by a consultant or a creative project manager. The goal of a brief is to achieve stakeholder alignment on a project before it begins.
A creative brief is a document used to outline the strategy of a creative project. A creative brief contains project details including: Project purpose Objectives Requirements Messaging Demographics Deadlines
A creative brief is used to define any relevant creative requirements, including messaging, audience, and outlining how success will be measured. Once the brief is created, plan to host a kickoff meeting to discuss conflicts or restrictions. That way, you have time to revise and update your creative brief before the work begins.
A creative brief is a short, one- to two-page document that serves as the blueprint for a creative project. It documents the client’s vision and ideas for the project and provides the designer with set parameters and guidelines for the finished product.
A creative brief is a short but informative document outlining the main details of any creative project and leads the team from ideation through the final deliverables. It’s the key to creating your roadmap and solidifying must-know information like: Project requirements Brand guidelines Creative assets Purpose Audience and messaging KPIs