The Ultimate guide to crafting a Creative Brief Template

What is a creative brief ?

A creative brief is a document that captures the main ideas of a marketing campaign. It’s very useful as it outlines essential details like the goals, launch dates, budgets, target audiences, and other key messages. Creative briefs help different stakeholders understand the message you want to share, and also provide information on responsibilities for instance.

In short, the idea behind a clear brief is to summarize a creative project in one or two pages. This document is essential at the start of a project to make sure everything runs smoothly and effectively.

Why is a creative brief essential for the success of your project ?

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It presents your project in a concise way

As I said, a creative brief presents the key points of your project, in 1 or 2 pages. It’s a very good way to present your project to key stakeholders to ensure they understand the project's objectives and importance. It serves as a crucial tool for gaining their approval, getting feedback, and aligning everyone involved on the project's direction

It clarifies roles and responsibilities 

A creative brief mentions people involved in the project and their responsibilities. That’s why it’s essential to introduce a project. It ensures all team members understand their tasks and expectations from the start !

It defines a clear plan for the project

A creative brief includes a plan of the project, with a detailed (as much as possible) roadmap. It’s very useful to have a clear idea of the project timeline, the different steps needed etc… It will also be a precious help to stay on track during the project and avoid unnecessary work throughout the project.

You may know what are the key sections to include in a creative brief. Even if you don’t know you should now have an idea as I already mentioned the roles and responsibilities section and the timeline section. But let’s enumerate all the sections needed in a creative brief.

What to include in a creative brief ?

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Name of the project and quick description

This is quite logical, the first words on your creative brief must be the project’s name ! But this step shouldn’t be taken lightly as it will be the readers' first impression ! It's important to select a name that grabs interest and makes people curious about the project ! Here, I can’t really give advice but try to be creative and find a name that will make the readers want to know more about the project !

A quick description of the project should also be included. Try to summarize your project in one sentence here !

Eg: A comprehensive digital marketing strategy to boost online visibility and drive customer engagement across multiple platforms

Project’s objective

This section is important but not mandatory. I mean, you could have included the project’s objective in the quick description of the project I mentioned above. But if you haven’t, then you HAVE to mention it in a dedicated section.

In this section, you should write 1 or 2 sentences explaining the motivation behind the project, and the problem it addresses. This is crucial to highlight the value of your project.

Target audience

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A creative brief is related to a marketing project. And to prepare a good marketing project, you must know what is the target audience to target. Is it destined to young people ? To current customers ? New potential customers ? This is the kind of question you want to answer in this section. Try to be as specific as possible and include information about gender, age, location …

Also, don’t forget one team you will present the creative brief to is the creative team. And this section will help them understand what is the best content to create to ensurethe project's message reaches and engages the right people.

Key message

Even though a creative brief should not give too much detail about your project, you should still mention the key message of the campaign. Just like the target audience section, it will help the creative team understand what is expected in terms of tone and global communication.

Deliverables expected

This is another section destined mainly to the creative team. Here you should list the deliverables you expect to build the marketing project. These could include a range of items such as social media posts, blog articles, video content, infographics, email campaigns, and more. 

The deliverables you choose must be adapted to the target audience. For instance, if you target young people, you might want to focus your efforts on social media posts.

Distribution strategy

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The distribution strategy for each deliverable is a critical component of your creative brief. This section should outline how and where the project's content will be shared, such as through social media platforms, email newsletters, websites, or other channels. A clear distribution plan ensures that the content reaches the intended audience effectively, maximizing the impact and success of the project.

Roles and responsibilities

This is a section I mentioned previously so you should know approximately what to include. List all the people and groups involved, including their titles and responsibilities in the project. This ensures everyone knows who's responsible, especially as different teams might have to collaborate. 

This section also helps clarify the chain of command and define who needs to approve each step of the process.

Budget

This is another key section, as there is no project without a budget ! Here you should put figures on your project. For every team and/or every step of the project, you should allocate a budget so the different teams involved know the financial limits they’ll have to deal with.

The budget section is also very important to get the first approval from the stakeholders in charge. A project too expensive relative to its value might not be approved easily…

Timeline

The timeline is also a key indicator for the stakeholders. Here, you explain how long the different steps of the project should take, but also give the overall articulation of the project (step by step). This timeline should also include dates set for milestones at every phase of the project.

This section will basically be the plan for the whole project so it must be thoroughly thought about, and I strongly recommend communicating with the teams in charge before doing anything. You don’t want to set unrealistic timelines that could lead to delays or missed deadlines.

The ULTIMATE Creative Brief template

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Maybe the previous section helped you improve your creative brief template. Or maybe you don’t even have one yet. In this case, download this template, fill it with the information relative to your project, and you’re done !

Discover Claap and make efficient and innovative creative briefs !

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What is Claap?

Claap is an audio and video transcription tool. And it also records your meetings ! The concept of taking notes becomes a thing of the past as Claap does it for you ! Claap even summarizes your meetings in key takeaways. Now you should be wondering what this has to do with a creative brief. Let me explain.

Discover claaps!

The features of Claap are not limited to what I just mentioned. Claap is also an asynchronous meeting tool which allows you to record claaps: 2 to 5 minute videos where you can show or explain anything efficiently. For that, Claap has a screen recording feature, so you can present anything on your computer, and you can do it while showing your face, just like in a regular meeting !