Creative Brief Components + Best Practices for Writing Briefs

You know it’s important to develop strong branded assets for your business—from advertising campaigns to social media posts, website copy, out-of-home advertising, and beyond. But how do you ensure the collateral you’re working so hard to create actually helps you grow? How do you speak to your target audience in a way that resonates and drives sales, onboards, sign-ups, or whatever success metric matters most to your business?

Crafting a strong creative brief is a critical first step that helps you and your team focus on exactly what you’re trying to achieve with your campaign. Below, learn exactly how to create an effective creative brief, along with tips and pitfalls to avoid so you, your team, and your partners are all on the same page and set up for success.

What is a creative brief?

A creative brief is a sharp, focused document that outlines the objectives, success metrics, key messages, and other business-specific mandates that ensure all key stakeholders are aligned toward a common goal when kicking off the development of creative work.

John Cascarano is a lawyer-turned-serial-entrepreneur who has successfully launched and scaled multiple successful businesses; his current brand, Beast, is a personal care brand focused on vegan and cruelty-free products. In an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast, John credits the methodical art of the creative brief for helping him and his team stay focused on delivering products that his customers really want (rather than spending precious time and resources creating aimlessly).

“I heard a great quote when we went to do a commercial: ’Give me the freedom of a well-defined creative brief.’ I thought that was a great phrase,” he says. “It’s liberating to know we are creating around this. Here’s the box we’re playing in.”

Though it may initially seem counterintuitive, clear guardrails can actually boost the creative process and lead to more imaginative and exciting campaign ideas.

When do you use a creative brief?

Use a creative brief whenever you need to create branded assets for your company and the project involves multiple teams, teammates, or stakeholders. Even if you have an internal creative team responsible for developing and executing the work under your vision (versus an outside agency or vendor), a well-crafted brief ensures the end product gets delivered on time and aligns with your goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). The accountability of a brief, which requires all key stakeholders to fulfill their roles and meet key deadlines, can also save time and potentially let you cut back on team project status meetings—a win for everyone’s calendars.

Even if you have an existing piece of creative that simply needs an update (such as a social campaign or presentation template), a creative brief is still important. It lets you distill exactly what changes or updates are needed, the purpose of the update, and how you’ll define success once the new version is finalized and the refreshed work is live.

Who is responsible for crafting the creative brief?

The person closest to the project —whether it’s the business owner or marketing leader—should develop an in-house creative brief. This owner then shares and reviews the brief with their creative director, who briefs the rest of the internal team. When a business hires an external agency, the agency’s strategist typically writes the creative brief.

The components of a creative brief

• Project overview
• Goals and objectives
• Target audience
• Design requirements
• Key project stakeholders
• Budget and schedule
• Company profile
• Additional information (optional)

Use these key sections as a guide to drafting your own creative briefs:

Project overview

A creative brief typically opens with an opportunity to answer: What’s the final deliverable of this project, and what problem does it solve for your audience? The overview is also an opportunity to share any context or background information related to your business that the team reviewing the brief needs to know to create strong, relevant work.

Goals and objectives

This is where you use hard numbers or plain, jargony-free language to communicate exactly what you’re trying to achieve with this creative project, along with the due date for final work. Never brief a creative team without a crystal-clear success metric here—explain and agree upon during a briefing session. It’s helpful to start by asking yourself: What’s the opportunity or business problem you need this work to solve?

Target audience

Finding your target audience means asking and answering:

• Who are you talking to? 
• Which of your audiences is this work for? 
• What are their defining demographic and psychographic characteristics?

The more specific you get here, the better. A focused audience for the team to rally around and create for will make the work feel more personal.

Design requirements

Depending on the assets you’re looking to create, are there any design specifications (formats, mediums, technical specs, brand guidelines, or otherwise) required to successfully complete this project? This is your chance to outline, in detail, all requirements that the creative team must follow, along with any reference materials specific to your brand to help the team deliver the work exactly as you need it.

Key project stakeholders

This section lists each project stakeholder (including their name, email, and phone number or other relevant contact info), along with their specific role and project-related responsibility. Though it may seem obvious, confusion over individual roles or responsibilities can waste time or even derail a project entirely. Make this clear and indisputable from the start.

Budget and schedule

This element of the brief, typically formatted in a simple chart or spreadsheet, clearly outlines each project deliverable, its deadline, hours required, and the associated budget for each. A project may involve a list of individual creative assets or multiple rounds of work on one larger deliverable. In the latter case, breaking a project down by individual milestone (e.g., Version 1 of the work) lets you back into a realistic final deadline, total hours (or scope of work) required, and final cost. This helps ensure every project stakeholder works against the same schedule, preventing scope creep or excess costs.

Some agencies or freelance creative teams will work on an hourly basis, as in the example below, and others will work on retainer (this is especially common for teams working on multiple projects). Others will provide an overall scope of work or budget for the project as a flat rate or project fee, rather than breaking the budget down by hour. You can craft your budget, schedule, and milestone needs to suit your agreed-upon workflow.

Company profile

Here, you’ll set your creative team up for success by outlining everything they need to know about your company to create work that feels authentic, ownable, and unique to your brand. This way, you’ll avoid generic work that could easily come from another brand, company, or competitor. Share your brand mission, vision, values, differentiators, and unique selling proposition (USP). Include any direct or indirect competitors that your stakeholder team should be aware of when developing these assets.

Even if you’re partnering with a creative team that knows your company well, write this section for someone entirely new to your business (who has never even heard of it before). This prepares you for turnover on the team or new creatives added to your project (both extremely common scenarios, even mid-project). This way, new teammates and long-timers alike have all essential information to create strong work without needing prior context or experience.

Additional information (optional)

Though most essential information will likely be covered above, this final section lets you share anything else relevant to the project. What else would make your creative team’s job—and your team’s life—easier? This could be anything from relevant company research, data, past work, or reference materials not covered above.

Are there different types of creative briefs?

Depending on the work you’re looking to create, some projects may call for more specialized briefs with additional sections that outline specific needs of the content type. If you’re shooting a brand video, for example, you’ll need a more elaborate video shoot creative brief that includes a creative treatment, scripting, a shot list, props, equipment, production schedule, and workback schedule.

If you’re kicking off a product photoshoot, your brief will begin with a creative treatment that highlights product images, concepts, placement, lighting needs, and props. A free creative brief template can help you remember every detail to include.

Best practices for writing a creative brief

• Be clear and concise
• Keep it focused on the goals
• Prioritize the right performance metrics

Here are some best practices to keep in mind when polishing your creative brief:

Be clear and concise

Vague or meandering briefs frustrate creative teams and force them to guess what you want. A tight brief, on the other hand, provides exactly the guardrails and constraints the team needs to let their creativity flow and produce focused, inspired work that supports your goals. This can take time to master—be patient with yourself. One to two pages is a good target for most creative briefs.

Keep it focused on the goals

Use your brief to provide the creative team with the “what,” such as your project’s objectives, audience, key messages, creative mandatories, etc. Then let them take care of the “how.” Avoid adding your own creative ideas and solutions in the brief, since this is what creatives do best (micromanaging or over-guiding might hinder brilliant ideas).

Prioritize the right performance metrics

When it comes to measuring success, clearly outline a single metric by which the project or campaign will be judged (avoid trying to tackle multiple KPIs), share how you’ll measure it, and make sure you discuss and agree upon this during the briefing meeting.