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Want to kick off a creative project but don't know where to start?
A creative brief will guide you in completing your deliverables and aligning actions with your project’s purposes.
So, creative briefs are valuable for marketers, copywriters, and creatives involved in the company’s marketing initiatives.
In this concise guide, you’ll learn:
- What a creative brief is
- Benefits of creative briefs
- Actionable tips to write a creative brief
And the best thing?
You’ll get a templated content brief to download and use to record your creative tasks.
Without further ado, let’s get into it!
What is a Creative Brief?
A creative brief is a documented guide that outlines all the information needed by a marketing team to complete a creative project.
The goal of a creative brief is to communicate the client's requirements successfully and coordinate the team members involved.
Based on briefs, the stakeholders create their marketing plans to meet the initial goals.
Creative briefs usually contain the following information:
- Brand details
- Product/service information
- Campaign information
- Creative specifications
The design briefs are about the initial stages of collaboration between brands and advertising agencies or creators, often during a kickoff meeting.
While creative briefs sound like they’re simple to put together, they can be quite challenging as the key stakeholders need to be precise with the details.
Through these documents, creatives and marketing teams plan the tasks required to complete a project.
This is why you can think of creative briefs as project management tools.
When all the necessary details are provided, both sides benefit since they don’t have to waste time on communications or making multiple edits.
Furthermore, creative briefs inform collaborators about:
- Investment (budget allocation)
- Due dates
- Deliverables
So, creative briefs are essential documents as they detail the most important parameters of the project, materializing the investment, and building a connection between clients and creative teams.
In short, any company interested in creating a marketing initiative or a creative campaign needs to provide a detailed plan to the project’s participants.
As you can see, briefs are vital documents for marketing. But why?
Why are these documents beneficial for both parties?
Stay with us till the following section.
Why is a Creative Brief Important?
A creative brief outlines a marketing campaign’s objectives, goals, and expectations.
It serves as a guide for everyone involved in the process, from the brand to the content creators.
While a creative brief can be used in various forms of marketing, it’s particularly important in influencer marketing.
Here are some reasons why a creative brief is important for brands and content creators.
It reduces back-and-forth communication
One of the primary benefits of a creative brief is that it reduces the need for back-and-forth communication between the brand and the influencer.
The brief outlines everything the influencer needs to know, including the campaign's goals, target audience, messaging, and content style.
With a clear understanding of what is expected of them, the influencer can create content that aligns with the brand's values, eliminating the need for multiple rounds of revisions.
This saves both the brand and the influencer time and effort and leads to smoother and more efficient collaboration.
It makes campaigns more efficient
Through a creative brief and a streamlined process, the content creators know exactly what to create, and the brands know what to expect.
This process makes the project’s workflow, from its start to completion, seamless and more efficient.
The briefs ensure all parties are on the same page, leading to a more focused campaign.
As a result, the created content is more likely to align with the niche audience.
It boosts collaboration
Running marketing campaigns requires collaborations with content creators or influencers.
A creative brief helps to establish a shared understanding of the campaign's goals and expectations, which leads to more productive and effective collaboration.
The influencer can use the brief to create content that meets the brand's requirements while infusing it with their unique style and voice.
At the same time, the brand can provide additional details about the content, which the influencers can use to refine and improve their work.
This collaboration helps to build a stronger relationship between the brand and the influencer.
It establishes a common goal
A creative brief sets out the campaign's objectives and goals, which helps to establish a clear roadmap between the brand and the influencer.
This makes the campaign more effective and increases the chance of success.
It also ensures that the influencers build a more authentic and compelling campaign.
In short, the value of creative briefs is undeniable for both sides, so the main question here is—how to write a creative brief from scratch?
We’ll dive into it right now.
How to Write a Creative Brief Step-by-Step
Ready for the nitty-gritty of this guide?
In this section, you’ll learn how to write an effective creative brief to ensure successful collaboration for your marketing campaigns.
A creative brief is a vital tool that helps businesses and content creators achieve their goals.
Although writing a creative brief may seem daunting, it can be broken down into five simple steps.
Step #1: Include brand details
First, a creative brief needs to include brand details and creative assets.
This section includes information regarding:
- Brand name
- Website URL
- Brand identity and branding assets
- Brand proposition
- Target audience, demographics, and personas
This information communicates the company’s industry, niche audience, and new products or services to potential partners.
Understanding the brand's identity, such as fonts, color palette, and brand voice, is essential for creating content that aligns with the brand's vision.
Step #2: Set objectives and deadlines
Setting clear objectives is a top priority for marketing strategies.
Highlighting the project goals will help partners to understand the expected outcomes of their creative work and measure the success of the creative campaigns on social media.
Try to set SMART goals for your campaigns.
What we mean is that your objectives should be:
- Specific: Set specific goals for the campaign and communicate them in detail to the contributors. The goals may be conversions, engagement rates, sign-ups, and more.
- Measurable: Choose specific metrics to measure the progress of the campaign and evaluate the results with the creators.
- Achievable: Highlight the easy wins to create a campaign that actually achieves small targets along the way.
- Relevant: Ensure the content is relevant to the target audience and brand values.
- Time-bound: Define the due dates of the produced content to sync it with your campaign’s schedule.
All these details create a clear roadmap that helps both parties define the success of the content marketing campaign.
Step #3: Explain the product
One more requirement is to explain the product's features, benefits, and unique selling points (USPs) to collaborators.
Understanding the product helps the influencers to produce content that showcases the product's unique attributes and the ways in which it solves the audience's pain points.
Step #4: Outline your campaign
Now we’ll jump into the core of the creative briefs, the campaign information.
This part refers to the campaign's theme, messaging, and tone. It also includes the channels where the content will be published and any specific requirements for each channel.
It outlines the budget and the types of payments for partners, such as payments per content piece through PayPal.
This section also defines the profile of the ideal creator. Basically, it includes the requirements to find the best matching partners, including:
- Creator’s location
- Industry or niche
- Gender
- Followers
And other metrics that may be important for this specific campaign.
Step #5: Add creative requirements
The final step is to add any creative requirements.
This includes any specific instructions for the content creator and refers to the content description and key messages.
The goal is for the user-generated content (UGC) to relate to the brand's proposition.
It may also include any legal requirements or graphics that should be featured, including:
- Disclaimer
- Logo
- Text overlays
- Captions
- References
And this part of creative briefs needs to describe in more detail the dos and don’ts of production, such as filming an overhead scene showcasing the product or not using any filters.
Adding creative requirements helps ensure the content meets the brand's expectations and requirements.
Or, instead of going through this process, you could take a shortcut and use a creative brief template.
Download our Free Creative Brief Template
Ready to accomplish even more through creative briefs?
A creative brief template will be a lifesaver for marketing teams or content creators. As we’ve seen, creating a brief from scratch isn’t an easy process.
But no need to worry at all, we’ve got your back!
We’ve created a creative brief template that’ll save your creative team time and effort. It’ll also increase their understanding of the project’s special requirements.
Feel free to download the creative brief template we’ve made just for you!
In our template, we’ve added the necessary fields to make the process seamless and ensure you don’t forget any questions.
Remember to configure this template based on your team’s needs and align it with your creative processes.
As we’ve covered all these, the time has come to wrap things up!
Now Over to You
That was it!
Writing a creative brief needs to be a helpful guide for every marketer.
As it may be challenging to write creative briefs for marketing initiatives, you can download the template we’ve created for you.
And if you’re looking to create marketing campaigns, book a demo with Insense, and we’ll help you manage the creative process.
