For marketers and small business owners, transforming ideas into actionable strategies can be challenging. This is where a well-crafted creative brief becomes essential. It acts as a roadmap for creative projects, guiding your team, unifying your vision, and setting clear expectations for clients.

This article will delve into what a creative brief should encompass and how to create one that effectively conveys your desired outcome!

Table of contents

• What is a creative brief?
• When do you need a creative brief?
• Why you should use a creative brief?
• How to write a creative brief
• Creative brief examples
• Free creative brief template

What is a creative brief?

A creative brief is a document that outlines the essential elements and goals of a marketing project or campaign. It serves as a central hub for communicating all the necessary information within 1-2 pages. A creative brief usually takes the form of a document, like a Google Doc or a PDF file. However, it can also be a sheet or table within a project management tool.

Example of a creative brief in Asana. Remember that your brief is not a place for drafts or sketching ad graphics. It should not be a collaborative, working document because its purpose is to record the crucial details that all project stakeholders have agreed upon. Need some inspiration for your upcoming campaigns and projects? We’ve got over 130 ideas for you! Get the guide » 130+ of the Best Online Marketing Tips for Generating More Traffic, Leads, & Sales

When do you need a creative brief?

A creative brief is necessary for any marketing project that involves developing creative elements and requires coordination between multiple stakeholders. If you’re a one-person marketing team and your boss trusts you to handle social media content independently, you might not need a creative brief for your holiday content. However, if you’re working with an agency to create and manage a holiday social campaign, a creative brief becomes essential for alignment.

This creative brief example is for an SEO blog post. Here are some common marketing initiatives that might require a creative brief:

• Graphic design: Logos, brochures, business cards, brand materials
• Ad campaigns: Concepts, copy, graphics, media selection
• Website and UX design: Full site redesigns, individual page designs, event and product interface designs
• Content creation: Blogs, articles, social media posts, and social media series
• Videography: Video content, animations, motion graphics, event videography
• Photography: Headshots, brand images, product photos, event photography
• Product packaging: Labels, boxes, containers, shipping materials This list is not exhaustive. If you need to align multiple people on a project, a creative brief is a good practice—and here’s why.

Why use a creative brief?

Using a creative brief helps align all stakeholders on a marketing project or campaign. A well-defined brief that includes all the essential elements—background information, creative direction, and follow-through plans—will help prevent redoing designs or scrapping content. Ultimately, this saves time and money. It’s not surprising that Monday.com found that 93% of marketers utilize some form of creative brief to capture and communicate project information. Despite the widespread use of creative briefs, a significant number of marketers are not satisfied with their effectiveness. In fact, 67% reported finding their briefs completely or partially ineffective.

If you’re investing time in creating a document like this for your projects, it needs to be effective. Here’s how to write a successful creative brief that leads to better project outcomes with less stress.

How to write a creative brief

Follow this step-by-step guide to create a comprehensive creative brief.

1. Start with a project overview

Begin your creative brief with a concise overview of the project, outlining what you aim to achieve, its purpose, and the process for completion and finalization. Clearly defining these aspects helps prevent scope creep, which is the gradual expansion of a project’s original deliverables or requirements. If you’ve ever freelanced, you’re likely familiar with this phenomenon. It occurs when a client adds tasks, requests features, or increases expectations after the project has commenced, often leading to uncompensated work. Scope creep isn’t just detrimental to contractors. Expanding a project’s scope often extends completion time and necessitates additional communication for review and approval. Providing a clear and concise project overview helps avoid scope creep and delays, keeping your project on track and within budget. Free guide » 25 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website

2. Define the project objectives

Just like any other marketing activity, creative campaigns need clearly defined objectives. Consider this creative brief example from PayPal:

Source This brief effectively states the objective: to clarify misunderstandings about PayPal’s offerings and provide clarity. Ideally, the specific misconceptions would be listed here. However, this example still showcases a well-defined campaign objective. What do you aim to achieve with this creative project? Ensure this is communicated clearly to everyone involved.

3. Share your brand’s key messaging and facts

Include your primary message or messages that you want to convey through this marketing material. For example, if you’re working with a freelancer to write copy for Google Ads promoting your latest product, clearly state your product’s value proposition, tagline, and positioning statement. Share your essential messaging points in the brief. While crucial for copy-heavy creative work, this information is valuable for visual elements too. Understanding how to resonate with your target audience is always beneficial. Additionally, include factual information that can guide the project. This could be data, brand details, or audience insights. Want to make your marketing messages more engaging and persuasive? Get the guide » 130+ of the Best Words & Phrases for Marketing with Emotion

4. Describe your target audience

Understanding your target audience is paramount to developing compelling creative assets. Therefore, include relevant details about them, going beyond basic demographics like age, gender, and occupation. Provide insights into their connection with your company. Why do they engage with your brand?

When your creative partner understands your customers’ pain points and motivations, they can tailor the designs, content, or media to be more personalized—and personalized marketing is effective.

5. Summarize your brand guidelines

Whether working with someone outside your organization or simply outside your marketing team, providing clear brand guidelines is crucial. The relevant brand information will vary depending on the project. For graphics, it includes your color palette, themes, logos, and design rules. For content, it includes your brand voice, tone standards, or content style guide. Masooma Memon, a freelance content marketer and author of the excellent Content Workshop newsletter, suggests keeping this section concise. Instead of overwhelming them with a lengthy document, provide a link to a one-pager highlighting the most important dos and don’ts. Most people won’t thoroughly read a comprehensive document for a single project, but they are more likely to review a concise one-pager to ensure they are aligned with your brand.

6. Point out your competitors

While in-depth competitor analysis is unnecessary, including key competitor information is valuable. For instance, if you manage marketing for a doggy daycare and have one primary competitor in town, ensure your new brand visuals—colors, style, and overall creative feel—are distinct from theirs.

Having logos this similar to a competitor because they weren’t included in the brief would be problematic.

7. Include any references for inspiration

While your creative brief should primarily focus on your business and products, including examples of inspiring creative work from other companies (not competitors) can be beneficial. The best examples come from businesses outside your competitive landscape. While you never want to directly copy, drawing inspiration from successful campaigns can spark creativity. Consider this creative from dog food company Stella & Chewy’s campaign. This photo could inspire visuals for dog leashes, pet-friendly hotels, or even hiking shoes.

8. Spell out the timeline and deliverables

Your creative brief differs from a contract, which should outline payment terms, timelines, rights, non-disclosure agreements, and more. However, your creative brief should include an overview of the specific deliverables you expect. For instance, if you need a new logo, specify the required file types (e.g., .svgs, .pngs) and versions (e.g., black and white, color, reversed, favicon). While these variations might not require entirely new designs, they necessitate additional work, so your designer needs to be aware.

Source Clarify the delivery method as well. For large projects like videography, you may need to provide a hard drive or agree on a digital file transfer method beforehand. Include a section in your brief summarizing the deadlines, deliverables, and delivery method to ensure clarity and prevent misunderstandings.

9. State your distribution plan

Context is essential. Whether you have someone writing a blog post or designing graphics for a campaign, the creator benefits from understanding where their work fits into your overall marketing strategy.

Social media assets are a prime example. While graphics and copy can be repurposed across platforms, tailoring them to each platform’s unique characteristics is essential. Facebook thrives on group interactions and personal updates, Twitter prioritizes concise messaging, Instagram values polished visuals, and LinkedIn welcomes long-form content. Knowing the intended social media platform might not change the project’s scope, but it helps your designer understand the type of content competing for user attention, which informs their creative decisions.

Creative brief examples

Need some inspiration before crafting your own brief? Let’s look at a few examples:

Colgate creative brief

This creative brief from Colgate exemplifies simplicity and effectiveness.

They clearly present the essential information required to start the project, maintaining brand consistency with simple yet recognizable Colgate-red icons.

Nike creative brief

Known for its exceptional branding, Nike unsurprisingly delivers an excellent creative brief.

They clearly outline the facts, objectives, problems, big picture, and target audience, providing comprehensive guidance for the project.

LocaliQ creative brief

This example showcases a creative brief used by the LocaliQ team for internal projects.

It encompasses all the necessary information for creating final deliverables, including presentations, guides, ads, and more.

Creative brief template

Use this straightforward creative brief template to get started. Make a copy and begin crafting!

Make a copy

Make your creative briefs count

While this may seem like a lot of information, each step should be covered concisely, ideally within a paragraph. Your creative brief should be a compact document, containing all the essential information about a marketing project within a few pages.

Remember these nine simple steps:

1. Provide a project overview
2. Define project objectives
3. Share your brand’s key messages and facts
4. Describe your target market
5. Summarize your brand guidelines
6. Point out your competitors
7. Include references for inspiration
8. Clearly define the timeline and deliverables
9. Outline your distribution plan

By following these steps, you can minimize back-and-forth communication, reduce the need for revisions, and dedicate more time to leveraging your exceptional creative work effectively.