Creative Brief: [Project Name]

The purpose of writing a Creative Brief is to clarify your thinking upfront and to force you to make
decisions at the beginning of the marketing project so that the marketing or advertising agency can start
working on it with a complete picture of what you want. This process allows the design and production
process to happen efficiently and therefore less expensively. People who don’t take the time to write a
creative brief frequently end up making many changes to the requirements of the project during the
project and this causes rework and ultimately leads to missed deadlines, higher costs and frustrated
designers and agencies. A Creative Brief should be so complete that if you handed it over to the agency
and disappeared for the duration of the project, the end result should be pretty close to what you
wanted.

Project Project name

Client Client company name
Date March 26, 2021
Contact Contact name at the client
email
phone

Project Description
Briefly describe the project in one or two sentences.

Background
Briefly describe any background to this project that would be helpful to the agency. Why are you doing
this project? Is it part of or connected to anything else? i.e this is a new product launch for our company
but there are 2 competitors in market; or we have had this product for years and have just decided to
invest in marketing it better. What’s going on in the market? Mention important trends. What are
competitors doing?

Deliverables
What are the end deliverables? What will the agency actually provide you? i.e a printed brochure, a
functioning website, a radio ad, a poster, 500 CD’s with cover artwork etc.

Requirements
List the requirements of the end deliverables. What are the key specs and requirements. i.e. quantity,
sizes, weights, technical specs, commercial length, video formats, audio formats, other file formats etc.

Mandatory Elements
List the mandatory elements. Be careful here not to put too many items as you will tie the hands of your
agency as far as the concepts or designs go. Ideally, you want to give them freedom to be as creative as
possible. Potential mandatory items might include: a logo, a tagline, a website URL. By putting items on
this list you are saying “Don’t show us any creative that does not have these things on it.”

Advertising Communication Strategy

It is important to include this section below because good agencies need this information in order to
produce creative material that is “on strategy” for your brand. If you don’t give them a Communication
Creative Brief for: [Project]

Strategy then you are expecting them to create one for you out of thin air and that’s not their job. Their
job is to take your Communication Strategy and bring it to life creatively in the elements you have asked
for. The inputs to the development of the Communication Strategy are generally research data and
analysis using established marketing frameworks. However, in a small organization it is often just
knowledge you have about your organization and stakeholders that you can’t expect the agency to know,
combined with some analysis (careful thought) of the options and a sense of where you want to go in the
future.
WHO do you want to reach?

Term Definition Example

Strategic This is the subset of the total population that you Women, 18-49 years old
Target want to target. The “strategic” adjective implies
that you have made a definite choice, based on
good data, regarding who is most likely to
respond to your offering.

Prime This is the subset of your Strategic Target from Women who go to a fitness
Prospects whom you expect to get the greatest response in club or class at least 2X per
the immediate short term. They should also be week
people who are relatively easy to target in clusters
of some kind.

WHAT will you say to them?

Term Definition Example

Benefit or This carefully chosen sentence or phrase must ThermaSilk helps you get the
Unique Selling define what compelling benefit you will offer to look you want and the
Proposition your user or consumer. It must be focused on protection your hair needs.
them and what they will gain, not a descriptor of
positive attributes of your product or service
(which are features). It must be short and to the
point.

Reason To This carefully chosen sentence or phrase must Thermasilk contains patented
Believe (RTB) define why your consumer or user should believe silk protein formulas which
that you can deliver your benefit. It is often a protect your hair against the
backup of your claim and states credentials or damage that blow dryers,
deeper explanation to make your benefit promise curling or flat irons can bring
more compelling and believable. RTBs can be and work with heat to give you
rational or emotional. intense conditioning.

Brand If your brand were a person what key words Beautiful, flirty and
Character about their character would you want to aspirational.
emphasize? (Eg. Fun or serious? Inspiring or
chummy?)

Features These are positive attributes of your product or Comes in 200ml, 750ml and 1L
service that ultimately create or deliver the benefit sizes.
described above. Comes in 4 versions: Normal, Dry,

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Creative Brief for: [Project]

Oily, Permed/Color Treated.

Widely available at retailers across
Canada.

HOW will you communicate it?

Term Definition Example

Other Media If you know what media you plan to use for other Direct mail to 200,000 homes
Plans elements in the campaign then outline as much as in Nov 09
you can here. It will help your agency develop a Follow-up calls in Dec 09
more holistic execution for you (one that ties in Web viral campaign in Dec 09
with the rest of your plan and therefore has a
more powerful marketing effect.)

You should not expect the agency to use your exact language from the Benefit or RTB statements in their
executions. It is their job to be creative and to come up with language, headlines etc that communicate
the meaning of the Benefit and RTB even if it’s in different words. When you see their creative concepts
you should compare them back to this Creative Brief and ask, does their creative version communicate
the message you asked for, even if in different words? If yes, then their creative is said to be “on
strategy”, which it needs to be. If no, then their creative is “off strategy” and needs to be revised.

Insights into Target

This should ideally be based on research or focus groups, but if you know your stakeholders/end-users
well you can write it yourself (Eg. They are skeptical of ______________, they resonate with
_______________, they are concerned about ___________, they are looking for ____________).

Design Strategy
If you have an existing Design Strategy or Design Theme that must be followed, you should clarify that
here. You would likely only have this if you have asked an agency to develop one for you. The Design
Strategy is sometime referred to as Brand Guidelines or a Mood Board. It specifies which fonts, colors
and design theme have been chosen for this brand. A Design Theme is a metaphor that defines the
aesthetic direction of the Brand. It is an inspirational, not a literal execution. For example, the design
theme of ING Direct is “orange citrus fresh”. The design theme of FIDO is “as trustworthy and unique as
your dog”. The design theme of the Gillette Venus shaving line is “sea glass.” When a brand does not
have or consistently use a Design Strategy or Theme then over time the advertising produced for the
brand will look like it was made by very different agencies with different styles and it may not even look
like it was all from the same brand. This tends to weaken the brand in the marketplace.

Priority of Communication
When a person looks at a piece of advertising, their eye often goes to certain elements first which cause
them to draw conclusions about whether or not the item is relevant. It also impacts how long they
continue reading before they move on. In this list you specify the order of priority for the headlines or
visuals as a guide to help the designer.

Desired Response
What do you want the viewer of this ad to do? Just know about you? Call and sign up? Refer a friend?
Feel something? Have you enabled that response to the best of your ability (by setting up a 1-800 # or a
website with a tell a friend engine?)

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Creative Brief for: [Project]

Photography/Video
Will you be supplying existing photography and video for which you have the rights?
Will any new photography or video be required?
Do you expect the agency to source stock images or video?

Talent Objectives
If applicable, what guidelines can you give the agency on the kind of talent (models/actors) you want in
any photos or video elements? Do you want only certain ages, races or styles of people? Are you looking
to show diversity and of what: age, race, style? If yes, then communicate it here.

Budget
What is the budget for this project? Are there any Fiscal Year end deadlines that have to be factored in?

Deadlines
Clarify any deadlines that must be met including intermediate steps like legal or regulatory approval and
language translation. This is a good place to outline the key dates in the Artwork Process like Creative
Brief approved, Initial Concept Presented, Final Concept Approved, Wording Approved, Final Design &
Artwork Approved, Final Artwork produced, Final Artwork arrives at destination.