The creative brief template is a short document used by creative professionals to assist the teams in the development of creative material. Creative materials usually include creative deliverables of all types, creative visual design, advertising campaigns, websites, slogans, and filmmaking.
This document is usually developed by the person who is requesting the services of a creative team. So, it is consulted and approved by the team of creative professionals such as graphic designers, creative content writers, and project managers.
The creative brief is usually not such as lengthy documents. I mostly consist of a maximum of two pages. The directions are set, the audience is defined, focus on the key message, and the goals are clearly defined.
The creative brief template is a critical part of the project communication phase. It is important to understand that the creative brief must be aligned with the communication strategy of the project.
What is a creative brief?
A creative brief is a precise document created by a creative project manager that outlines the project’s goals, challenges, demographics, messaging, and other important details. Before a project gets started it is presented to the client or company stakeholders. Basically, a creative brief explains the client’s thoughts and vision for the brand or product. However, it can be difficult to put a bunch of key details into just a few pages.
What are the different types of creative briefs?
Let us discuss below the different types of creative briefs that are used across the industries;
Marketing creative briefs
As its name implies, this type of creative brief is most commonly used to bring both new and existing campaigns to market. They include broad business goals and strategies to accomplish them. Also, a marketing creative brief includes revenue goals and a budget.
Product design creative briefs
Product marketers are responsible for developing product design creative briefs. This document outlines the following details;
- For a new product or feature launch, a go-to-market strategy
- The features of the product
- The benefits of the product
- How the audience will benefit from the product
Moreover, product documentation and product descriptions are the unique features of this type of creative brief.
Advertising agency creative briefs
Advertising agency develops this type of creative brief. It is a precise document and contains the guidelines of the client’s brand and the specific project. Before the agency starts working on the project, the creative brief is created by an account manager or supervisor and then they share it with client stakeholders.
What is the Significance of the Creative Brief Template?
The creative brief document works as a medium to clarify the expectations of a project between the project team the potential stakeholders of a project. It avoids the negligence of missing important deadlines and saves a lot of time.
In projects, it enlists what are the objectives and goals of the project, and how these will be achieved?
It must enlist all the important elements of a creative campaign and the following are the reasons to create it.
- It helps to ensure that all the messages related to creative material are on-brand.
- It allows the creative team to think broadly about the product, brand, or business.
- It acts as a starting point for brainstorming.
- It clarifies the expectations, objectives, and goals.
- Works as a document to provide quick understanding to third-party contributors.
- It brings the creative team and the potential stakeholders on the same page. So, the risk of conflicts gets minimized.
What do you include in a creative brief?
You have to include the following things in a creative brief;
- A brief brand statement
- Explain the campaign’s background and objectives
- Key challenges that you have to resolve
- Target audience
- Chief competitors
- A short statement that describes your brand’s or product’s values and marketing positioning.
- Platform or communication channel where the campaign will run.
How does a creative brief work?
A creative brief is a standard document used for marketing, advertising, or design team. In the case of smaller projects, the team owns the brief to execute the information in the brief. This creative team comes within the brand department or even lives within marketing.
In the case of long-term projects that involve an agency, the creative team or the agency owns the creative brief to execute the work. This team works closely with the stakeholders on the project to understand what is required. They use their own expertise and competitive research that the internal team can’t use. Because of the nature of the projects they support, these types of creative briefs are rare.
Elements of Creative Brief Template
There are several formats of a creative brief template. It depends on the type of business or project and the details in hand. However, it is no more than 2 pages and developed in simple jargon to avoid any confusion among the readers.
There are five important aspects of a creative brief campaign. It is important to briefly understand each so a good creative brief can be created.
- Product
- Business
- Market
- Customers
- Campaign
In the product section, many questions are answered about the product’s nature, use, features, price, and advertisement.
In the business section, the relationship between the business brand and the product is explained. Although, many products don’t have any rigid relation with brand loyalty.
Therefore, the business needs to provide quality service and a good experience to the clients for each of their products. Otherwise, the customers will hesitate to buy even the best product of the business due to the bad reputation of some other product.
The market section of the creative brief template focus on competitors, the context of the campaign, and the category. Similarly, the most important asset of a brand is its customers. A deep understanding of the target market, their needs, and their tastes are very important.
Moreover, the goals, objectives, message, and audience of the campaign are described briefly in the campaign section.
How to write a brilliant creative brief?
Let us discuss in detail how to write a brilliant creative brief;
- At first, before creating your brief you should know why this project has to be done. By thinking about the benefit and audience develop the purpose of a brief.
- Secondly, identify clear and specific objectives and challenges. Here you have to include a precise paragraph on the brand challenges that you are going to solve. This step clearly explains why this project needs to happen.
- Then, you should also include the description of your target audience. For effective deliverables, you must know who the materials are. However, it is a huge part of your brief.
- Next, you should also know about what your competitors are doing. You should use competitive data to present those ideas that they haven’t tried yet and learn from their drawbacks.
- When the project is completed ensures that your audience actually sees it. Inform about those channels or platforms from where you will announce the launch on.
- You can also organize your creative brief with a template. You can download templates from the internet or you can also make them by yourself.
- Once you have organized a creative brief, distribute it with the team you are working with.
Writing an effective creative brief template:
Consider the following steps to write an effective creative brief;
Build the purpose of your brief
You must have a clear understanding of why the project is to be done before drafting your brief. Think about the audience, the action, and the benefit to develop the purpose of the brief.
Determine the objectives
Write down a clear and specific objective by specifying what the target audience should think and feel when you expose the material. You can make the objectives easily when you know this.
Provide an explanation of your target audience
A big part of your brief and your project is the audience. The creative team must understand the audience in order to create and develop effective deliverables. You must explain while giving a description of the target audience for whom the deliverable is and what the target audience cares about and what the target audience currently thinks and feels in relation to the objectives you have set.
Create a list of all the current behaviors
You must create a list of all the current behaviors and conditions in your brief. Make sure that these competitive behaviors and conditions must be identical to those which are specified in your audience analysis. When you add this list to your brief, it makes the creative team able to establish the deliverables with more thought and accuracy.
Explain the major issues
Describe the major issues that have to be addressed. Take a main improvement and its potential effect on your target audience and then think about it.
Develop the points of support
Make use of facts, testimonials, or endorsements from celebrities or essential people because any audience will require factual, realistic, and compelling support. In the form of guarantees and comparisons, you can also describe this.
Build the call to action
The call to action refers to a specific action that your target audience must take to get the benefits from the promise. It serves as a sort of suggestion to your target audience. Make the call to action realistic and 100% doable.
Keep creative considerations in mind
Analyze the situation and audience analysis that you have created in order to develop suitable materials, media, and overall tone. By keeping creative considerations in mind, give the creative team enough information.
Map out the timeline
It is essential to include a realistic timeline as the brief will act as a guide for the creative team. A sensible number of days should be explained to complete each task. It would be better to print out a separate timeline and place it in a visible location.
Create your project budget
In the end, consider the budget that you have designated for the project or the deliverables. You must include it in your brief.
What are the benefits of drafting a creative brief template?
The creative team gets encouraged by having a creative brief template. This document also provides them with relevant information regarding marketing, branding, and demographics. The creative brief is beneficial for both the customer and the creative team. Let us discuss below their benefits;
Benefits to the customer
- All the objectives and the goals of the project are made clear with the help of a creative brief.
- It allows you to deliver all facts and assumptions.
- All the stakeholders become able to give input on the project.
- It gives criteria for the evaluation.
- By having this document, the designers are held accountable for the results.
- It acts as a signal of the metrics for success.
Benefits to the creative team
- This document gives appropriate background information for the design.
- It helps you to disclose the facts, insights, and truths regarding the brand.
- It specifies buy-in by the customer.
- It assists in scoping creep from happening.
- It gives criteria for evaluation and provides an explanation for the designs.
- It reveals the customer’s preferences and values.
Faqs (Frequently Asked Questions)
Writing a creative brief is important because it provides you various benefits;
1- The first and foremost benefit of a creative brief is that it allows you to gather all project participants on the same page.
2- It provides synthesizing key information in one place. It also informs you what you don’t know.
3- A creative brief is more than just a database because it compiles several bits of information.
4- Moreover, it communicates with your overarching responsibility such as messaging.
5- It provides you inspiration and allows your project’s participants generate brainstorm ideas.
6- The creative media strategy aligns the client’s budget and expectations.
A design brief must contain an overview of the client’s business because in this way project participants are familiar with your client, their brand, and any internal factors that can affect the success of the project.
