Creative brief: what is and what elements it should contain

The creative brief is a key document for copywriting advertising projects, web marketing, and social media marketing. What kind of information should it contain? A short guide to writing a good and successful creative brief

Joy and torment of every copywriter and a key element of every marketing, web marketing, copywriting, and design project (but you can also extend it to other activities in the field of marketing, especially in social media), the brief is a document that contains all the information and the main elements of a creative campaign.
Generally, it is presented to agencies (advertising, digital, and/or communication) by the customer and helps to get an overview of what you would like to create, the goals to be achieved and other useful information for the campaign such as the possible target audience, detailed description of the product and the kind of market in which compete.

Instead, we refer to a creative brief as the document that is presented to the creative team (or to the freelance) by an account manager (or a figure who acts as a liaison between the client and the agency), containing all the detailed information to start working on the concept to be presented to the customer (those “spectacular” presentations Mad Men style, where the agency showed the proposal made by the creatives and the client tried to understand where his advertising investment money was going). It’s here that you define the copy strategy, the set of communication strategies for the launch or rebranding of a product: whether it’s an advertising campaign, for a claim, or the production of content that will end up on social media or your website.

Despite the brief being a “conventional” document (but not the only one and without an unambiguous model) used in practice between communication agencies and customers, its drafting and use may also be useful for those dealing with content creation, personal branding, and social media marketing. In these cases the brief plays the good function of the compass, able to direct the various stages of the creative process, reminding us of the essential points and the objectives set.

The more detailed a brief is and contains precise information, the easier it will be to catch what are the creative “limits” of the creative campaign. However, a brief with too much information and constraints may not be ideal: the less is more adage is ok, but we don’t do too much less and too much more. Even in this case, the saying “reality lies somewhere in the middle” works. So, a good creative brief should contain the essential information to make a good copy and design a campaign, providing the best guidelines to express the best in the creative phase. So, what is the essential information that a good creative brief must contain? Let’s see them in the following lines.

#1 THE OVERVIEW
The overview presents the scenario (market, socio-cultural, demographic, economic and/or political, and so on) in which the campaign will enter. It generally explains the “reason why” for the campaign. Knowing the environment in which the campaign has been placed is essential to understand some trends that could be intercepted or even anticipated, as well as the ability to discover insights related to the target audience.

#2 THE GOALS
Goals are linked to the overview. The campaign goals must be concrete and achievable. For this reason, the advice is to set 1–2 targets. In case of difficulties you can rely on marketing suggestions, using the SMART model: in this pattern, the objectives must be Specific (clear, well-defined), Measurable (using valid indicators), Actionables (actionable with direct and concrete actions), Reachable (based on available resources) and Timeable (with clear deadlines and schedules).

#3 THE KEY MESSAGE (the unique selling proposition)
Here is the most creative and productive part. In this section, we have the key message of the campaign, to bring out the distinctive feature that differentiates the product from that of other competitors, what in the world of marketing is called the unique selling proposition (USP). The key message must communicate effectively and originally the distinctive features of the brand and/or product.

#4 TARGET AUDIENCE
The choice of the right target is the key point of every good campaign: advertising and social. The choice of the target audience is preparatory to the creation of buyer personas (which will not necessarily end in the creative brief) and to the segmentation of the public in the case of micro-targeting.

#5 FINAL RESULTS (deliverables)
This is the most creative section of a creative brief. Here include all the creative elements of the campaign such as:

• activation of the campaign: the post/copy with which you launch the campaign
• campaign claim: the main message that will be used in the campaign
• tagline: a short slogan that identifies the brand, generally placed under the logo (in many cases this part will not be necessary since many companies already have a tagline). Warning: do not confuse the tagline with the campaign claim!
• call to action: the CTA that will be used in the campaign, which invites users to perform a certain action (such as clicking on the e-commerce link, for example)
• hashtags: a list of hashtags that will be used in the campaign. In this case, we recommend an original hashtag that includes elements of the claim, the tagline, and the CTA Launch posts: a list of posts (ideally 3 available) to use for the launch of the campaign

#6: CREATIVE CONSIDERATIONS
This section is useful to understand the activities carried out and elaborating on further considerations of the campaign. Creative considerations try to analyze how the work fits into other campaigns, observing similar campaigns carried out by competitors in the past or looking at how some themes and products are creatively transformed by others.

#7: KNOW-FEEL-DO
Know-feel-do is a model that can be useful for developing your communication strategy. This section is divided into the three mini-objectives that you want to achieve:

• know: what do you want the audience knows after seeing the campaign (is it a cheap? or smart product? is it easy to use?)
• feel: what emotions do you want to push in your audience
• do: what do you want them to do (the conversion that is not necessarily a purchase, maybe just the subscription to the newsletter, the request for a quote, or the compilation of a form)

In conclusion, these are the seven main pieces of information that should always be present in a creative brief. Since there is no single model and you are working with different clients and agencies, you may be faced with a different creative brief setting that includes more information in one paragraph (for example, overview and goal could be merged by choosing to describe the overall scenario with the goals of the campaign, as well as deliverables and creative considerations, leaving a unique space in the most creative section). No problem. The important thing is to have all the information you need to start your work!

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