Creative Briefs for Design Projects

The creative brief is the most underrated document in our business. And most of them are terrible. I've seen thousands of briefs over 30 years. Award-winning briefs and briefs that should never have left the building. Here's what separates them: 01 - A bad brief tells the creative team what to make. A great brief tells them what problem to solve and trusts them to find the answer. 02 - A bad brief has six objectives. A great brief has one. If everything is important, nothing is. 03 - A bad brief describes the audience as a demographic. A great brief describes them as a human being in a specific moment, feeling a specific thing. 04 - A bad brief is written by committee. A great brief is owned by one person willing to defend every word in it. 05 - A bad brief asks for something safe. A great brief gives the creative team permission to surprise you. The best creative work I've ever seen didn't start in a studio. It started in a room where someone wrote a brief that was brave enough to demand something extraordinary. You can't get great creative output from a mediocre brief. It's not possible. What's the worst brief you've ever been given or written? #Advertising #CreativeStrategy #BriefWriting #Design #BrandBuilding #CreativeLeadership The One Club for Creativity

Briefs should be… well… brief. I wrote my fair share of really shitty briefs. I still remember the first one. I think it was like 20 pages long. And I got home really proud thinking that my brief was able to answer any question the agency may have had. Well, little I knew that most likely no one ever read that brief 😂 The quote from Mark Twain was repeated multiple times to me by my former boss, mentor and friend Steve Miles. And it’s so so so true. It’s really hard to write a concise, to the point and insightful brief. To do that you need to know what is the one most important thing to communicate. And leave out the temptation of adding a laundry list of things. And believe me: It is indeed very tempting to ask for more and more and more. The issue is that the more you put in, the less consumers will take out (and I will illustrate that with data in a future post). And if the creative team cannot put their finger on the one thing that they need to communicate (and understand the insight/ tension behind it), chances are you will get average creative. The best work I had the chance to be part of had a very simple, unforgettable, one line sort of brief. “Let’s make women feel more beautiful” triggered Dove Real Beauty Sketches. “Our food is not crap” triggered Moldy Whopper. “Play with fire” was the brief behind Burning Stores. That’s the thing. I still remember all of them. And so does the creative team. My first ever 20 page brief? Can’t remember what was in there. #Advertising #Creativity #Marketing

The Real Reason Most Campaigns Fail? The BRIEF. 👉 Let’s stop pretending it’s always the agency’s fault. → It’s not always the creative. → It’s not the media plan. → It’s not the pitch team. 👉 Most campaigns fail because they were set up to fail. And that failure starts with a BAD BRIEF. 👉 What does a bad brief look like? → It’s vague. → It’s written by committee. → It has no business outcome attached. → It’s filled with jargon, but no clarity. → It’s written to tick a box, not solve a problem. 👉 I’ve received briefs that were: → A three-line email → A rushed conference call → A 42-page RFP with zero actual direction → A three-minute thought during a presentation → A “template” copied and pasted across departments 👉 And every time, the question is the same: “Come back with something great.” 👉 Here’s the uncomfortable truth: If the problem isn’t clearly defined, no one can solve it. → Not even the best strategist. → Not even the best creative director. → Not even the best media team. But how do you solve a problem that’s never been clearly defined? Who’s responsible? Both sides. 🟦 Brands need to stop outsourcing confusion. → If you’re not aligned internally, don’t expect clarity externally. → Define the outcome. → Sharpen the ask. → Then brief. 🟧 Agencies need to stop playing along. → Challenge the brief, and ask questions. → If it’s broken, don’t build on it. → Fix it first. 👉 Why does this matter? Because unclear briefs don’t just waste time. The result? → Great agencies are stuck answering the wrong question → Misguided pitches → Frustrated clients → Underperforming work 👉 So what’s the fix? Simple, but not easy. → Better briefs lead to better ideas. → Better ideas lead to better results. → And that starts with the courage to slow down and get clear. 👉 So here’s what I do: ✅ Ask for a formal written brief ✅ Request a meeting to walk through it ✅ Interrogate the assumptions ✅ Clarify the objective ✅ Ask: “Is this the right question or just the one that made it onto paper?” 👉 The truth? Most campaigns don’t fail at the end. They fail at the very beginning. A bad brief.

What I learnt the hard way about writing influencer briefs 👀 No one else cared about them as much as I did. Harsh? Maybe. True? Definitely. Here’s the problem: Brands who send creators (and their agents) never-ending-slide-decks stuffed with brand vision, campaign context, KPIs, tone of voice, and more. It feels thorough, but in reality, the core message often gets buried under text bulk and over-explaining. I’ve been guilty of this myself. Hours spent perfecting every word choice, adding layers of context that felt essential, but overwhelming (and sometimes confusing), for the person on the other end. Even today, I still see briefs like the one in my slideshow circulating (😭). They’re heavy, uninspiring, and often suppress creativity instead of sparking it. Psychology backs this up: 💡 Information overload makes it harder to prioritise what’s important. 💡 Paradox of choice shows us that more options often make decisions harder, not easier. Creators are operating in fast-paced environments, competing for attention. Recruiters are pitching roles in 2-minute Loom videos. If you’re asking for creativity, you need to meet them in the same spirit. Guide on best practices and strategic frameworks, but ensure the core of your brand shines through in a simple, clear-cut way. My recommendation for briefs that actually work: 📲 A short TikTok esque video: deliverables, vibe, do’s/don’ts. 📄 A one-pager/Notion: clear, to the point, starting with overview, deliverables, non-negotiables. 📷 A moodboard: bring the creative direction to life visually 🤝🏼 Make it collaborative: share a Pinterest board, jump on a 15-minute vibe check call. Pressure-test: if your core message and brand can’t fit in 5 slides, it’s probably too much. For complex industries like health or fintech, extra detail is valid, but that makes it even more important to cut jargon and put clear do’s and don’ts front and center. Every brand’s process will differ, but it’s worth asking: is your brief actually doing its job? A brief is the first touchpoint with a creator. It’s your chance to inspire, not bore. 👀 If you’ve ever sent an influencer brief or received one yourself - what are your thoughts on this?

Briefs die in the gap between what clients think they're saying and what they're actually asking for. After two decades of translating client anxiety into creative work, I've learned the real job is asking simple questions. Here are 5 of them that get you usable answers from non-designers: 1. **"What's the actual problem here? Sales? Brand perception? Follow-through?"** → Name it. Don't solve the wrong problem beautifully. 2. **"What are the mandatories and no-go zones?"** → Budget, formats, deadlines, legal lines, brand guardrails. Most clients are crystal clear on what they must do and what they don't want. 3. **"What's an example of creative you admire and why?"** → Forces them to point at real work, not abstract concepts, and gives you a territory to circle. 4. **"Where will your audience see this?"** → Describe the person, the moment, the channel. Context changes everything. 5. **"What's the one action you want them to take?"** → Everything else is secondary. This helps you (and them) prioritize. BONUS FOLLOW-UP: What else should I know? Seriously, always ask this. The takeaway? Bad briefs aren't your clients' fault. They're not designers. But you are. Your job isn't to complain about the brief—it's to ask questions that turn their anxiety into your clarity. What question unlocks clarity for you? Follow for more practical creative insights. --AMc

Great creative teams produce mediocre work all the time. Not because they lack talent. Because the brief didn't give them what they actually needed. The missing piece is almost always the same: nobody told them how the brand wants the customer to feel. Not what you want them to do. Not what you want them to know. The feeling. Excited. Calm. Understood. Relieved. Seen. The Brief Diagnostic: 5 Questions That Predict Whether Your Creative Will Land Save this before your next campaign brief goes out. 1. Does the brief name the specific feeling the brand wants to evoke? Not "professional" or "trustworthy." Those are brand values, not emotional targets. Feeling words are: excited, calm, understood, proud, relieved. These tell a creative director what the art direction needs to evoke before they open a file. 2. Does it include at least 3 examples of creative the brand actually likes? Descriptions of what you want are almost always interpreted differently by the person receiving them. Actual examples create shared understanding that no amount of written direction can fully replicate. 3. Is the funnel stage explicitly stated? A piece of creative designed for a cold audience looks completely different from one designed for a warm audience who has visited your site three times. The brief should name the stage. 4. Is there a single objective, not three? The worst briefs ask creative to build awareness AND drive conversion AND introduce a new SKU. Good creative solves one problem very well. 5. Is the founder or executive the final approver without having stated what "right" looks like? Founder approval without a defined benchmark produces the most expensive revision cycles in the business. If a founder needs final sign-off, they need to supply the examples in question two. If your creative keeps "not feeling right" after multiple rounds, one of these five things is almost always the root cause.

Stop being frustrated by bad briefs and start getting curious about them. Trust me, every bad brief is a clue. About how an organisation thinks. What it hasn't decided yet. Where the real conversation hasn't happened Or the guy is real lazy :) In an enterprise space with multiple stakeholders and global teams involved, writing a proper creative brief is genuinely hard. It forces clarity about things you haven't fully decided yet. That kind of thinking is uncomfortable. So it gets skipped, and you won't even realise how deep that mistake runs. Here are 10 kinds of bad creative briefs I've received. 1. The One-Liner "Redesign our corporate website. Make it modern." The rest gets excavated across weeks of calls. By the time you have enough to start, the deadline hasn't moved. 2. The Mood Board Make it green. Big boxes. Something like this image from Google. They've decided what they want. They just haven't figured out what they're trying to say. 3. The Blank Canvas. Big Creative Freedom. "We trust you completely. Surprise us." When the surprise arrives, it turns out they had very specific expectations they forgot to mention. 4. The Casual Call Good energy. Lots of nodding. "Looks good" reply in four minutes. Weeks pass. Then the polite U-turn. When something is never written down or approved with real intention — it was never really agreed upon. 5. The Urgency Bomb No context. No background. Just panic dressed up as priority. The brief doesn't exist but the timeline is extremely real. 6. The Homework Dump "Go through the docs I shared." It's a 100-slide decks, 15 ebooks, 10 whitepaper, and all the website links. Come back with a full creative strategy & execution plan. In a presentation. For my boss. By Thursday. 7. The Telephone Brief The decision-maker never joins the calls. When the work is rejected, the person in the room says "let me check with the team." 8. The Evolving Brief Starts as a simple logo update. Becomes a brand. Becomes a website UIs. Becomes a campaign creative templates. Updating visual language. Few more rounds later, you'l realise that it is a full brand transformation. 9. The Competitor Brief One screenshot. "Make it like this but ours." No explanation of what they like, whether it fits, or whether the competitor is even doing well. 10. The Vibe Brief Premium but approachable. Bold but minimal. Serious but fun. Every adjective cancels the one before it. You're being handed a list of contradictions and asked to resolve them through design. In the last 25+ years, I've sat across much more than above 10 :) Now, I rarely depend on a single perfect brief. I'd rather take the project discovery progressive and far more engaging. It is a bit of every briefing approach and a lot of well drafted questions. You spend time on the brief. You save time on everything else. Period.

It is time to redefine how we approach creative briefs, and here are my three key insights about writing better ones: 1. Creative briefs shouldn't be about filling out template boxes. I've seen too many briefs where people mechanically complete sections without thinking strategically. The result? Uninspired work that lacks direction. Instead, we need to answer fundamental strategic questions that drive creative excellence. 2. The most effective briefs I've encountered start with "What's the real problem we're solving?" Not the surface-level issue, but the core challenge. Breakthrough campaigns came from briefs that identify an unexpected problem definition. When we dig deeper into the actual problem, we unlock better creative solutions. 3. Briefs focusing on human truth outperform those fixated on product features. Yet I still see countless briefs listing features and USPs without connecting to human behavior or emotion. We need to stop writing briefs like product manuals and start writing them like strategic narratives that inspire great creative work. I'm calling on all strategists and creative directors to rethink how we approach creative briefs. Let's move beyond the template mentality. Ask the tough questions. Challenge assumptions. Push for clarity. Your creatives will thank you, and more importantly, your work will be better for it.

When I was COO at an 8-figure agency, I tracked every revision for 90 days. The creative team caused about 20% of them. The briefs caused the rest. Agency owners almost always misdiagnose revision problems. They assume the creative team needs more training, or the clients are too picky. But when you actually trace revisions back to their source, the brief is the bottleneck almost every time. I worked with a creative agency last month where this was playing out in real time. Revision rates were high across the board. The founder was ready to hire stronger designers. We pulled their last 10 revision rounds and traced each one back. Incomplete briefs. A QA step getting skipped under time pressure. Designers making ad-hoc changes without telling anyone upstream. One designer adjusted copy spacing on their own, never communicated it, and it triggered two revision rounds and a client escalation call. The snowball effect was brutal. Unclear brief leads to a wrong first draft, which leads to skipped QA, which leads to client-facing errors, which leads to side conversations eating 25-50% of production time. We built a two-part brief structure. Part 1 covers everything about the client that stays consistent, filled out once during onboarding and rarely updated. Brand identity, audience, guardrails, production specs. Part 2 captures everything specific to the deliverable, filled out every single time. Strategy, creative direction, learnings from past work, copy guidance. The standard is simple. Every person in the process should be able to complete their task from the brief alone, without messaging a teammate or the client. Agencies under-invest in briefs because spending 20 minutes upfront feels slow. But recovering 25-50% of your production time is like getting half a team member back without hiring anyone.

90% of creative briefs I audit wouldn't pass our quality check. I'm talking briefs that say "strong hook" instead of writing the actual hook concept. Briefs with no awareness stage. Briefs where nobody checked if the ad's promise even matches the landing page. The industry is obsessed with trends, cool automation, hooks, but nobody talks about the brief. The actual document that determines whether creative works or fails before a single frame gets shot. Here's what I keep seeing across DTC brands: → Hook section just says "attention-grabbing hook" with zero specifics. Your editor isn't a mind reader. → No awareness stage identified. A cold audience ad and a retargeting ad need completely different briefs. Most briefs don't distinguish. → No congruency check. The ad promises one thing, the landing page delivers something else. Nobody caught it because nobody checked. → AI tells everywhere. Briefs are showing up with "In today's fast-paced world..." and "Are you tired of..." openers. That's not a brief, that's ChatGPT on autopilot. A bad brief doesn't just slow things down. It burns 2-3 revision cycles, pushes timelines, puts the production at risk for a reshoot, and the final creative still underperforms because the foundation was wrong. Before the strategist can send the brief to a client or a team member, they need to complete this checklist. We built a 36-point checklist to make sure that never happens. Link to grab it in the comments.