Example of creative brief

There's an insight section, and it does real work. 'RevOps leaders don't trust their own forecast number' is a claim - not an opinion, not a tone descriptor, a specific behavioral observation about the audience. The insight is what lets the proposition land. Without the insight, the proposition ('the forecast is wrong because the tools don't agree') is just a vendor pitch. With it, it's a recognition - the audience nods because the brief named the thing they live with.

The audience description is signal-rich. It names a title (VP RevOps), a company range ($5M-50M ARR), a tool stack (Salesforce + HubSpot + Outreach), and a specific pain (cross-tool forecast reconciliation). Every detail is recoverable - you could go run a Sales Navigator search against that description and get a real list of accounts in 10 minutes.

The hook archetype is platform-native. Thought leader ads on LinkedIn have specific structural rules that don't apply to Meta or TikTok - first-person voice, two-paragraph opener, no link in the first sentence (algorithmic penalty otherwise). The brief encodes those rules in the hook section, which means the creator doesn't need to relearn them. Format-naive briefs cost a production cycle to fix.

The do-nots are surgical. Five exclusions, each targeting a specific way this brief would otherwise collapse into a generic B2B ad: no demo-book CTA in the hook (would tank thought-leader engagement), no product screenshots (would shift the ad from narrative to demo), no corporate voice, no boilerplate, no charts in the first frame. Each is a real failure mode being prevented.

First pass: read it for structure. Notice the sections - background, objective, audience, insight, proposition, hook archetype, do-nots. That's the seven-section shape that holds up across almost every campaign type. Memorize the shape.

Second pass: read it for the moves. The audience layers behavior + tools + pain. The insight is a specific behavioral claim, not a vague observation. The proposition is two sentences max with a category contrast or category truth. The hook is platform-native and bracketed. The do-nots are surgical.

Third pass: replace the substance. Re-derive each section for your own brand. The Orbital substance won't transfer to a DTC supplement campaign, a beauty launch, or a B2C app. The structural moves transfer; the words don't.

Pressure-test with the 5-minute test. Hand the filled brief to someone not on the campaign. Can they describe in one sentence what the ad should be about? Can they name 3 things the ad should NOT do? If yes, ship. If no, the brief isn't ready.

They copy the words. A brief example that you copy verbatim becomes a worse brief than no example at all, because it imports the substance of someone else's campaign into yours. The Orbital insight - that RevOps leaders don't trust the forecast number - is true for RevOps. It is not true for your audience unless your audience is RevOps leaders. Importing the insight unmodified means you'll write a campaign for the wrong people.

Copy the moves, not the words. Notice that Orbital's insight is a specific behavioral claim about a specific role. Yours should be too - but the claim, the role, and the behavior are all going to be different. Notice that Orbital's hook is platform-native (LinkedIn thought leader). Yours should be platform-native too - but the platform and its rules are going to be different.

Treat the example as calibration. Examples are how you tune the dial on 'how specific should each section be?'. The dial setting transfers. The contents do not.

For more filled-in examples across formats and industries, see creative brief examples. For the empty structure to fill in yourself, see creative brief template.