Before you start
- A campaign you're actually about to run (not a hypothetical)
- A blank doc - any tool you already use, no fancy template required
- 30 minutes, ideally not split across multiple sittings
- One friend or coworker willing to read it for 5 minutes when you're done
The playbook
8 steps
Open a doc and write what the campaign is for in one sentence
Plain language. 'We're trying to get 150 people to sign up for hydration packs by July 14.' That's it. No fluff like 'strategically position' or 'leverage synergies'. If your friend wouldn't write it that way in a Slack message, don't write it that way in the brief.
Expected outcome
One plain-language sentence stating what the campaign is supposed to achieve.
Describe who you're trying to reach - like you'd describe them to a friend
Not 'our target demographic'. Just 'people who train a lot and hate how generic electrolytes taste'. The plain-language version is almost always more specific than the corporate version. If you find yourself reaching for marketing jargon, that's a sign you don't actually know who you're targeting yet.
TipTest: read your audience line out loud. If it sounds like a person you'd recognize, it's good. If it sounds like a slide deck, rewrite it.Expected outcome
Audience described in 1-2 plain-language sentences that sound like a human wrote them.
Write the one thing you want the ad to say
One thing. Not 7 product benefits. Not a value-prop matrix. ONE thing. 'It tastes good, so you finish the bottle.' If your ad could only communicate one idea, what would it be? The discipline of picking one is the entire job here.
Expected outcome
One sentence stating the single idea the ad needs to communicate.
Name the kind of ad you want
Pick from the obvious shapes: someone talking to the camera, a problem-then-solution sequence, a customer review, a side-by-side comparison, a quick demo, a day-in-the-life. Naming the shape (instead of describing it) makes the brief 10x easier to execute against. 'Customer review' is way more useful than 'authentic testimonial-style content with social proof'.
# Just write it like this: Ad type: customer review Real person, talks to camera, holds the product, says what they used to use and why this is better.Expected outcome
Ad type named in 1-2 words; one sentence describing how it applies.
Drop 3-5 examples of ads you wish were yours
Open Meta Ad Library, TikTok Creative Center, or your competitor's Instagram - find 3-5 ads that look like the vibe you're going for. Paste the links. Don't explain them; the links explain themselves. References do 80% of the work that 'creative direction' paragraphs try and fail to do.
Expected outcome
3-5 URLs pasted in the doc.
Write 3 things you DON'T want
This is the section that separates okay briefs from good ones. Three things you'd be embarrassed to ship. 'No price discount in the hook. No founder talking to camera. No close-up of the bottle as the opener.' Specific things. Not vibes. The do-nots are where you stop the executor from defaulting to generic.
Expected outcome
3 specific things you don't want the ad to do.
List what you need delivered, with formats and dates
Plain list. '6 square images for Meta by July 10. 3 vertical videos for TikTok by July 12.' This is the boring section and the most likely to get ignored, but the executor needs it. Format, quantity, deadline. Skip it and you'll get the wrong specs back.
Expected outcome
Clean deliverables list with format, quantity, and dates.
Send it to one friend for a sanity check, then send it to the executor
Find one person not involved in the campaign. Ask them two questions: 'what's the ad about?' and 'what should it NOT do?' If they answer both in under a minute, ship the brief. If they hesitate or describe the brand instead of the ad, you know which section to fix. Fix that one section, send again to a different person, then ship.
Expected outcome
Brief sanity-checked by an outside reader; queued for execution.
Shuttergen
Skip the doc. Get a brief in 60 seconds.
Shuttergen makes the brief from your brand and your competitive set in seconds. No template, no jargon, no process - just the brief, ready to send.
Pitfalls
What goes wrong
Using marketing jargon to sound more professional
Jargon hides vagueness. 'Strategically position the brand to resonate with high-intent prospects' means nothing. 'Talk to people who train 5+ hours a week' means something. Plain language is the higher standard, not the lower one.
Trying to cover every possible audience and use case
A brief that tries to reach everyone reaches no one. Pick one audience, one angle, one ad type. The brief that commits is the brief that produces work people actually notice.
Spending more time formatting the doc than writing it
Nobody cares if the brief is in Notion vs Docs vs a plain text file. Stop tweaking the template. Write the content. Send the doc.
Skipping the do-nots because they feel negative
Do-nots feel awkward to write but they're the highest-leverage section. They define the negative space that distinctive work lives in. Push past the discomfort and write 3 of them.
Sending the brief without the sanity check
The 5-minute sanity check is free and catches 80% of brief problems. Skipping it because you're in a hurry means the executor catches the problems instead - 3 days into the work, when fixing them is expensive.
Limits
When this playbook won't work
- You're doing a single one-off post (just write the post)
- The campaign strategy isn't actually decided yet (decide it; THEN make the brief)
- You're iterating on a clear winner (reuse the prior brief)
- You're shipping in 24 hours (write 3 lines: goal, audience, do-not)
Why the simple brief is usually better than the fancy one
Most teams over-engineer their briefs. They add background sections, market context, stakeholder approvals, success metrics dashboards. None of this helps the person making the ad. The executor needs to know: what's the goal, who's the audience, what's the angle, what shouldn't I do. Everything else is overhead.
Fancy briefs signal effort, not quality. A 5-page brief looks rigorous. It's usually just hedging across multiple unmade decisions. A 1-page brief that commits to one audience and one angle outperforms the 5-pager almost every time, because the executor inherits a clear constraint instead of a fuzzy mandate.
Plain language is a forcing function on clarity. Marketing jargon lets you sound rigorous while saying nothing. Plain language exposes when you don't actually know what you mean. Forcing yourself to write the brief in the voice you'd use in a Slack message is the cheapest way to surface vagueness.
Skip the doc. Get a brief in 60 seconds. Shuttergen makes the brief from your brand and your competitive set in seconds. No template, no jargon, no process - just the brief, ready to send.
How to make briefs faster over time
The first brief you make this way will feel weirdly short. That's the point. You're not making the brief shorter; you're cutting the parts that weren't helping. After 3-4 briefs, the new length feels normal and the old length feels bloated.
Save a copy of the briefs that produced great ads. They become templates - not in the 'fill in the blank' sense, but in the 'this is the shape of a good brief in our company' sense. The shape gets reused; the content gets rewritten per campaign.
Update the brief after the campaign runs. What worked? What didn't? Add the lessons to the next brief. Three or four campaigns later, the brief is way better than your first attempt because it's accumulated specific knowledge about what works for YOUR brand and YOUR audience.
Internal: creative brief, simple creative brief, creative brief template, how to create a creative brief.
FAQ
Frequently asked
How simple can a creative brief actually be?
Do I need a special template to make a creative brief?
What if my company already has a long brief template?
Can I make a creative brief without being a marketer?
How long should it take to make a brief?
What's the most important thing to get right?
Should I include budget in the brief?
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Skip the doc. Get a brief in 60 seconds.
Shuttergen makes the brief from your brand and your competitive set in seconds. No template, no jargon, no process - just the brief, ready to send.