The Founders Guide To Briefing Creatives

Startup founders (and even some marketers) tell me that they struggle to work with creatives –  they seem to view creatives as “other” and at best ignored because creatives are either intimidating or naive. But when a design, media, or communications project comes up, these normally effective managers find that they don’t know where to begin and how to manage the project.

There might be some some real differences in worldviews between creatives and everyone else in your organization but the differences are smaller than you might think. You may speak a different professional lingo, hold different priorities but you can find a way forward if you take time to align on the goals and essential project information. Let me introduce you to the path forward, your new best friend – the creative brief.

The Creative Brief

The creative brief is an alignment document that gives your creative(s) all the context they need to start their work. It ensures that the project manager sets clear goals and understands their responsibilities to the project. A good brief also ensures that everyone is clear on final deliverables. You might use briefs to launch and manage internal creative teams or to hire an external team.

Typically a brief is a one or two page document containing some variation of the following kinds of information:

• Project Name
• Project Goal
• Project Description - what you hope to achieve, why and why now
• Supporting Contextual Info - ex. the company’s brand story, look & feel and target audience
• Key Stakeholders & Roles - who is does what, who has input and who makes the final decision
• Budget - If appropriate, this might be a request for a budget proposal or guidelines on what costs will be covered
• Deliverables - including specific media formats, sizes and other specs
• Timeline - final delivery date & any other milestones
• Additional Resources - ex. links to brand guidelines; research; inspiration examples; or project assets like logos, photos or text

A good creative brief poses a challenge to the creative(s) and provides resources to help them solve that challenge for you.

A good creative brief poses a challenge to the creative(s) and provides resources to help them solve that challenge for you. The challenge can be narrow, such as create an infographic with the provided text and images, or broad, like develop a communication strategy to launch a new product. Usually the creative team takes the brief and comes back with a proposal of how they will solve the challenge and a process they will use to get there. If you are using the brief to hire freelancers or an agency then the brief will be used to understand the scope of the project and to set their fee.

I have posted an example of a creative brief to my website at uprightbrand.me if you would like a template.

Best Practices

It is a good idea to share the brief with your creative team ahead of time so they can review and develop any questions. Then gather the creative(s) and all the key stakeholders for a project kickoff meeting to discuss and refine the brief. In that meeting, changes can be negotiated. If you don’t work with creatives often you might not know exactly what to ask for and the kickoff meeting is a chance to clarify your vision. A good creative should be able to facilitate clarifying your vision and the brief. The brief is a starting point of a creative project but also might serve as the central project reference document lacking other proposals or agreements.

Confirming the timing and deliverables in a kickoff meeting is key from a project management point of view but it is also important that you take this time to develop a shared understanding of the conceptual and aesthetic goals with the creative team. There are also a number of small technical details that might need to be confirmed at the start like the specific size of an image you want to create so it will work for a print catalog.

The ideal brief is just enough to bring clarity, inspiration, and alignment to the project without creating a burdensome layer of paperwork.

My final encouragement is to keep your creative briefs as simple as possible. The ideal brief is just enough to bring clarity, inspiration, and alignment to the project without creating a burdensome layer of paperwork. In the end, a great brief is simply a starting point. When you look back at the brief with your creative team at the final review hopefully the project is on time, on budget, and yet has creatively surpassed your initial vision.

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Erik Fabian is a brand marketer and founder of Upright Brand. He helps founders launch and build new brands at every stage of growth. He has worked with creatives for nearly 20 years. Some would even call him creative.