Work Sample | A good brief template

Google doc template >

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This is the best brief template I've created. It's based on a brief for The Guardian that Dave Dye wrote about in his blog, Stuff From the Loft.

Scanned document titled "Guardian - Creative Brief" from 1986. The brief outlines background on increased newspaper competition, notes The Guardian's "bullishness" and desire for a new advertising campaign that retains core values while moving forward. Objectives focus on selling the paper's differences rather than appealing to a readers' club mentality. Key differentiators listed: independent ownership enabling fair and unbiased reporting, emphasis on understanding facts rather than just presenting them, and intelligent good writing. The campaign message: "The Guardian makes you make up your own mind."

Page 2 of the Guardian Creative Brief. Specifies campaign areas should reflect the paper's breadth from politics to art, business to sport, humorous to serious. Tone: intelligent, witty, open to everyone who wants to understand and think more—not solely middle-class or academic. Target market: Guardian readers, occasional readers, and similar demographics; young, educated, opinionated, interested in current events. Style notes two approaches: fast-moving with many cheap ads reflecting the topical nature of newspapers, or gritty black-and-white TV advertising that feels like a newspaper. Requirement: TV campaign to present week commencing January 27, 1986.

Each section in The Guardian's brief provides business context, clear reasons why this ad should exist, and tight copy that serves as an example to emulate in the final product. Here's one line as an example:

"Only by understanding how something is can you decide how to judge/evaluate it."

This line tells me how The Guardian thinks and what they want to communicate. It explains what they're selling (understanding) and hints at their audience (people who think deeply). Even the sentence structure provides copy direction.

The issue for modern B2B SaaS marketers is making an ad that sells a vague concept like "understanding" won't really fly in today's feed-dominated world. It'd take too long to establish the concept, barring top-notch creative execution, which requires an all-too-often near nonexistent budget.

So, I emulated The Guardian brief's clarity, brevity, and structure, and added:

a one-sentence summary
a list of deliverables
a timeline and next steps
a focus on ONE specific message directly tied to ONE product feature

I oversaw three projects at Submittable that used this brief template as their seed. Two are here in this portfolio: How Workplace Giving Should Work Videos. For these ads, the one message was "Employees can give how they want" thanks to the Impact Card feature (see Impact Card Product Page).

These ads landed well internally. So, marketing leadership said, "Great, we'll have another. This time, do it for a different audience and product."

We saw that project through, but filling out the brief revealed deeper issues that a 30-second ad couldn't solve. Ultimately, from my vantage, the core questions the brief forced us to confront became one of the catalysts for important internal alignment conversations.

That's what a good brief does: it gets to the guts of the issue.

Check out the brief templates above and make them your own. I've added commentary and examples from the original The Guardian brief. You might find these briefs spare, but I think that's good.

Start with what you want to say, who you want to say it to, and why it's worth being said. Then go from there.

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