Creative Brief Template
Define requirements, goals, and resources for creative projects to promote alignment with a Creative Brief. Get everyone on the same page and produce outstanding pieces.
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About the Creative Brief template
Marketing and advertising campaigns are often massive, complex projects. There are a variety of stakeholders and moving parts, a budget that is stretched to its limit, and a complicated review process. If you succeed, you can win new customers and expand your business. If you don’t, you risk burning precious resources and undoing hard-won progress.
With so much at stake, it’s essential to get it right on the first try. That’s where the creative brief comes in, providing the relevant information for any creative project, including the target audience, goals, timeline, budget, and guidelines or specifications of the project itself.
What is a creative brief?
A creative brief is the foundation of any marketing or advertising campaign. Whenever someone requests a creative project, it’s important to include a creative brief that establishes guidelines for the project.
A creative brief helps build websites, videos, ads, banners, and much more. This document aims to anticipate any questions the creator might have about the project and confirm that everyone agrees on the scope and purpose before the creative work begins.
Most creative briefs are a maximum of two pages long. They are designed to outline the project's objective, establish direction, define the audience, and nail down the message. It states the communication strategy for the project's duration, timeline, budget, and scope.
When do you use a creative brief?
Prepare a creative brief before kicking off a project to ensure that all stakeholders are aligned and the creative team (designer, writer, videographer, etc.) has all the information they need before working. By using this Creative Brief template you can capture all the information needed for your campaign in one place. The template can easily be edited and shared with all stakeholders, keeping everyone on the same page.
Who should use a creative brief?
Design and advertisement agencies often use creative briefs to kickoff projects, but marketing departments, executives, or others professionals may use them to request creative work. Freelancers may also ask their clients to prepare a creative brief to streamline their collaboration.
What are the benefits of a creative brief?
Creative briefs clarify your goal and objectives. The brief ensures that everyone is aligned on what you are trying to accomplish. It increases efficiency and reduces the need for redundant meetings.
They also articulate facts and assumptions. It builds a foundation for your project, so your design team is on the same page as your marketing team, allowing space for all stakeholders to provide input.
They also provide metrics for success and criteria for evaluation. Your marketing and design teams can refer to the brief throughout the project lifecycle to ensure they’re on track to achieve their goals increase ownership and accountability.
The creative brief also allows the design team to uncover insights about the brand. The brief is an excellent way for the design team to be better acquainted with your company, brand voice, marketing style, and aesthetic. It creates opportunities for key conversations early in the project, saving you time and money down the line helping avoid scope creep.
And finally, it keeps all members of the team informed. The brief should lay out the budget, timeline, and preferred communication style, so everyone stays aligned.
What’s included in a creative brief?
Creative briefs may vary depending on the project, but here are a few basics that every creative brief should have: summary, content format, related projects, references, description, specs, deadline, goals, target audience, and content input.
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SCAMPER Model
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Is your team in a rut? Have you had a lingering problem that can’t seem to be solved? First introduced in 1972, SCAMPER. is a brainstorming method developed by Bob Eberle, an author of creativity books for young people. This clever, easy-to-use method helps teams overcome creative roadblocks. SCAMPER walks you through seven questions that are meant to encourage your team to approach a problem through seven unique filters. By asking your team to think through a problem using this framework, you’ll unlock fresh, innovative ways to understand the problem you’re trying to solve.
Disney Creative Strategy Template
Works best for:
Business Management, Ideation, Brainstorming
Know who knew a little something about coming up with ideas that set imaginations alight? Walt Disney. And he inspired the Disney Creative Strategy, an approach that establishes three types of thinkers—dreamers, realists, and critics—and gives each the space to do clear thinking. Your team will go through an engaging exercise of adopting the three mindsets, where they’ll focus on a specific aspect of the idea. The Disney Creative Strategy has a way of yielding brilliant ideas and great products. That’s why it’s used successfully by organizations of all kinds and sizes.
Bang for the Buck Template
Works best for:
Project Management, Strategic Planning, Prioritization
The name pretty much says it—this Agile framework is all about helping you maximize efficiency by powering collaboration between product managers and dev teams. Together you can go over each to-do on the project agenda and evaluate them in terms of costs and benefits. That way you can prioritize tasks based on how much bang for your buck they deliver. This template is great for teams and organizations that want to make a strategic plan to tackle an upcoming sprint.
Stakeholder Analysis Template
Works best for:
Design
When designing new solutions, thinking about what people need is important. Before deciding or defining the problem, ask questions like: Who is involved? What do they care about? How much power do they have? Understanding how your work affects everyone involved is crucial. Stakeholder analysis helps you plan and might change how you see the problem.
User Journey Mapping Template
Works best for:
Design
Each person's life is a unique journey filled with daily decisions and challenges. The User Journey Mapping Template is a useful tool to visually represent these individual experiences. It simplifies understanding and documenting the current state of a situation by breaking down its different parts.
Card Sorting Template
Works best for:
Desk Research, UX Design, Brainstorming
Card sorting is a brainstorming technique typically used by design teams but applicable to any brainstorm or team. The method is designed to facilitate more efficient and creative brainstorms. In a card sorting exercise, you and your team create groups out of content, objects, or ideas. You begin by labeling a deck of cards with information related to the topic of the brainstorm. Working as a group or individuals, you then sort the cards in a way that makes sense to you, then label each group with a short description. Card sorting allows you to form unexpected but meaningful connections between ideas.