28 Free Creative Brief Templates – How to Write (Examples)

When executing a creative project such as an ad campaign, whether an in-house or external project with partners or clients, getting everyone involved on the same page is imperative. This increases the chances of success and reduces the number of hindrances and frustration associated with a project due to misaligned or unclear intentions. A creative brief can also be used as a roadmap. It is one of the different tools to outline what the team intends to achieve and how they intend it.

At its core, it is a planning and communication tool; it lays out the project’s implementation and communicates to the team members what needs to be done to achieve predetermined objectives (client’s vision and mission).

Templates

Ordinarily, creating a solid creative brief will take a significant amount, more so for large projects. Using templates like the ones provided here can help in shortening this duration. The templates are predesigned, reusable, and fillable forms that you can fill out to write a comprehensive brief. Since different projects will have different requirements, the templates are customizable every time you want to write a new brief.

Free Downloadable Basic Creative Brief Template 01 for Word Document

Free Downloadable Basic Creative Brief Template 02 for Word Document

Free Downloadable Basic Creative Brief Template 03 for Word Document

Free Downloadable Basic Creative Brief Template 04 for Word Document

Free Downloadable Basic Creative Brief Template 05 for Word Document

Free Printable Design Creative Brief Template for Word Document

Free Downloadable Basic Creative Brief Template 06 for Word Document

Free Downloadable Basic Creative Brief Template 07 for Word Document

Free Downloadable Basic Creative Brief Template 08 for Word Document

Free Downloadable Basic Creative Brief Template 09 for Word Document

Free Downloadable Basic Creative Brief Template 10 for Word Document

Free Printable Content Creative Brief Template for Word Document

Free Printable Video Creative Brief Template for Word Document

Free Downloadable Basic Creative Brief Template 11 for Word Document

    What is a Creative Brief?

    This is a planning document outlining a creative project’s overall implementation strategy, objectives, and components. The essential features are the project name, objectives, stakeholders, target audience, key message or the big idea, due date, competition, and distribution/campaign delivery.

    When and Why Use it?

    These briefs are highly flexible and can be used in multiple projects to create harmony among the project team and meet client expectations. This article will discuss areas of application and reasons.

    When

    These are ordinary in advertising, marketing, and design. As a result, they are often prepared through close consultations among members involved in each creative project. Therefore, you should consider integrating a brief in the following situations:

    Non-standard, non-iterative, highly conceptual work

    These are essential, multifaceted, and highly conceptualized when working on projects outside standard business operations. This is because they eliminate the ambiguity of the project by outlining a rational plan of execution, thus providing the team with a roadmap that shows what is expected of them. The brief of such a project has to be detailed and may take longer to prepare to get everyone involved on the same page.

    Execution of previous work across deliverables

    Briefs are also used when doing projects for clients you have previously worked with. They are less detailed than for novel clients since the deliverables, vision, and mission are often already defined. While you may already know the client’s expectations, it is always good to have a guide for your work to refer to as the project is carried out.

    Edits, revisions

    They can be used for template work. This is work or projects that use standard procedures and practices but can be edited and revised to suit clients’ expectations. Such briefs are the least detailed and are often a formality and simple guide describing the critical aspects of the project for the team to refer to.

    Why

    There are many reasons why it is necessary for creative projects. Primarily, it acts as a blueprint for the entire project. Therefore, it helps everyone involved in the project have an idea of the project scope, goals, target audience, client expectations, tone, and attitude to reach the target audience and evaluate the competition targeting the same audience. In some cases, a brief is considered a standard agency practice as it communicates your understanding of the project.

    Other reasons include:

    You need a plan

    Having a plan is a huge determinant of success in any project. Going further and documenting the plan makes things easier, especially when managing the project. This means everyone involved in the project or joining at a later stage can get an overall but in-depth idea of what the project entails, from purpose, and objectives to expectations and deliverables, in one or two pages.

    Saves your time

    As a management tool, a brief can guide the schedule of project meetings, thus ensuring meetings are conducted efficiently without back-and-forth discussions, thus reducing the time spent on making decisions. They also reduce misunderstandings among team members by stating the direction the project should take, especially regarding the tone and attitude of the vital message.

    Maintains accountability and communication

    By outlining the project scope and deliverables, it can determine if the client is getting value for their investment. Therefore, it promotes accountability within the creative team. By promoting accountability, a brief helps build trust among stakeholders from the onset of the project. 

    To process requests and approval faster

    A creative brief is used as a communication tool, thus facilitating administrative decisions such as approvals; for example, the brief can determine if an idea positively impacts the project’s objectives, thus speeding up the approval of suggestions and proposals. In addition, by clarifying the expected results, it speeds up the final project review and approval process. This further reduces the wastage of resources on objectives that vary from the client’s expectations.

    To produce products of higher quality

    It lets the creative team clarify what the project is expected to accomplish. It allows them to be objective with their ideas, resulting in high-quality end products. Also, a brief ensure resources (money and time) are appropriately allocated to areas that greatly influence the quality of the product.

    Who is in Charge of Writing it?

    Commonly, a project team member is appointed to craft a creative brief. Consequently, the person designated to write the document will vary from one situation to the next. For example, a project manager will typically be the most appropriate person to write it for in-house projects.

    Whereas, for agencies dealing with external clients, the facilitator between the agency and the client will ordinarily be responsible for drafting the creative brief. The person appointed to write the creative brief then collaborates with other involved parties to develop a comprehensive one. 

    How to Write it?

    It should be written concisely and explicitly so that anyone who reads the document, be it a designer, marketer, or client, can understand the general concept of the project. Below is a guide on creating a solid creative guide for any project:

    Step 1: Company’s background information

    A description of the company should be provided, giving context to what the company does, vision and mission, and core values. The background information should align with the project and not a company’s general history. You can discuss the need for the project and the challenges that necessitated the project’s initiation.

    Step 2: Your project name

    The brief should then indicate the name of the specific project. More often than not, the creative team will be handling more than one project. It is, therefore, important to give the project a unique name that distinguishes the project from other names. The name can be based on what the target audience is being urged to do, the name of the campaign, or the product/service in question.

    Step 3: Objective or big idea

    Next, define the project objective(s). The objective represents the need for the project and what the company intends to achieve with it. It is the end goal of the company. For example, does the company want to attract more college students to sign up for its services, or how does its product/services intend to solve the target audience’s problem?

    Step 4: Target audience 

    The following section should identify the project’s target audience. When identifying the target audience, you can categorize and define them based on demographics, behaviors, psychographics, and geographics.

    • Demographics define the target audience based on age, education, ethnicity, occupation, and income.
    • Behavioral characteristics categorize the target audience based on purchasing behaviors and patterns based on historical data.
    • Psychographics define the target audience based on consumer psychological characteristics – how they feel about the company’s products or services.
    • Geographics are characteristics that classify customers based on where they are located. Different geographical regions will have varying market attributes like price, preference, language, etc.

    Any identified customer characteristics would be helpful in tailoring end products that suit the identified target audience.

    Step 5: Stakeholders

    In every project, key stakeholders within or outside the company have to review the brief and offer feedback before the project begins. The stakeholders should be identified, and their contact information should be listed. The stakeholders can also be ranked in order of authority and critical roles so that the team knows who to contact when issues arise.

    Step 6: Key message

    The project’s key message you want to communicate to the target audience should then be derived and included in the brief. An excellent key message should indicate the purpose of the project. Therefore, a suitable question to ask yourself is, “we are undertaking this project so that we can?” and the answer can form the basis of the vital message.

    In addition, the selected key message should identify the main point, the target audience’s experience without the main point, and how your product/service impacts that experience. The customer takes center stage in the narrative and is more likely to pay attention to what you want to share.

    Step 7: Any technical requirements

    The next item should be a list of the project’s technical requirements. Technical requirements will include the number of designers, brand guidelines, deliverable dates, specialists, equipment, etc.

    Step 8: Any challenges

    After outlining the technical requirements, it should mention any challenges the company currently faces in reaching its target audience. It is advisable to include the notable general challenges as the brief is expected to be concise.

    Step 9: Competition

    The brief should then provide an assessment of the company’s competition. This involves identifying the competitors, their projects to achieve similar objectives, their products and services, and the points of similarity and differentiation in their strategies. Examining the competition can help develop novel ideas that have not been experimented with or build on existing approaches.

    Step 10: Consumer benefit

    Next, indicate the main benefit, crucial consumer benefit (KCB), the target audience is expected to gain from using the product or service. Note that even if there are multiple consumer benefits from one product/service, only the KCB should be indicated, which is the benefit that addresses the target audience’s most significant main point or problem. Identifying the KCB requires consultations with the stakeholders and evaluation of consumer data so that the selected KCB can be objective and supported by statistics.  

    Step 11: Tone and attitude

    Tone and brand voice influence how a customer associates with a company and its products or services. Tone and attitude are used to get the critical message to the target audience effectively. The tone and voice should reflect the values that a company upholds and the assurances they give its customers.

    Copywriters use adjectives to influence tone and brand voice, while designers use font, color, size, logo specs, shapes, etc. To illustrate an example of the tone and brand voice, you can indicate in it that the product is fun, reliable, and efficient while the brand is mature, trustworthy, and affordable. Since tone is dependent on the target audience, some companies will use a formal tone, whereas others use a casual tone.

    Step 12: Call to action

    It can include a call to action (CTA) if you intend to convince the target audience to do something after interacting with the project’s end product. While having more than one CTA is acceptable, if the campaign targets primary and secondary customers, try to use a single CTA. Note that not all of them have a CTA since some campaigns could aim to change the target audience’s thoughts or perceptions without taking action.

    Step 13: Your scope

    The last item is the project scope. The scope can outline the project’s due date, budget, and time frame. The timeline can be provided in the form of an action plan with due dates for every deliverable.

    Effective Practices for Writing 

    You can observe the following writing techniques to ensure that it effectively serves its intended purpose:

    • Be thorough but concise: An excellent brief should be exhaustive but concise. It is advisable not to get into tertiary actions and elements of the project, especially when indicating what needs to be done.
    • Focus on measurable results: Always try to include deliverables that can be quantified or qualified to measure progress and performance. This helps in the review and approval stage and in measuring a project’s success. 
    • Get input from your team: You should always involve your team when creating it. This way, everyone is on the same page from the beginning. Including other stakeholders from other departments or external stakeholders is advisable.

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      Final Remarks

      Coordination is significant when executing creative projects. A project’s creative brief is a document you can use to ensure this is possible. While it takes time to write such a brief, its benefits are unlimited. It provides your team members, stakeholders, and anyone involved with a summary of the ins and outs of the project. These are popular among designers, web developers, and marketers. It documents what the project is expected to accomplish and your team’s strategy to make this possible.

      While each creative project is unique, you can craft a brief using the different templates available. Even if a designated person prepares the document, consultations with stakeholders must be done. It is created in the initial stage of a project before any activity has started. However, it is utilized in the subsequent stages of the project cycle until the review and approval stage.

      About This Article

      Julie Ross
      Authored by:
      Market Research, Business Planning, Financial Modeling, Project Management
      Julie Ross is a seasoned expert in market research, financial modeling, and business planning. With over two decades under her belt, she's honed her skills in Excel and Google Sheets, crafting in-depth models. She stands out with her adeptness in exhaustive market research, resulting in robust, visually compelling business plans with realistic financials. Beyond planning, Julie has managed multi-million dollar projects for Fortune 500 companies and startups, supported by an MBA and a Scrum Master certification. Her multifaceted expertise ensures holistic solutions for business challenges.

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