Creative brief template that a designer can start from the same day
Two lines in, a one page creative brief out: the single objective, who it is for, the message, the mandatories, and every open decision marked instead of invented.
- Works in
- Claude
- You need
- What this campaign has to achieve, in one sentence · Who it is for and where it will run
- Written for
- creative brief
Scored by our own engine
This page, run through the audit we sell. Measured 16 August 2026.
Most creative briefs fail before anyone reads the second paragraph, because the objective at the top is a sentence nothing could contradict. This prompt takes two lines from you and returns a one page brief with a single testable objective, and marks every decision you have not made instead of quietly making it up.
What it gives you back
Run with the objective “get free trial sign ups from operations managers at 50 to 200 person manufacturers who currently run scheduling on spreadsheets”, audience and channels “LinkedIn paid and a landing page, six week flight, offer is 30 days free with no card”:
THE ONE THING Get operations managers at 50 to 200 person manufacturers to start a free trial, from a cold LinkedIn audience, within a six week flight.
WHO IT IS FOR Runs the schedule for a plant with a few hundred people and holds it together in a spreadsheet she built and maintains. She is not looking for software. She believes the spreadsheet is under control because she is the one keeping it under control, and she is right about that. She has seen software promised as an upgrade and delivered as a second system to maintain. For this to work she has to stop believing that switching means losing the thing she built.
WHAT WE ARE MAKING
- LinkedIn paid, static and short video, [NEEDS DECISION: which formats are already committed]
- One landing page carrying the 30 day no card offer
THE MESSAGE “It keeps my spreadsheet’s logic and stops me being the only one who can read it.” Supporting: 30 days free, no card. Import from an existing sheet rather than a rebuild. Access for the people who currently ask her for updates.
MANDATORIES The 30 days free, no card required offer. The landing page URL.
WHAT THIS MUST NOT BE
- Not a digital transformation story. She is not transforming anything, she is trying to get through the week.
- Not a spreadsheet mocking joke. Her spreadsheet works, and the ad that laughs at it is telling her she is the problem.
- Not a feature grid. Nothing in a feature grid answers the fear, which is migration.
- Not aimed at her boss. The plant manager is not the one who has to move the data.
HOW WE WILL KNOW IT WORKED Trial starts from the campaign landing page over the six weeks. [NEEDS DECISION: what number counts as working]
OPEN DECISIONS
- Which creative formats are already committed. Media lead.
- What sign up number counts as success. Whoever owns the trial target.
- Whether the import from a spreadsheet actually works today, because the message depends on it. Product.
The section people delete first
What this must not be is the part teams cut for length and the part that saves the most work. Every one of those four lines is a route a creative team would reasonably take from the brief above, and every one of them is wrong for this specific job. Written down, it costs four lines. Left out, it costs a round of work and the meeting where everyone discovers they disagreed.
Item three in Open decisions is the other kind of value. The message rests on a product claim, and nobody in the room had checked whether the claim is currently true.
You are writing a creative brief. Produce the brief itself first, with no
preamble, under these exact headings and in this order.
THE ONE THING
One sentence. What this work has to achieve, stated so that afterwards
somebody could say whether it did. Not a list. If I have given you two
objectives, choose the one the other depends on and put the second under
Open decisions.
WHO IT IS FOR
Three to five lines describing one person, not a segment. What they are
doing when they encounter this, what they already believe, and what they
would have to stop believing for this to work. No demographics unless I gave
you some.
WHAT WE ARE MAKING
The deliverables as a bulleted list, each with its format and where it runs.
If I did not say, write [NEEDS DECISION: which formats] and continue.
THE MESSAGE
One line the work has to leave behind, written as the audience would say it
back to somebody else, not as we would say it to them. Then two or three
supporting points, each of which must be a fact rather than an adjective.
MANDATORIES
Anything that must appear or must be true: legal lines, the offer, the URL,
the brand rules I stated. Only what I gave you. Never invent a legal
requirement.
WHAT THIS MUST NOT BE
Three to five lines. The tones, formats and clichés that are wrong for this
specific job, each with a short reason. This section is the most useful part
of a brief and the one most often left out, so do not skip it.
HOW WE WILL KNOW IT WORKED
The one measure that decides it, and when it gets read. If I did not give you
a way to measure, write [NEEDS DECISION: what we measure] rather than
proposing a metric nobody agreed to.
OPEN DECISIONS
A numbered list of everything you had to mark as needing a decision, plus
anything a creative team would ask in the first meeting that this brief does
not answer. Name who probably has to decide each one.
Rules for the whole brief:
1. Never invent a budget, a deadline, a legal requirement, a brand guideline,
a competitor claim or a statistic. If it is missing, mark it.
2. No marketing adjectives anywhere. Innovative, seamless, world class,
game changing, cutting edge. A brief written in adjectives gives the
creative team nothing to work with, which is why briefs come back wrong.
3. Keep the whole thing under 400 words. A brief nobody finishes reading is
not a brief.
4. Do not ask me questions first. Everything you would have asked goes in
Open decisions, which is where the person reading this can actually see it.
What this has to achieve: [OBJECTIVE]
Who it is for and where it runs: [AUDIENCE AND CHANNELS]What to change
Everything in square brackets is yours to replace. Nothing else needs editing.
[OBJECTIVE]- One sentence saying what has to be different after this campaign, in terms somebody could check later. "Get sign ups for the free trial from operations managers who currently use spreadsheets" works. "Increase brand awareness" does not, and the brief will come back with [NEEDS DECISION] against the measurement because there is nothing there to measure.
[AUDIENCE AND CHANNELS]- Who sees this and where. Include anything already fixed: the deadline, the offer, the legal line, the budget, the formats already committed. Everything you leave out is marked rather than invented, so the brief is honest about the gaps, but a brief with nine open decisions is a signal that the campaign is not ready rather than a fault in the output.
How to run it
- 01Write the objective as a sentence somebody could later contradict
This is the whole exercise. A brief fails at the first line far more often than at the last, and it fails by stating an aim that nothing could disprove. If nobody could look at the result in six weeks and say it did not happen, rewrite the sentence before running the prompt.
- 02Run it, then read Open decisions before anything else
Skip the brief on the first pass and go straight to the numbered list at the bottom. It is the list of things the creative team would have asked you in the kickoff meeting. Answering four of them now and rerunning takes five minutes and removes an entire round trip.
- 03Check What this must not be, and add the one you actually fear
The generated version is generic because it only knows what you told it. The useful version has the real one on it, the specific execution somebody on your team keeps proposing that would be wrong for this job. Add it in your own words. This section prevents more wasted work than any other part of a brief.
- 04Fill the markers by hand and send it as one page
Every [NEEDS DECISION] is a decision somebody owes the project, not a gap in the output. Fill them from the person named, delete the marker, and send. If more than three are still open when you send it, say so at the top rather than letting the creative team discover it in the work.
Questions people ask
What is a creative brief?
A short document that tells whoever is making the work what it has to achieve, who it is for, what the message is, what is fixed, and how success gets judged. It exists so the creative decisions are made against something agreed rather than against whoever speaks last in the review.
What should a creative brief include?
One objective, one audience described as a person, the deliverables, the message, the mandatories, an explicit statement of what the work must not be, and how it will be judged. The two sections most often missing are the last two, and they are the two that cause the most rework.
How long should a creative brief be?
One page. The prompt caps it at 400 words on purpose. Length in a brief is usually the sound of nobody having decided anything, and a brief that runs to four pages is generally four pages because the objective at the top was never settled.
What is the difference between a creative brief and a campaign brief?
A creative brief tells a maker what to make. A campaign brief sits above it and covers the whole plan: budget, channels, timing, and how the pieces work together. If you are briefing one execution, this is the right document. If you are briefing a quarter, this is one section of a larger one.
Why does it mark things instead of filling them in?
Because an invented budget, deadline or legal line is worse than a blank one. A blank gets noticed and filled. An invented one gets built on, and the discovery happens after the work is made. Every [NEEDS DECISION] marker is a real decision somebody owes the project, surfaced while it is still cheap.
Is this the same as a content brief?
No. A content brief tells a writer what one page has to cover and what it has to beat, and we have a [separate prompt for that](/prompts/content-brief-prompt/). A creative brief tells a team what a piece of work has to achieve and what it must not be. Different documents, different readers, different failure modes.
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