creative brief presentation template

How to Write a Creative Brief in 11 Simple Steps [Examples + Templates]

Updated: June 11, 2024

Published: July 02, 2019

The first step in any successful project is drawing up a game plan with a clear objective. It's one of the reasons marketers love creative briefs.

A creative brief acts as a roadmap that takes a project from ideation to completion. It ensures the scope, timeline, key stakeholders, and purpose of the project are communicated clearly.

The creative brief is the single source of truth for everyone working on a project. If questions come up or tasks become unclear, the creative brief will steer things in the right direction.

What is a creative brief?

A creative brief is a short document that sums up marketing, advertising, or design project mission, goals, challenges, demographics, messaging, and other key details. It's often created by a consultant or a creative project manager. The goal of a brief is to achieve stakeholder alignment on a project before it begins.

The Purpose of a Creative Brief

Whether you’re a consultant pitching a creative brief to a client, or a project manager presenting a brief to your team, start by speaking with the project stakeholders.

These discussions will help you understand the company's mission, project goals, and challenges your team faces. Then, you’ll have enough information to write a compelling brief that focuses on what’s really important to your company or client.

The idea of a creative brief sounds simple, but it can be hard to wrap a lot of important details into just a few pages. Therefore, a creative brief is typically comprised of eight sections that can fit on one to two pages.

Free Creative Brief Templates

Three customizable templates designed to serve as the blueprint for your next campaign.

• Campaign brief template.
• Video brief template.
• Client brief template.

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How a Creative Brief Works

Creative briefs are pretty standard documents within just about every marketing, advertising, or design team.

For smaller projects that live in-house (like designs, templates, marketing assets, etc.) the brief is owned by the team who will be executing on the information in the brief.

This is usually the creative team, but this team can fall within the brand department or even live within marketing.

For more advanced, long-term projects that involve an agency, the creative brief is owned by the creative team or agency who will be executing the work.

This is because they'll work closely with the stakeholders on the project to understand what is needed, plus they'll bring their own expertise and competitive research to the brief that the internal team may not have access to.

These types of creative briefs aren't rare, but they are created infrequently due to the nature of the projects they support. So for this post, we'll focus mostly on the day-to-day creative briefs that you're likely to use often. Here's how they work.

Creative Brief Outline

• Project Name
• Company Background
• Project Objective
• Target Audience
• Competitors
• Key Message
• Key Consumer Benefit
• Call to Action
• Distribution

Step 1. The teams who need assistance from the creative team will retrieve the creative brief template from a repository like OneDrive, Google Drive, or an online form.

Step 2. The team that is requesting the project will complete the brief according to their team's needs and goals. The completion of the creative brief starts with the team requesting the project so that they can explain their vision and goals clearly to the creative team.

Step 3. From there, the brief is sent back to the creative team to review. They'll be looking for timelines, resources, and budget requirements.

Step 4. If they have any questions, they'll go back to the team who wrote the brief and finalize the details.

Step 5. After that, the project is kicked off, sometimes with the help of a project manager, who will check-in with stakeholders on the project and keep everything on schedule, within scope, and within budget.

Step 6. Once the project is complete, both teams will review the deliverables against the creative brief to ensure everything is completed correctly.

The format of every company's creative brief might vary slightly to suit the needs of the project or client. Below is a simple outline that will be the foundation of your creative brief.

It includes the most important steps in the creative process and information that'll be relevant to stakeholders involved in the project.

Once you’re fully informed and ready to write, use the following steps to draft yours. To make it even easier, I've included a fill-in-the-blank template in the last step.

How to Write a Creative Brief

• Decide on a name for the project.
• Write about the brand and summarize the project’s background.
• Highlight the project objective.
• Describe the target audience.
• Interpret the competitive landscape.
• Prepare the key message.
• Choose the key consumer benefit.
• Select an attitude.
• Determine the best call to action.
• Draft the distribution plan.
• Share the creative brief with stakeholders.

1. Decide on a name for the project.

The first step in developing a creative brief is deciding on a project name. This might sound simple, but it's one of the most critical components of a creative brief.

If you're building a campaign around a brand new product or service, the campaign name will be the first time many members of your team will be introduced to it.

Referring to the campaign (and therefore product or service) by the correct name prevents the game of telephone from happening. Without a specific and clear campaign name, people will make up their own terminology which can alter the intent of the campaign .

To create a project or campaign name for your creative brief, keep it creative and brief. A few words or a short sentence should work just fine.

If you're launching a product, identify what the call to action will be for the target audience, then center the name around that. Here are a few examples of fictional campaign names:

• The Search for Adventure Campaign- A scavenger hunt-themed amusement park.
• The Don't Forget Your Memories Campaign - A photo frame company.
• The "What's hotter than Pepperco hot sauce?" Campaign - A hot sauce brand.

2. Write about the brand and summarize the project’s background.

Another simple, yet essential section is the company background. If you work in an agency setting, this is non-negotiable as your team is likely handling several client campaigns at once.

However, if you're developing a creative brief for an in-house project, you'll still want to include this part. New hires on your team, freelancers, and vendors will appreciate the background that your internal team is already privy to.

The company background shouldn't be a general history of the company or a copied and pasted paragraph from the about page. Instead, tailor this to the project at hand.

Set the scene with one or two sentences that sum up the brand’s mission. Follow this with a few sentences that give background on the brand and what led to the development of the project.

While some creatives have put this information all together in a quick paragraph, others separate it with headers like “Brand Statement” and “Background.”

Here are some questions to consider when writing a company background for your creative brief:

• Has the company launched a campaign like this before?
• Why is the company choosing to launch this campaign right now?
• What's happening in the market and how will this campaign respond to it?

3. Highlight the project objective.

Here is where the creative brief gets more specific. The project objective should briefly explain the purpose of the project, the timeline, and the audience it'll target. This can be done in a sentence or two, but you can get creative and stylize it in sections.

This part of the creative brief will be helpful in emphasizing why the project needs to happen. The goal aspects will help you and your team align on the project’s expectations.

If the company or client hasn’t identified any major challenges, you can focus this section on goals and objectives. Explain what a successful project looks like and how it will benefit the company.

Pro Tip: Writing a project objective is very similar to writing a goal, so take a look at this blog post for more detail on goal and objective writing.

Here’s an example of a sample creative brief for PayPal that offers separate sections for “The Problem” and “The Goal”:

4. Describe the target audience.

Next, it's time to define the target audience for the project. This is the segment of your market that will directly benefit from the product or service being launched.

You can take audience segmentation a step further by identifying a primary and secondary audience. Doing so will give your team more freedom to explore creative ideas that might resonate with one group more than the other.

When crafting the target audience section, be sure to include the following:

• Demographics - Simple demographic information gives your team insight into exactly who the audience is. This includes data points like age, income, education, ethnicity, and occupation.
• Behaviors - Buying behaviors, trends, and other customer history make up the target audience behaviors. These provide important context to the creative brief because they explain where the customer is in their buyer journey.
• Psychographics - This is how the audience thinks and feels about your brand and the product or service you sell, in general.
• Geographics - Digital, physical, and hybrid campaigns will benefit from having geographics stated explicitly in the creative brief so that media buyers can price ad slots in each market.

Pro Tip: Your creative brief shouldn't be too long, and this section can take up quite a bit of space. To make this section more digestible, consider using buyer personas .

Here’s how the sample brief for PayPal noted above thoughtfully explains a new product’s target audience:

5. Interpret the competitive landscape.

Knowing what your competitors are doing is advantageous for the whole team.

You can use competitive data to come up with ideas that haven’t been tried yet, learn from their failed projects, or build a project that improves on a strategy they’ve used in the past.

Include a quick list of competitors with similar product or service offerings.

Briefly list a few things your company has in common with them, how your brand has differentiated itself already, and a few areas where this project can help you get ahead.Get Your Free Templates

6. Prepare the key message.

The key message can be the most difficult part of the creative brief to develop because just about every stakeholder will have a different opinion of what it should be.

To get buy-in faster, try this simple trick. Ask yourself "We're launching this project, so what?" The "so what?" is your key message. It explains why your target audience should stop what they're doing and pay attention to your campaign.

The key message includes the pain point, what the audience's experience might be like without the pain point, and the benefit they'll receive as a result of your company's solution.

This framework places the customer in the spotlight of the campaign. Instead of telling them what this product or service could do for them, it positions them as the main character in the journey from problem to solution.

7. Choose the key consumer benefit.

If you're launching a new product, there are likely several features and benefits that the target audience will experience when they decide to purchase it. However, it's very difficult to structure a campaign around several different features.

That's why marketers and creatives use something called a key consumer benefit (KCB) in the creative brief to keep everyone aligned on the primary benefit being communicated.

To choose the right KCB, you'll want to get input from the project stakeholders and rely on consumer data to guide the decision.

Pro Tip: Your KCB won't always be the fanciest feature of your product. The benefit that solves the biggest problem for your audience is a great choice for the KCB.

8. Select an attitude.

The tone and voice of your campaign create the overall attitude and that should be consistent throughout every creative element that's being developed.

Identifying a few adjectives that describe the attitude of the campaign can help copywriters draft copy that sends the correct message within the right context.

Graphic designers can use colors and techniques to portray the tone and voice as well.

In this section of the brief, you should also note the appropriate voice for your audience. While some audiences, like those in the business world, prefer more formal language, others might engage more with a casual, relatable tone.

To substantiate your decision to choose a particular brand voice and tone, you could write something like, “Our brand voice is a casual and carefree tone because it speaks to younger Gen-Z audiences.”

Pro tip: Use a thesaurus to find specific words that evoke nuanced emotions and attitudes for a hyper-targeted campaign.

9. Determine the best call to action.

Finally, your audience needs something to do once they see your campaign. The good thing about CTAs is that they don't have to be physical actions.

A CTA could have a goal to change thoughts and perceptions about your brand which doesn't require the audience to do anything at all.

Your creative brief might include several different CTAs, especially if you have a primary and secondary target audience. But it's a good idea to have one primary CTA that drives the project objective we talked about earlier.

10. Draft the distribution plan.

When the project is done, you’ll need to make sure your audience actually sees it. List a few channels or platforms on which you plan to announce the launch, as well as any promotional content you plan to create.

When drafting this section, think about your target audience. Don’t waste time on a promotional strategy that they won’t see.

For example, if you’re promoting a project to Gen-Z, you’ll want to invest in social media rather than billboards or newspaper ads.

11. Share the creative brief with stakeholders.

Once you’ve drafted a creative brief, share it with the team you’ll be working with. You’ll also want to circulate it around the company via Slack, email, or presentations.

If you’re a consultant working outside of a client’s company, encourage your clients to share the brief internally.

As you or your clients spread awareness, you should be open to answering questions or taking feedback from colleagues in case they have any great ideas.

This strategy will improve team alignment , increase support of the project, and ensure that all of your colleagues are on the same page.

Follow Along with HubSpot's Free Creative Brief Templates

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Creative Brief Templates

Having trouble with the flow and organization of your brief? Here are simple templates that could help. Copy and paste into a document and fill in the blanks. You can also add to the templates or adjust them as needed for your project.

Download More Creative Brief Templates

[Inset company or client logo at the top along with the project name.]

COMPANY BACKGROUND:

For ___ years, ______ [Brand Name] has been serving customers in the ____________ [group/job field/geographical area] with ____________________ [product or service].

[Brand Name] has made achievements including __________,__________, and ___________. We have also launched marketing campaigns that have touched on ____________,________, and ____________. With the launch of _________ [project name] they hope to ___________.

PROJECT OBJECTIVE:

With this project, the company aims to solve problems related to ____________________, while also expanding on ___________ and improving on _____________.

TARGET AUDIENCE:

Our target audience is ____ [gender], in the age range of _ and _, and live areas like ____, _____, and ______. They enjoy _____, dislike ______, and might work in fields like _____, _____, and _____. They want more of ________ and their daily pain points include ________.

Their favorite products might include _______ and ______. They learn about these products through channels including ________, _________, and _______.

COMPETITORS:

Our three biggest competitors [are/will be] ________, ________, and _______. These competitors offer _____, ______, and ______. We are ahead of them in _____ and ______, but we are behind when it comes to product offerings like __________ and _________.

KEY MESSAGE:

The target audience is experiencing __________ [pain point], but with our newest project ___________, they'll get to experience _________ [new experience without the pain point]. That's what makes ______ [solution] an unrivaled solution within the market.

KEY CONSUMER BENEFIT:

________ [feature] is the best way for our target audience to experience _____ [benefit].

[Include three to five adjectives that describe the tone and voice of the project.]

CALL TO ACTION:

When the target audience sees our campaign, they will [feel/think/do] _________.

DISTRIBUTION:

We will promote the launch on platforms and channels that our demographic regularly engages with. These will include ________, ________, and _______.

We will also release content including _______, _______, and ________ to gain attention from our audience and inform them of the project.

Below are a few messages we will use:

• _________________________________________________.

Here are more templates to consider:

1. Simple Campaign Creative Brief

2. video creative brief, 3. simple client creative brief, types of creative briefs.

Creative briefs serve several purposes in the communications field. Marketers, designers, and advertisers use them differently. Depending on your role, your team, and the project you're working on, one might be more effective than the other. Below are some of the most common types of creative briefs used across industries today plus examples of what they might look like.

1. Marketing Creative Briefs

A marketing creative brief is most commonly used to bring campaigns to market. This type of creative brief can be used for both new and existing campaigns. Broad business goals and strategies to accomplish them are usually included in this type of creative brief. It's also not uncommon to see revenue goals and a budget included in a marketing creative brief.

Simple Marketing Creative Brief Example

2. Product Design Creative Briefs

Product design creative briefs outline the go-to-market strategy for a new product or feature launch. Product marketers are responsible for developing this type of brief. Developed in conjunction with the product manager, the product design creative brief will describe the features and benefits of the product and how the audience will benefit from them. Unique features of this type of creative brief include product documentation and product descriptions.

Product Design Creative Brief Example

3. Advertising Agency Creative Briefs

Advertising agencies develop creative briefs often for the various clients they serve. These briefs are concise and include the client's brand guidelines as well as the specific project guidelines. A budget may also be included in the brief so that all teams can make wise decisions about the tactics they recommend for the client. An account manager or supervisor develops the creative brief and shares it with client stakeholders before the agency begins working on the project.

Advertising Agency Creative Brief Example

Creative Brief Examples

1. creative request template.

For the day-to-day management of creative projects, using a creative request template in Asana acts as a dynamic take on a traditionally static creative brief. With a few tweaks to suit your business's needs, this template flows through each stage of the project while specifying tasks, deliverables, and key points that need to be included in the project. Moreover, Asana provides several types of views that make this template easy to look at from a calendar view, list view, board view, and timeline view so you'll always know the progress of your project in relation to the creative brief.

When to Use This Creative Brief:

This creative brief example is great for marketing, brand, creative, and design teams who handle a large backlog of projects with stakeholders on many different teams. Use this brief for both ad-hoc and regularly occurring projects.

2. Creative Brief Presentation Template

This creative brief example was designed by TemplateForest. It's a visual-forward example of a brief that works well for long-term projects like building a business or refreshing a brand. This longer brief includes a variety of information from internal brand insights to an external competitive analysis.

Use this creative brief when you're partnering with a creative agency on bigger projects. They can use this layout to inspire a creative brief that fits the needs of your business.

3. Red Bull

Image source

This creative brief is straightforward and simple. The only eye-catching visual is the use of the brand's logo. However, all the necessary information is included. 

When to Use this Creative Brief

Use this kind of brief when you want a straightforward document detailing your brand's longterm creative projects.

4. Quaker 

This Creative Brief by Quaker lays out the brand's problem, plan, and guidelines and includes visually appealing graphics to drive home the brief's point. 

A brief like the one above is most useful if your organization is embarking on a long-term project or if there's a lot of information and data that needs to be conveyed in an understandable manner.

5. Graphic Design Creative Template 

This template is designed to allow graphic designers to gather important information from clients so that they designer can create a product that is aligned with the client's vision.

When to Use this Creative Brief 

Briefs like this work best when working with clients on detailed projects. 

6. Nike Creative Brief

This creative brief example for Nike features all the crucial information a brief should include while utilizing the Nike logo and symbols to create visual interest. 

A brief like this serves the same purpose as the Quaker brief. If you have a lot information to convey, including symbols and interesting colors will help the information stick out and remain top of mind. 

Streamline Projects with a Creative Brief

Scope creep happens to the best of us. Projects get bigger, stakeholders are added, and the objective of the project seems to morph as time goes on.

Streamline your next product launch or marketing and advertising campaign with a creative brief. As a result, you'll find that your team is more aligned with the project's goals.

We've even provided free creative brief templates to get you started — download them below.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in July 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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10 Free Creative Brief Templates & Examples

Praburam Srinivasan

Growth Marketing Manager

February 13, 2024

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No matter your business, it’s tough for creative projects to keep the balance. You need to make sure they stay on track but don’t want to structure them so much that they become formulaic. ⚖️

On the one hand, less structure leaves more room for creativity—AKA, the fun part! Emphasizing ideas first leads to beautiful designs, engaging content, and thoughtful collaboration. But on the other, the lack of process, accountability, and guidance often leads to missing deadlines and a lack of consistency throughout your work.

Plus, the structure behind your creative projects is what props them up for success! Without a sturdy and standardized operating procedure to l ay the foundation, it may be unclear to the team what your project is actually trying to accomplish.

That’s why a creative brief is essential to every creative project, no matter its complexity or size! With an equal focus on creativity and structure, your creative brief is the compromise your design and marketing teams have been searching for!

These documents help you think about and solidify the who , what , where , when , and why of your project. They keep your team aligned on goals and establish your next steps! Plus, they often go through a hefty approval process from every key player, so you know the finished product will meet (or exceed) all expectations.

But there’s no need to start from scratch on your creative brief for every new project. Instead, invest your time more productively—with a creative brief template! These resources are easy to use, collaborative, and best of all, customizable!

And lucky for you, we’ve already done the work to bring you the 10 best creative brief templates for any use case! Follow along for more creative brief FAQs, key features, template breakdowns, and more. 🎨

What is a Creative Brief Template?

1. creative brief template by clickup, 2. creative brief whiteboard template by clickup, 3. creative brief demand planning template by clickup, 4. product brief template by clickup, 5. campaign brief template by clickup, 6. event brief template by clickup, 7. seo content brief template by clickup, 8. design brief template by clickup, 9. marketing campaign brief template by clickup, 10. marketing project brief by clickup, what makes a good creative brief template.

A creative brief template is a pre-built document defining the key information, parameters, and goals for an upcoming creative project. These documents are typically created for stakeholders and project members to stay aligned on the project objectives throughout its lifecycle and kept by the project managers for easy reference.

Creative briefs are also, well, brief. We’re not looking for pages of research, we’re looking for a high-level rundown of what you’re going to deliver. If any additional resources are needed for context, hyperlink to it. 🙂

Creative briefs come in many forms, especially depending on your specific project type and complexity, but each brief consistently follows a standard set of categories to ensure your ducks are in a row before the kickoff meeting. Think of your creative brief kind of like a coloring book—it sets the boundaries for your creative team to work within to the best of their abilities!

Bonus: Creative Brief Examples!

10 Creative Brief Templates

Your creative brief is most useful when it integrates seamlessly with your other work tools. And since ClickUp is the only creative project management software flexible enough to bring all of your work together across apps into one centralized platform, that’s where we’re starting. ✅

Check out the top 10 creative brief templates for virtually any use case in ClickUp! Access collaborative and pre-built Docs, Whiteboards , workflows, Lists, and more—all at no cost!

We’ll start with what might be the most easily modified and comprehensive creative brief template you can find. The Creative Brief Template by ClickUp ensures your creative team is on the same page and working toward the same goals from the jump. This beginner-friendly ClickUp Doc template comes pre-formatted to support tables, media, and checklists. Plus, designated sections to clearly organize and quickly locate project information. These sections include:

• Target audience
• Deliverables
• Timeline and milestones
• Key stakeholders and sign-offs

ClickUp Docs is the ideal document editor for your creative brief template for its many collaboration features like live editing , assigned comments , and URL sharing. Its intuitive formatting, styling, and rich text editing also help you create highly visual and engaging briefs that stakeholders can read without needing a walk-through from the project manager!

And since ClickUp Docs live within your Workspace, you can convert text into actionable tasks, add tags to your Docs for easy referencing, and keep your work automatically updated without ever having to press “save.”

While creative brief templates are often pre-made documents—they don’t have to be! A key part of building your creative brief begins in the brainstorming process. And what better way to implement your best ideation techniques than on a dynamic digital whiteboard software ? 🤓

The Creative Brief Whiteboard Template by ClickUp takes your typical brief a step further, applying a pre-built List of creative project tasks to your Workspace and brainstorming diagram using its collaborative Whiteboards feature.

Whiteboards are ideal for capturing and acting on your ideas the moment they happen. Use this diagram as the framework to explore your creative project’s goals, audience demographics, research plans , and potential workflows. And when you’re ready to take things to the next phase, simply convert your text, shape, or note directly into a ClickUp task!

While the previous template was comprehensive in Doc sections and formatting, this Whiteboards template is rich in features and functionality to convey the same information visually! In this template you’ll find:

• Seven custom task statuses to oversee all progress
• Nine Custom Fields to bring more context into every view and within each task
• Four project views including Timeline, List, and Doc view
• Workflow automations to keep your project moving forward (without the pesky busywork in between tasks)

And it doesn’t end there. This template ensures your creative team, stakeholders, and clients always have access to the information they need as your project takes shape.

The creative process starts long before your brief takes shape. You have to be able to set clear goals that align everyone on where the project should go, along with a roadmap on how to get there. You’ll also likely be juggling multiple project ideas at a time—how do you decide which projects are developed first?

Project prioritization may depend on current resources, the amount of work required, and complexity. But ultimately, it comes down to the projects that resonate best with your clients or audience. AKA, there needs to be a demand for the project before you can justify acting on it. That’s where the Creative Brief Demand Planning Template by ClickUp comes into play.

This List template is designed for teams managing several creative campaigns at a time. With five custom statuses arranged on an interactive Kanban board using ClickUp’s Board view , you’re able to visually manage every small step in progress across multiple projects using the whopping 20 Custom Fields included in this template.

For a smooth product development process, it is crucial that everyone is on the same page. The Product Brief Template by ClickUp provides a solution to this challenge with a detailed Doc to foster cross-functional collaboration, reference high-level research, and work toward a successful product launch.

With this creative brief template, product managers can easily work with members, stakeholders, or clients to organize product specifications, review feedback, and act on their next steps—all from the same Doc.

At its core, this formatted template prioritizes the key information your teams will need to get to work. That includes a simple overview, functional specs, a detailed release plan, a description of the problem to be solved, and a list of key team members.

Ready to learn more about the product development process? Start with an intuitive product management template to guide your workflow!

Creative campaign briefs take a little more elbow grease to put together than your average project. Similar to product briefs, they require input, action, and collaboration from other departments to carry out successfully. That’s because campaigns are typically made up of several smaller projects to drive a larger result. The Campaign Brief Template by ClickUp outlines these key parameters and makes it easier for project managers to oversee a campaign’s many moving parts.

This five-page ClickUp Doc breaks down your campaign elements from a high level to ensure alignment on messaging and goals from the top down. Starting with the overall campaign brief, this template establishes your goal, target audience, budget, deliverables , resources, and more. Within those sections, you’ll be prompted to dive into greater detail to guide the other elements of your campaign.

From there, pre-built subpages will help you create briefs for your smaller creative campaign elements and assets.

Hosting an event is no easy feat! But the Event Brief Template by ClickUp is the ideal resource to ensure you’re kicking off your event project management process in the best way possible.

This Doc serves as a detailed checklist to refer back to throughout the planning and execution phase to manage the event logistics, resources, and ultimately, its success.

The summary section not only lists the event title, date, and location but also allows you to link your ClickUp project template and message channel for the event. Other sections include an outline of goals and objectives, your target audience, the project team working on the event planning and execution, and a specific event schedule.

This is a great template to have on hand when presenting progress to stakeholders and clients to ensure the larger event needs are being met before contracts are sent out and vendors are solidified.

It’s not just about having a steady flow of blogs planned on your content calendar —it’s about making sure they reach the right audiences! Proper search engine optimization (SEO) reviews and strategies are key to achieving this and should be a critical part of your content creation workflow to ensure your writing is ranking well.

While there are many tools you’ll consult throughout your SEO project management processes, having a reliable starting point like the SEO Content Brief Template by ClickUp can provide writers with everything they need to create content that is both engaging and search-optimized. 

In addition to a project overview, this Doc template includes the SEO title, meta description, and intended word count. An OKR section leaves space for objectives and key results, target audience, and keyword info to focus the content, and an outline gets writers started in structuring their content.

Bonus: Outline generators !

If you’re looking to add images to a blog or create posts for social media channels, you’ll likely need to submit a design request first. These requests gather basic information about the image or graphic you need, and will ultimately help shape the design brief .

Since these requests are often a small piece of a larger project, your design team will likely be managing multiple briefs at a time—sometimes several each day! This makes having an organized framework like the Design Brief Template by ClickUp a must for keeping all requests, progress, and feedback together.

Use it to outline the goals, scope, and timeline of your project with multiple views to manage your work from every angle—even assign responsibilities, delegate action items, and set task priorities from a single List view.

Then, track the execution of the design project using custom task statuses and a pre-built Kanban board to make sure that the deliverable timeline stays on track and every stakeholder stays in the loop on where it stands at any given time.

The Marketing Campaign Brief Template by ClickUp shines not just in its usability, but also in its presentation. A presentation-ready cover page makes it easy to get your core information across visually, while sections for the target audience, the proposed budget, and your significant dates help with planning.

As you build out the brief, you can also add context through embedding extra marketing materials and references, simply put, it’s the perfect overview for any team working on the planning and execution of a marketing campaign.

Believe it or not, not every marketing project is a campaign! For smaller projects or individual asks, the Marketing Project Brief Template by ClickUp is your go-to. This pre-built task keeps things simple and structured, so you can focus on the good part—being creative!

This task and its subtasks ensure you’re supplied with all the key information you need to get the project off the ground, including the audience, overview, next steps, and key players. 

Need help choosing a creative brief template? The best creative brief templates have to be standardized enough to fill out quickly every time there’s a new project, while also being general enough to leave room for unique development.

That’s a tough line to walk, especially considering the many types of creative briefs you might need. But it’s possible! Look for briefs that include the following elements:

• A quick summary of the project . That way, everyone will grasp the gist of the project—especially stakeholders and cross-functional team members
• A section for the target audience , with space to explain some of the nuances about that audience and the problems they face
• The goals of the project . It always helps when a designer or writer knows exactly  why  they’re doing what they’re doing
• Room for open-ended information . Your brief won’t include every little detail. In fact, some elements of the project may still be up for discussion—your brief will ultimately help those elements take shape
• The project timeline . This sets hard and fast expectations for what will be produced in the project and when it will be completed

And of course, it needs to be easy to complete. The less time the project manager has to spend filling it out each time they need to, the more time there is to focus on the project deliverables.

Streamline Your Creative Projects With a Creative Brief Template

Building creative products, campaigns, and deliverables is hard work. So why make it any more difficult than it has to be? When you use the right creative brief template, much of the organization is already done for you.

ClickUp’s vast Template Library is filled with thousands of templates for every use case! Access any of the 10 templates listed above for free to start crafting the perfect creative briefs in no time. And when you’re ready to take your creative project off the ground, ClickUp has the perfect set of features to help you do it.

Find hundreds of project management features , over 1,000 integrations , a built-in Whiteboards feature, a collaborative document editor, and more when you sign up for ClickUp today .

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20+ inspiring creative brief templates

A compelling brief should inspire, inform and challenge creatives to do great work. Whether you're planning a new design, project or campaign, this template collection helps you create detailed, shareable briefs to get everyone on the same page.

Advertising Campaign Brief Template

Streamline your advertising process with a comprehensive brief that clearly communicates campaign goals, target audience, messaging, and creative direction for effective ad campaigns.

Design Brief Template

Collaborate seamlessly with designers and clients by providing a clear design brief that outlines objectives, styles, deliverables, and project timelines, resulting in a clear vision for the project.

Brand Strategy Brief Template

Develop a strong brand strategy using a comprehensive brief that clarifies brand positioning, target audience, unique value proposition, brand voice, and visual identity guidelines, ensuring a consistent and powerful brand presence.

Media Planning Brief Template

Optimize your media planning efforts by using a concise brief to define campaign goals, target audience, media channels, budgets, and scheduling for efficient and effective media placements.

Digital Campaign Brief Template

Plan and execute successful digital campaigns with a detailed brief that outlines campaign objectives, target platforms, messaging, content strategy, and performance metrics for impactful online advertising.

Illustration Brief Template

Communicate your illustration requirements effectively by providing an illustrative design brief that outlines project objectives, style preferences, subject matter, and usage context.

Logo Brief Template

Create a strong visual identity by using a detailed logo brief that specifies logo requirements, design preferences, brand values, and application guidelines, resulting in a distinctive and memorable brand mark.

Marketing Brief Template

Streamline your marketing efforts with a well-crafted marketing brief that defines campaign objectives, target audience, messaging, channels, and success metrics, driving effective and impactful marketing initiatives.

Social Media Brief Template

Strategize and execute successful social media campaigns with a clear social media campaign brief that outlines campaign goals, target platforms, content strategy, tone of voice, and key performance indicators, maximizing social media engagement.

Website Design Brief Template

Collaborate seamlessly with web designers by providing a comprehensive website design brief that defines project goals, functionality requirements, design preferences, and user experience considerations.

SEO Brief Template

Boost your website's visibility using an effective SEO brief that outlines keyword research, on-page optimization, link-building strategies, and analytics tracking, improving search engine rankings and organic traffic.

Press Release Brief Template

Craft compelling press releases by utilizing a well-structured press release brief that outlines key messages, target audience, distribution channels, and desired media coverage, resulting in effective PR campaigns.

Event Brief Template

Plan and execute successful events with a detailed event brief that defines event objectives, target audience, budget, logistics, and branding requirements, ensuring memorable and seamless event experiences.

UX Research Brief Template

Conduct user-centered research using a comprehensive UX research brief that outlines research goals, methodology, participant profiles, and research questions that informs design decisions.

UI Design Brief Template

Collaborate seamlessly with designers using a clear UI design brief that provides design objectives, user interface requirements, style references, and interaction guidelines, resulting in visually appealing and user-friendly interfaces.

App Design Brief Template

Develop engaging and user-friendly app designs by using a comprehensive app design brief that outlines app objectives, target audience, functionality requirements, and user flow considerations, creating intuitive and delightful mobile experiences.

Video Brief Template

Create captivating video content with a well-defined video creative brief that outlines video objectives, target audience, messaging, visual style, storyboard, and key performance indicators, ensuring compelling storytelling through video.

Motion Design Brief Template

Inspire and guide motion designers using a detailed motion design brief that provides project goals, visual references, animation preferences, and desired motion effects, bringing visuals to life with dynamic and engaging motion graphics.

Animation Brief Template

Plan and execute animated projects with a concise animation brief that defines animation objectives, storytelling elements, style preferences, and technical specifications, resulting in engaging animated content.

Photoshoot Brief Template

Plan and execute a successful photo shoot with a comprehensive brief that outlines the creative concept, desired aesthetics, locations, shot list, and mood board, ensuring a cohesive and impactful visual storytelling experience.

Interior Design Brief Template

Achieve your desired interior design vision by providing a detailed brief that encompasses the project goals, functional requirements, desired ambiance, color schemes, furniture preferences, and layout considerations, resulting in a beautifully designed space that reflects your style and purpose.

Model Brief Template

Select the right model for the job by creating a concise brief that includes the project scope, look and feel, wardrobe requirements and poses, resulting in the correct casting who brings your vision to life.

How to write an inspiring creative brief

A strong creative brief outlines the problem to solve and the path to get there. It gives your team the ingredients to do their most creative work without prescribing the solution.

Read our step-by-step guide on how to write a creative brief

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• The complete guide to writing creative ...

The complete guide to writing creative briefs

Just like any other task, creative work deserves a clear plan and measurable goals before work begins. That’s where a creative brief comes in. Developing a creative brief allows you to take a proactive approach and outline requirements while planning out your creative work. Among other important elements, your creative brief is your opportunity to define the scope, deadlines, and deliverables specific to the creative part of your project.

Overall, a creative brief helps keep everyone on the same page—reducing feelings of frustration or confusion—while making sure no part of the design process is bottlenecked.

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What is a creative brief?

A creative brief is used to define any relevant creative requirements, including messaging, audience, and outlining how success will be measured. Once the brief is created, plan to host a  kickoff meeting  to discuss conflicts or restrictions. That way, you have time to revise and update your creative brief before the work begins.

Remember this—creative briefs aren’t meant to be written and then left stagnant. Before your work begins, your creative brief should be an ever-evolving document that may change as the creative requirements continue to be scoped or tweaked. However, by the time the work starts, your creative brief should be a  clear plan  and have specific goals that your design, content, and creative teams can refer back to throughout the process, making sure everyone is aligned and making the right decisions.

Essential elements of a creative brief

Understanding what a creative brief is and why you need one is important. However, knowing what to actually put in one will save you significant time and reduce back and forths with your creative team. You can avoid having to circle back to questions and conflicts down the road by putting the appropriate information in your creative brief up front.

Take a look at these “must-haves” for every creative brief. Whether you’re planning a marketing campaign, writing a creative brief for an advertising agency, or preparing a creative brief for your internal team, these nine steps will help you clarify the key information your team needs for success. Keep in mind that your brief may contain more elements—and you can certainly add them as they relate to your work—but the criteria mentioned below should be part of nearly every creative brief.

Title and description

Goals and objectives, messaging and tone, assets and deliverables.

Stakeholders

Distribution process

First, give your creative brief a title. Provide a short description of the creative work so team members understand why they are a part of it. Let them know the intention of the creative work.

Title:  Advertising campaign for new product launch

Description:  As we prepare to launch Apollo Enterprises newest product, we’ll be putting together a series of advertisements to introduce it to the market.

Why are you working on this? At this point in your creative brief, you want to define the specific business need and what the work will accomplish. What does success look like for this particular body of work? As you’re writing down your goals, make sure they are measurable. At the end of the project, you’ll want to look back on them and clearly know if you’ve met your objectives.

Goals and objectives:  Reach 500,000 potential customers via paid search over a one-month period and add 5,000 new subscribers to our email list.

Outlining your target audience will help better tailor your creative to them. Look for specific insights, as those become your gems of valuable information. Get clear on who will be consuming your deliverable (video, ad, etc.). Try your best to define what that person looks like by outlining demographics such as age, gender, income level, marital status, or education level.

Also note what your audience values, along with their interests, wants, and needs. State if you’re trying to reach current customers or potential ones. Answering as many questions as possible about what your audience looks like will help you and your team along the way.

Audience:  Men, 30-65, mid-high income, at least a high school diploma. They value time outdoors, working with their hands, tools, and gadgets. They’re not current Apollo Enterprises’ customers.

Now that you know who your audience is, you need to clearly establish what messaging you want to put in front of them. Also, when your target market receives that message, what should they think, feel, want, and do? Are you asking them to take an action?

If you already have brand guidelines be sure to include them in your creative brief, or direct stakeholders on where to find them. Following brand guidelines ensures the tone and voice of your messaging matches that of your overall brand, and keeps your messaging consistent across marketing initiatives.

If you don’t have established brand guidelines, work with the right team members to put together some information about the tone and voice that this particular creative work should follow. Think of your message as a person. It should have a voice (a personality) and a tone (a mood or attitude).

Messaging and tone:  We want to empower our audience to be creators and use Apollo Enterprises’ new product as part of their most valued suite of tools. We should celebrate the target audience for working with their hands and make them feel proud of their creations.

Since your team’s work will produce some sort of creative asset (or many), this part of your brief should describe what those assets and deliverables are. For example, if you’re creating an advertisement, the final deliverable would be the actual ad. Make sure you specify asset requirements such as dimensions, number of versions, and design elements.

Assets and deliverables:  Three different advertisements, each with a different tagline and image (one version for each of the following sizes: 250x250, 728x90, 120x600).

Creative work usually requires cross-functional  team collaboration . Marketing and design are almost always involved, and oftentimes other departments will also play a part. This means several individuals from different teams working together on the same desired outcome.

This is why it’s so important to identify all important stakeholders upfront. Each team member should know who is involved and what they’re responsible for. You’ll save yourself a lot of time fielding questions down the line if you add this to your creative brief.

Stakeholders:

Creative team: Larry (ad copy), Emma (ad design)

Marketing team: Hannah (team lead), Caleb (email marketing setup for campaign), Terry (ad distribution)

Product team: Zach (Product Manager)

Establishing your budget from the start will help you actually stay in line financially and guide your decision-making. Be sure you write down actual numbers and identify costs where you can. Conducting some quick research ahead of time will help. Are there ways you can cut some costs? Giving yourself some time to play with the numbers before you even begin the work will keep you in good graces with your boss!

Budget:  The overall budget is $8,000 with $5,000 going to ad spend, $1,500 to design, and $1,500 to copywriting.

Establishing a  timeline for your work  early on will keep you and your team on track. Decide on a start date and end date, and then fill in as many important dates as you can in between. Knowing the important deadlines from the beginning gives all stakeholders an idea of how long their part of the work will take. They can plan accordingly and let you know of any conflicts. Be as specific as you can with dates and deadlines, and keep in mind that adjustments may need to be made as the work progresses.

Kickoff meeting: May 5

Final creative brief due: May 10

Ad copy due: May 30

Ad designs due: June 10

Ad buy plans due: June 15

Ads are live: July 1 - July 31

Measure ad success: Ongoing

Wrap-up: August 15

Identifying how your media assets will actually get to your audience is a part of your creative brief that can’t be skipped. All the hard work you put into every other step of your creative process culminates with an effective distribution strategy. In other words, how will you communicate your message? Social media, email, blog posts, and paid advertisements are just a few ways to distribute your media.

Distribution process:  Google Adwords platform to deploy ads.

Creative brief example

Seeing examples of what great creative briefs actually look like can help you formulate your own. Check out this stellar example and pay close attention to the details. You can tell that the project manager took time and thought to develop this creative brief, and help their team work together smoothly.

Creative brief template

Get started with this creative brief template to outline your campaign goals, creative deliverables, due date, marketing strategy, and more.

Title and description:

A clear name that your stakeholders can easily identify, and a short summary that conveys the intention of your creative brief.

Goals and objectives:

Define the metrics of success for your creative brief.

Who are you targeting in your campaign and what are their values, interests, and needs? This section should include any relevant demographics.

Messaging and tone:

What type of tone are you trying to strike? How do you want your audience to feel when they see your creative assets?

Assets and deliverables:

Asset and deliverable 1

Asset and deliverable 2

Asset and deliverable 3

Stakeholder 1

Stakeholder 2

Stakeholder 3

What is your overall budget? Are there any specific details to how the budget should be spent?

Date:  Description

Date: Description

Distribution process:

Specify how you will reach your audience once your assets and deliverables are ready.

Using a creative brief when working with agencies

Sometimes internal stakeholders aren’t the only people you’ll be collaborating with on creative work. Companies may choose to hire an agency to help. If you find yourself  working with an agency , here’s how you can use a creative brief to make the most out of the partnership.

Make your creative brief a starting point

When you deliver the creative brief to your agency contacts, take the opportunity to discuss your goals with them and refine the creative brief if necessary. Ask for their input. They are there to help and getting their buy-in will make every part of the overall process easier. Allow your agency partners to educate you on what will work and what won’t.

Create a robust final version of your creative brief

The more valuable information you put it in, the less questions will come your way later. And, remember, while the agency is a partner of yours, they are working with other companies as well. Giving them as much information as you can will make you and your creative brief stick out (in a good way). For example, you’ll want to include any applicable style guides, tone of voice recommendations, relevant internal messaging information, and any brand guidelines the agency should keep in mind while working.

Be open to change

Creative work moves quickly, and some project leaders make the mistake of thinking their creative brief has to be rigid in order to support fast-moving teams. In reality it’s a living document. Until you start executing on the work, it should always be open to conversations and edits.

How Asana uses work management for creative production

Learn how Asana's Head of Creative Operations streamlines workflows across her team to produce high-quality work, faster.

Write your best creative brief

You’re feeling good, right? Hopefully developing your own creative brief doesn’t seem so daunting after all and you’re ready to get moving on building your next one. After you’ve written your creative brief, manage the next steps in your creative process in a work management tool, like  Asana . Not only will it help keep you organized—it will actually help you run the show.

Build a creative brief that makes your life (and those of your stakeholders) easier to execute your creative work successfully.

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