How to write a creator brief that actually gets good content
Most creator briefs are either too controlling or too vague. Here's what to include, what to leave out, and the principle that ties it together.
The brief is the single most important document in a creator campaign. It's where brand intent and creator creative meet — and where most campaigns go wrong before they've started.
There are two ways briefs fail. The first is over-specification: a brief that lists required talking points, mandated camera angles, prescribed caption structures, and a shot list that reads like a TV production schedule. The creator ends up executing a template. The result looks like an ad. Their audience can tell.
The second failure mode is under-specification: "post something authentic about our product." The creator has no idea what would actually work for the brand. They default to something safe. You get content that's technically fine and actually forgettable.
Good briefs live in neither extreme. Here's how to write one.
What to include
The why. What does success actually look like for this campaign? Not "impressions" — what behaviour do you want to drive? A new product launch wants awareness and curiosity. A loyalty program wants existing customers to re-engage. A limited-edition wants urgency. If the creator understands the real goal, they can make creative decisions in service of it.
Voice and vibe. How does the brand talk? Is it warm and conversational, or precise and considered? Playful or earnest? Give the creator a few adjectives and — better — a few examples. Not "be authentic," which is a non-instruction. Something like: "we sound like the well-informed friend who drinks good coffee and can explain why without being annoying about it."
What not to do. One or two hard constraints, not ten soft ones. The most effective constraint is often the one that protects something important to the brand: "don't compare us to [competitor]" or "we're not about calorie counts — don't frame it that way." Keep this list short. If you have six things that can't happen, most of them aren't actually hard constraints — they're preferences. Save those for review feedback.
The product truth. What is actually interesting about this product? Not the marketing copy — the real thing. Is there a sourcing story? A founder who switched careers? A process that's unusual? Creators find angles when they're given real information. Marketing copy doesn't help them; specific, true details do.
What to leave out
Shot lists. Unless you're shooting a product catalogue, don't specify shots. If you're working with a creator, you're hiring them for their perspective. "Four frames with natural light, one showing the lid open, one showing a pour" is a photography brief. Creators make content, not photography.
Caption scripts. The caption should sound like the creator, because it's in the creator's voice. If you've written the caption, you've also negated much of the value of working with a creator in the first place. Give them the key message; let them write the words.
Platform mechanics. "Use three hashtags including #YourBrand and mention us in the first line of the caption" is the kind of instruction that made sense in 2017. Platforms have changed. Creators know how their platforms work better than your media team does. Trust them.
The "describe what already works" principle
The most useful thing you can put in a brief isn't instructions — it's examples. Find two or three pieces of content (not necessarily featuring your brand) that have the energy, register, and approach you're hoping for. Share them. Add a line about why each one works for you.
This accomplishes several things at once: it calibrates what "on-brief" looks like without being prescriptive, it gives the creator a creative direction rather than a constraint, and it helps you understand whether this creator can actually deliver what you're looking for.
If you struggle to find examples, that's diagnostic: you don't have a clear enough sense of what you want yet, and the brief shouldn't go out until you do.
A brief that works
A good brief fits on one page. It answers: what do we want people to do or feel, who are we, what are the hard lines, what's actually interesting about this product, and what does success look like in content form?
Everything else is overhead.
At Scrye, briefs are written in plain prose — no form fields, no dropdown menus. We've found that the act of writing forces brands to actually know what they want, and the result is a document a creator can actually work from. If you're about to start a campaign and your brief is a slide deck, convert it to prose first. You'll find out quickly what you actually know.
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