If you’ve worked in an agency for many years, perhaps part of your role may well be writing briefs for copywriters and designers.
Here’s my perspective on what makes a good written brief. This is based on my experience working with multiple agencies and doesn’t apply so much to individual clients, as I supply my own brief for them to fill in.
What should be included?
It helps to lay all the information in front of your creatives straightaway. A good brief would include:
- Project name and job number
- Specs needed for designers and copywriters – including character counts, especially for social copy
- The point of the brief and what the outcome should achieve, as well as any objectives
- Relevant information about the organisations or businesses involved
- How success will be measured
- The target audience
- The deliverables – and any information about those deliverables. For example, if the brief is to create three emails, it can be very helpful to lay out what’s involved in an email: subject line and pre-header options, hero headline options, hero body copy, CTA options – and the same for the other modules. As a copywriter, I map out what needs written first, so then it’s just a case of going back and populating my document.
- Dates and deadlines
- Wireframes
- Any keywords for SEO
- Examples of previous similar copy. This is especially useful in highlighting the tone of voice to use.
- Tone of voice guidance
- Anything else you think is relevant
As a copywriter, it’s incredibly useful to have all this information written down to refer back to when I’m writing.
How should it be written?
A good brief is concise (not easy, given the list of things that needs to be included!) and clear.
I’m a big advocate for bullet points – they force the writer to be concise and lay everything out in a few simple lines. I find it much easier to process and understand lists if they’re written this way.
Isn’t all this a bit of a faff?
It certainly takes time to put together all this information in a clear, concise way. But it’s worth it. Collating all the information will save you time in the long-run – and your copywriter will be eternally grateful.
Over to you…
What do you think makes a good brief? Let me know.
Leave a Reply