Should you put a call to action in a creator video?

Say you roast coffee. The new decaf is the one you need people to hear about, and the case for it is that it tastes like the regular roast. It's September, filming is booked for October, and the video goes out the week after that. The brief is nearly done when somebody reads it through and asks: shouldn't it tell people to go get some?

Worth settling while the brief is still open, because once the draft lands the answer is no longer yours to change.

What are you adding to the video?

A call to action (CTA): a line that asks the viewer to do something once the video is over. We'll call it the ask from here, because the same reasoning holds wherever outside the video it points.

When you write down what a video has to do, the sentence takes a form we've used before: after seeing this, the viewer should …. Two things go in it, something to understand and something to see, and the video is what delivers both. Nothing outside it has to happen for either half to do its work.

The brief exists to get that sentence made. The facts the creator can't reach, the format, the element that has to stay intact: each one is in there so that one half or the other lands. Disclosure is the exception that proves the shape, since it's a brief line carried for its own reasons rather than the sentence's.

Go get some is not one of those. It finishes at a page, or a counter, or a shelf, and none of those is in the frame.

So the test on a line you're unsure about runs in two steps. Is it about the video at all? And if it is, does the video finish it? How many rounds of changes you get fails the first step, which is why it was never a brief line to begin with. An ask passes the first step and fails the second, and no other line in the brief is in that position except the ones that carry an ask themselves.

For the decaf: the sentence is already written. After seeing this, the viewer should understand that the decaf tastes like the regular roast, and see it made in an ordinary morning. A creator can film both halves. Buy a bag isn't a third piece of that sentence; it's a sentence about what happens after the video ends.

Is there anywhere to send them, and is it yours to state?

Two questions, and both have answers you already hold.

Is there somewhere for it to go? Somewhere that exists when somebody is watching, not somewhere that exists by the time you finish the brief. A page that goes up with the launch and a counter that opens in the spring are places on a plan, and a video out ahead of them points at nothing.

Is it yours to state? The address of a page is a fact on a desk inside your company. Whether a tin will be on a particular shelf in a particular week is a fact on somebody else's. Our guide to what belongs in a creator brief sorts facts like these by asking "where the answer lives." That question settles whether there is a fact at all. It doesn't ask whether the fact will still hold in a month, and for this line that's the part that decides it.

Neither answer can be no.

If there's nowhere to send them, the brief guide's test disposes of the line for you. It asks what you'd do if the draft came back ignoring the line, and a line pointing at nothing is one you'd let go: "You'd be annoyed, and you'd let it go." That guide runs that answer on questions of taste. This line arrives there by a different road and comes out the same door.

If there's somewhere but the fact isn't yours, that test keeps the line. You'd chase it, and you could say why. So this is a condition the test doesn't check, and we're adding it: a line resting on somebody else's plan is right for exactly as long as that plan holds, and nobody is going to call you when it changes. An ask that's wrong by the time the video is out is worse than no ask, because you're the one who put it there.

For the decaf: there are two candidates. The decaf went up on the roastery's site the week the roast was signed off, so it's reachable now and its address is on a desk at the roastery. That one passes both questions. The grocery listing starts sometime in November, which is after the video goes out, so it fails the first question before the second one comes up. It would fail that one too: which stores and which week is a fact at the grocery chain, not at the roastery.

Who writes it?

You write the place. The creator writes the words.

That isn't a courtesy, and it isn't about who is better at writing sentences. Brands do supply exact words. Cuts grease, not kills germs goes in the brief as written if that's where your legal team landed, and the brief guide keeps that line for exactly that reason. What you don't get to supply is the way a person asks for something. Our guide to what to ask a creator to change puts how somebody talks off the table, and "colliding with the standard doesn't put it back on." An ask is mostly manner, which is what makes it an ask rather than a fact, so handing over a finished one hands over the part that was theirs.

So the brief carries the address, not the words that say it out loud. Write it the way the brief guide says to write the other facts only you have: flat, as a fact rather than a direction. You picked this creator for what they already do when nobody's asking, the situations they film in and the words they use for those situations, and a finished line handed over in advance asks them to put some of that away.

For the decaf: the brief says the decaf has its own page and gives the address. It doesn't say go grab a bag, and nobody at the roastery has to sit there deciding whether that's how this creator would say it.

Will you be able to tell them apart afterwards?

Whoever turns up at the other end, an order or a visit or a signup, arrives carrying a name or arrives anonymous. Which one is a decision you make now rather than in December.

An arrival can only carry a name if the video handed out something that names it. A discount code is one instrument for that, and what it costs to hand one out belongs to that guide. Whatever instrument you use, the same rule applies before you issue anything: "Give it for the name when you can say in advance what you'd do differently depending on what the number says. Write that sentence down before any discount code is issued. If it doesn't exist, the number will arrive and nothing will happen."

That rule does one job, and it's the useful one: it stops you handing out something you have no use for. A separate limit sits on top of it. A name tells you which door an order came in through, not why the person walked through it.

So an ask can go in without any of that. It means the arrivals are anonymous, and there's no number for anyone to read as a verdict later. Whether the video did the thing the campaign asked for is a question you answer from the list you wrote before it posted, and that guide has the method. Leave that naming sentence until the orders are in and you'll write it around what already came back, which is the trap that guide flags for the list.

For the decaf: somebody tries to write the naming sentence. If the number is low, we'll stop — stop what? The decaf is launching either way and the campaign is already booked. Neither answer changes a thing anyone would do, so nothing goes out for the name. Whether the decaf wants a discount for the price is that other guide's question, and it's still open.

So should you ask for one?

Two questions decide it, and the naming is settled separately. All of this rules on an ask that points somewhere; an ask for something that happens where the video already is, like a reply under it, is a different question this piece doesn't take up.

Both answers yes. The line goes in the brief, and on the draft you check the fact rather than the phrasing, before you approve rather than after.

Either answer no. Don't write the line. The video still does the two things the sentence asked of it, which is what you were buying before anyone suggested the ask, and a line you leave in anyway still spends the shoot.

Then the naming. It's a decision of its own, so write it down where the campaign's other decisions live.

For the decaf: one ask goes in, pointing at the page that exists. The grocery listing stays out of the video, because November isn't writable in September. And the campaign notes get a line saying the arrivals will be anonymous.

Frequently asked questions

The creator put an ask in that we never asked for. Do we take it out?

Three answers, and which one you get depends on what it points at rather than on how it's phrased.

It points at something of yours and the fact is right. Leave it in. Both questions above came back yes, and the words were always theirs to choose.

It points somewhere that isn't yours, like their own arrangement with somebody else, or a place you've never seen. A revision request isn't the way to handle it. The revision guide takes anything settled by what you agreed with the creator off the list before its test runs, so go read what you agreed. If it covers this, your answer is in there. If it doesn't, you still don't have a revision request, and what you have is a conversation with the creator rather than a note on the draft.

It points at something of yours and the fact is wrong. Catching that was on you, because the fact was never theirs to hold. Whether you can ask them to change it runs the same test as any note: name what in the standard it collides with. If your sentence depends on that fact, it collides with the sentence, and the guide puts that case among the things you can ask for, because "then the line defeats the sentence". If your sentence doesn't, check the format and the element as well, and if none of the three is touched, by that guide's own terms what you have is a preference rather than a revision request.

The wrong-fact case your sentence doesn't depend on is the uncomfortable one, and it's worth knowing before you write an ask rather than after. A preference isn't nothing. It's not a change to this video. So, short of the creator agreeing to change it anyway, the video goes up with the wrong address in it. The note goes in the notes you didn't send, which that guide keeps as the input to the next brief.

We've seen the draft and now we want to add one. Is that a revision request?

No. What you have is a new request rather than a note on the draft, and the revision guide rules on this shape directly: "wanting the video to do more work than it was made for isn't a complaint about the video, and no revision answers it."

What a note gets checked against was fixed before the draft arrived. That guide puts the sentence, the format and the element on that list, and an ask that was never written isn't something the draft could have ignored. Nothing they filmed is wrong.

You can still want it. It's a new ask rather than a note, and what it takes to get it is a conversation you haven't had yet.

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