Creator Marketing Playbooks
What belongs in a creator brief (and what doesn't)
If you wouldn't ask for a change over it, it doesn't belong in the brief.
Your brief for the refill spray runs two pages. A tablet drops into a bottle of water and you've got cleaning spray again, which is the whole point of the campaign, and the brief says so somewhere on page one.
It also says: upbeat tone. Film in a kitchen, not a bathroom. Hook them in the first two seconds. The tablet takes about a minute to dissolve. Say cuts grease, don't say kills germs. One continuous shot. Two rounds of changes.
Every line got in there because somebody wanted it. Nothing marks which ones you'd chase if the creator ignored them, or what you'd chase them with. Those two questions sort the whole document.
What this guide covers
- Why does a longer brief cost you?
- So what's the test for one line?
- What only you know goes in
- What is the campaign standing on?
- What comes out?
- What belongs in the agreement instead?
- What about disclosure?
- Frequently asked questions
Why does a longer brief cost you?
A brief line turns into a decision at exactly one moment: a draft lands, you watch it, and you decide what to ask for. That's the only place it can settle anything.
It starts costing you earlier than that. The creator reads every line as a requirement and builds around all of them, so a line that will never settle anything still spends the shoot — her attention goes to which sink she's filming at, and less of it goes to the thing the campaign is standing on.
And the ones you would chase can go wrong the other way. We've written before that a brief specifying enough makes almost any note collide with something, and then it's in the brief quietly becomes permission to rewrite somebody's lines. It isn't. Write down how she should sound and you haven't bought the right to redo her read. You've bought an argument at review time.
So what's the test for one line?
Take one line. Ask what you'd do if the draft came back ignoring it.
- You'd ask for a change, and you could finish this matters because… without saying the brief said so and without borrowing a reason another line already gives you. It stays.
- You'd ask for a change, and you couldn't finish that sentence any other way. Cut it.
- You'd be annoyed, and you'd let it go. Cut it.
- No draft could ignore it, because it isn't about the video. It was never a brief line.
Four answers. The first one splits in two below, and the two that cut share a section, so every line in your brief has one of four places to be.
Run the tablet takes about a minute to dissolve through it. If it comes back cut to look instant, you're asking for a change, and you can finish the sentence: a video that shows the tablet vanishing shows something the product doesn't do. It stays.
Now upbeat tone. The draft comes back level and dry. You'd send that note — you'd have to stop yourself. So finish the sentence. This matters because… the brief said upbeat. There's nothing after it. Cut it, and notice that leaving it in is exactly how you end up sending that note anyway.
Film in a kitchen, not a bathroom is the easier one. Grease is a kitchen thing, so you had a reason once. But cuts grease is a claim about what the spray does, not about the room it does it in, and you know you'd let a bathroom counter go. Cut it.
Then there's two rounds of changes. Nothing a creator films can ignore it. It isn't a property of the video at all, and that's the tell.
What only you know goes in
The first kind of keeper is a fact the creator has no way to reach.
The dissolve time is one. So is cuts grease, not kills germs, if that's where your legal team landed. So is the fact that the starter kit ships with two tablets and the refills are sold separately, if the video's going to show someone reordering.
Here's the signal: ask where the answer lives. A dissolve time and a cleared claim exist as facts on somebody's desk inside your company. There is no desk anywhere with the right sink on it.
Write these flat. They're facts, not directions. The tablet takes about a minute to dissolve does the job. Please ensure the dissolution is portrayed accurately is the same fact wearing a suit.
What is the campaign standing on?
The second kind of keeper is a decision, and if the brief doesn't settle it, nothing does. The signal here is different: if the creator made the opposite call, would this still be a campaign about the same thing?
Our guide to what to ask a creator to change names three that answer no, and they're what we'd want settled before anyone shoots. That's our position, not an industry convention:
- The one sentence a viewer walks away understanding. Here: you refill this bottle from a tablet instead of buying another one.
- The content format. One continuous shot, tablet to spray. Cut between them and a viewer has to take your word for what happened in between, which is the one thing this campaign is asking them to believe.
- The element that has to stay intact. You see the tablet go into the water and you see the bottle work. Lose that and the format has nothing to do.
Notice how little else these settle. The sentence doesn't say which words. The format says what can't be broken and stops — not which room, which angle, or who's talking. Our guide to picking a format starts from the same order: decide what the content has to communicate, then decide how it should look.
What comes out?
Everything else, and it leaves by one of two doors.
It's your taste. The kitchen. The color of the shirt. Whether she opens standing up. Third answer, every time.
The brief is the only reason you'd have. Upbeat tone is one. Hook them in the first two seconds is the one people fight hardest to keep, and it goes out the same door. Try finishing the sentence for it. If the opening buries your one sentence, you'd say so — but that note is already yours, because the sentence is already in the brief. Take the sentence away and all you've got left is the brief said two seconds.
So the line buys you nothing, and it isn't free. The video goes up against the videos you don't skip on a For You Page (FYP), and we've written before that those are the competition, not other ads. Winning that comparison is something she works at every time she posts on her own account, and nobody on your team does. Writing the opening down doesn't move that call to you. It just spends it.
Same for how she talks, how it's cut, and where the pacing lands. You picked this creator for what she already does when nobody's asking, which is how we'd pick one, and a brief that overwrites it undoes the choice.
None of that leaves you with nothing to ask for. You can still require the sentence, the format, and the element that has to stay intact. You can ask for a different opening when the current one buries the sentence, because that's a note about structure and not about who she is. What you can't do is hand over a script and call it a brief. We've argued the loose-but-clear version of this before: say what has to be true, then treat what comes back as input.
What belongs in the agreement instead?
The fourth answer. You'd chase it, but not with a revision request — you'd be reading the contract.
Here's the signal: does the line govern the video, or the deal?
- How many rounds of changes you get. Two rounds is the budget for this whole conversation. It decides what you can afford to send back.
- Usage rights. Whether you can run her video as paid media from your own account, for how long, on which channels.
- Whitelisting. Running paid ads through her handle instead of yours. Separate permission, because the right to reuse somebody's video isn't the right to advertise as them.
- Timeline and pay. When the draft is due, and when the money moves.
Those first three we've worked through before. The fourth belongs with them for the same reason: no draft can get it wrong.
None of this is optional, and none of it gets shorter because your brief did — it moves. Settle it in the agreement before the shoot, and let the brief point at it in one line.
What about disclosure?
Disclosure is a facts line, and the strictest one on the list. The creator can't know what your arrangement is unless you tell them, so it goes in the brief. Unlike the rest of the facts, getting it wrong isn't a campaign problem.
The FTC's guidance for influencers is that a material connection between a creator and a brand should be disclosed clearly, and that the disclosure sits where people will actually notice and understand it. Its native advertising guidance makes the related point: content shouldn't mislead people about being commercial in the first place.
Read them yourself, and if the stakes are real, ask a lawyer rather than us.
Frequently asked questions
The creator asks me a question the brief didn't answer. Do I answer it?
Depends which kind of question it is.
If they're asking what's true — does it work on granite, does the tablet fizz, how long does a refill last — answer it. That's a fact on somebody's desk in your building, and the brief missed it.
If they're asking how to do it — should I open at the sink, handheld or tripod — say what you're standing on and let them decide. Answering that one with an instruction turns a question into a script, and you'll be living with it at review. The exception is when the question lands on one of the three: then the answer isn't you decide, it's the line from your brief, said again.
Does a creator I've worked with before need the same brief?
The facts get shorter. The three don't.
She already knows the dissolve time and the claim your legal team cleared, so you're not writing those twice. But change the sentence, the format, or the element that has to stay intact and it's a different campaign, and there's nothing about last time that would tell her so. The brief that says same as last time is the one that comes back looking like last time.
See what this looks like for your brand
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