How to write a successful video brief

In our post on briefs and budgets, we discuss the chicken and egg situation of what comes first, the brief or budget, if you missed that, you can find that here.

For this post we’re concentrating on how to get your brief correct and in place, and to help with that, you can download our brief template here.

You’ve downloaded our creative brief template; let’s look at a few key points that once in place will form the foundation that everyone can work to, and should enable your production move smoothly from pre-production to delivered video.

Choosing your Project Working Title. This may seem completely obvious; however, it gives you a starting point that everything can then work from and have as a reference point, it also gives you a structural point to build the rest of the creative brief on.

Skipping forward to Communication Objective. This is key, if you can’t decide on this, then you will struggle with the rest of the brief, it is also key that all stakeholders involved in the video project are agreed on this, this will enable you all to be working to the same objective and the pre-production, and in turn production deliver the video that you all need.

With Deliverables you can pinpoint what is the best video solution for your needs, we’re finding that the majority of our clients need a video of up to 4 minutes with at least one teaser or trailer that they can use socially to encourage their customers to view the full video.

Moving onto Audience Knowledge, depending on your audience, which by this point in the brief you will have already covered, you need to decide on how much information to give them based on their existing knowledge. If you are directing your video towards a group of employees on best practice, tailor it to the points you want them to achieve rather than what they already. You can’t afford to bore your audience before you get to the key information.

These are just a few of the key points from our Creative Brief template, soon we’ll look at the Production Brief which covers more technical points, plus locations, voiceovers, actors and with the Creative Brief completes the picture for creating your video.