Creating a Killer Creative Brief for Video: Template Included

In this blog post, learn the essential elements of a creative brief for video production, along with tips and best practices for crafting an effective brief. Discover how a well-written brief can help your team stay aligned, improve the quality of your video content, and drive better results for your marketing campaigns.

After reading this post, you’ll know exactly what to include in your video brief. You can use our creative brief template to provide your team with everything they need before you start your project.

We will show you the six elements that make up the creative brief with simple questions you can answer to provide your creative team with everything they need to execute a successful creative project.

Download our Video Brief template

What is a Creative Brief?

A creative brief summarises what you want your video to achieve. It is a one to two-page outline of the key results you are looking for from your video project.

It will guide your team and video production agencies throughout the project. The creative brief outlines essential aspects of your goals, including objectives, key messages, tone, budget, and other information vital for executing a successful video.

Why is a Video Brief Important?

Creative briefs ensure that everyone is on the same page and make it so much more likely that the video agency you hire will be able to help you achieve your goals.

There are many benefits of having a well-crafted video brief.

First of all, it helps align all the stakeholders of your company but also the companies you collaborate with to create your videos. It lays out the goals you want to achieve very specifically, ensuring everyone is on the same page with the same set of clear project expectations.

Completing a video brief will help with all stages of the video production process, allowing for improved collaboration, better communication, higher quality video content and most importantly, better results.

Setting your goals and objectives is vital to any video production’s success.

The Elements of a Creative Brief for Video

Objectives

Knowing what you want to achieve from the video project is vital.

Do you want to increase sales? Would you like to increase efficiency or expertise in the workplace? Do you want to drive more traffic to your website? This is the most important thing when planning your video. Starting with clear objectives is an essential part of any marketing strategy.

Clear objectives will clarify the video’s purpose for the production team you are working with and provide clear criteria for the project’s success. Be as specific as possible when writing out your goals.

An example goal might be to increase signups to the free trial of your project management software by 50% a month. So if you currently have 50 signups a month, make it clear you would like to increase that to 75.

Target Audience

Next up is defining who will be watching your video. Will it be leads, existing customers or employees? A video aimed at leads will differ significantly from an internal training video for your employees.

As a marketer, understanding your target audience is vital. This information will define every marketing plan and strategy you execute.

Knowing your target audience will also dictate your video’s style and format. Knowing their tastes and needs will allow you to create a video targeting their interests.

People will be likelier to watch your video if you speak directly to them. Focus on your ideal customers and learn to understand their pain points, motivations, and behaviours.

Key Messages

Next, we need to define what the key message of the video is. This message should be directly informed by the projective objects.

If our goal then is to increase the downloads of our program, the key message of the video should then highlight to the audience how the programme can help them.

You should also only focus on one key message per video, any more, and we begin to muddle our messaging. The effectiveness of the video will be diluted if we try and shoehorn in too much information or too many actions for the audience to take.

Call to Action

What action do you want your audience to perform after watching your video? Imagine a potential customer who has just watched your video and is blown away by your product or service. Tell your viewer what they should do now. This is called a call to action.

For our management software example a good call to action might be “download our free Trial.”

Make sure to create a clear and compelling CTA that is very easy for the audience to follow. The simpler the call to action the more likely it is for people to follow through.

Tone and Style

Showing examples of the type of video you’re looking for is a great way to communicate what you imagine your final video looking like. Is it a narrator or presenter delivering the information or a text-based infographic? If a narrator or presenter is required, will it be someone from your team, or are you looking to hire a professional actor?

You also want to consider how you want your brand messaging to come across. What is the tone of your brand and messaging? Do you want to use humour and be light-hearted, or are you looking to create a more informative video with a more earnest tone?

This is important as it will keep the video production agency’s direction and only present ideas that are out there for your brand.

If you have any other brand guidelines, it might be worth sharing these with the video production team so that they can create a style that is consistent across your whole brand’s identity, including video. You want the tone and style to align with your brand’s personality and values.

Distribution Channels

Where and how the video will be shown can influence the style. Will it be displayed on your website’s homepage, or will it be a training video shown to staff as part of their induction?

Identifying the channels where the video will be promoted will allow the agency to align its understanding of the platform audience and behaviour to craft a video that will achieve your desired goals.

A video that will be shown at in-house events will require a vastly different strategy than one that will be featured on the homepage of your website.

Some channels also require different video formats. For example, suppose it is short social content you are producing. In that case, you might want vertical versions of your videos for Instagram & Tiktok. You must ensure the video is optimised for each platform (e.g., aspect ratio, length, etc.)

Budget and Timeline

Last but very importantly, knowing how much you can spend and when you would like to release your video is crucial. This will help with managing expectations. One way to do this is to set a budget range. Production companies can then provide information about what is possible over different budgets. They can provide examples of a range of videos across various budgets.

Providing a deadline for the completed video will help the production team efficiently schedule your production. A well-prepared schedule will allow the production process to run smoothly.

Collaborating on a Creative Brief.

So now you know what to include in an effective video production brief, what’s the next step?

Easy! Reach out to a video production company that will help you get started on the project. We would love to help! We have worked on hundreds of video projects and we can build upon your brief to create a video strategy that will ensure the success of your business goals.

Download your free creative brief template below and then send it on to our producer Jack to learn more about our services and see if we are a good fit for working together.

Video Production Creative Brief Template

Remember, the more detail you can include in your creative brief; the easier it will be to achieve success with your video.