What is a brief and why is it important for project planning?

A brief is a document used to detail projects in several departments, especially the marketing department. Amarketing process is usually full of stages and details, and the first part is the famous brief. But what is a brief and why is it so important?

Simply put, a brief is a set of instructions for developing a project. It serves as a guide for execution as well as reference material.

A well-done brief follows two premises that seem contradictory, but they are not: it is both concise and complete. We'll explain how to build a better brief, so project planning can run smoothly.

What is a brief and how to create one? 

As we said before, a brief is a set of instructions for a project (which is usually related to marketing, but other departments also use it). All the information the team needs must be there to have a good brief as a result.

This means that, even before starting the brief, you must be clear about the following questions:

• What is the project or campaign?
• What is the objective?
• Who is the audience?
• Why are you going to develop this?
• What are the deadlines and budget?

You can only brief someone if you know what you're asking for or why, right? So, to make a decent brief, even before worrying about the format of the document—you must understand what you're requesting, have all the data about it, and be able to answer the questions above.

Your brief will direct other people's work, so anything you leave out might be done in a very different way from what you need—or, worse, not be done at all.

Brief examples and templates to help you 

There's nothing better than having an example template to explain how to do something, right? We will show you two types of briefs: internal (made for people from the same company) and external (made for an external team, such as an agency).

 To create an internal brief for your colleagues who already know the company and its product very well, you'll provide essential guidance related to the project:

• What's the project: Is it a series of posts? An advertising campaign? A TV commercial? Tell them what this project is in detail. Here, also spell out who the target audience is for this project.
• Why are you doing this project: Explain the objectives, goals, and what you want to achieve.
• Needs and deliverables: To get the project off the ground, what needs to be developed, in which formats and colors, and are there any restrictions or requirements?
• Budget: Mention if there's a specific budget (sometimes, internal work doesn't have a separate budget), how much it is, and how to distribute, it in case there's more than one format.
• Deadlines and schedule: List the deliverables with the deadlines and, to make it even more complete, put this list together with meetings, dates, and launches in a schedule.

An external team will naturally need a more complete brief. Those inside the company know the story of the company, what it does, and what it believes in. Agencies or service providers, in general, don't have this knowledge.

So, when making a brief for people outside the company, you start by contextualizing the team that will help you. An excellent external brief model will end with the internal briefing items, and it'll begin like this:

• Present the company, its positioning, and key data about it.
• Describe the market in which the company operates.
• Explain who the company's target audience is.
• Tell them about the product pros and cons. Explain how it works, what it does, and what it doesn't do.
• Name the competition, who they are, and how they compare to your company.

• Detail the company's tone of voice, brand colors, brand guide, and, if you have one, share the list of "dos and don'ts" (e.g.: always use informal language, don't use that color because it's from a competitor).

How to monitor the execution of the brief 

The brief is crucial because, with it, you guarantee organization, help guide production, support good planning of campaigns and projects, and document everything you need.

If you did a complete brief, you worked hard to ensure that the team helping you with this project has all the information to best execute what's needed. Now, are you going to drop this? Of course not!

Besides delivering the brief, it's vital to have a follow-up system to stay on top of the workflow. Here at Qntrl, we use our own platform to track our marketing briefs.

We transform the brief into a list of tasks, and assign deadlines and responsible persons to each one, to share everything in a marketing workflow. Thus, everyone involved can follow up on deliveries, ask questions, revisit the brief, and know how each task progresses.

Of course, we recommend usingQntrl as your platform to monitor the execution of your briefs, but even more important than that is to make sure you grasp the message of this blog is: follow up! As complete as a brief is, every project needs follow-up to ensure success.