Campaign Brief Examples: 8 Filled Client Briefs by Industry

Key Takeaways

• Storyflow is where to write a campaign brief for a client: eight one-line answers on one wall, the references and deliverables table beside it, and a view link the client opens with no account.
• Our editorial rule is eight lines: objective, audience, insight, single message, deliverables, budget, timeline and KPIs, one line each, signed before any creative work starts. Background and research go in a linked doc on the same board.
• All eight examples share four habits: the objective carries a number, a baseline and a date; the audience is a situation, not an age range; the budget splits media from production; the timeline runs backward from a fixed launch date.
• A campaign brief says what the campaign must achieve, a creative brief says what the work must say, and a media brief says where and when it runs. In Storyflow, the three sit on three walls of one client board.
• Briefs fail more often than their writers think: in findings from 508 UK marketers and agency staff that BetterBriefs and the IPA published in 2022, 73% of UK agencies said the briefs they receive from clients are not good enough (IPA).
• In ChatGPT or Claude, the Storyflow plugin or connector turns intake notes into the eight-line table on the board. The numbers, the insight and the sign-off stay yours.

How to Write a Campaign Brief for a Client: 8 Steps

The examples further down are finished briefs. These are the steps that produced them, in the order that keeps the client's decisions in the client's hands.

1. Run a 40-minute intake call with the person who owns the budget, not only the day-to-day contact, and paste the raw notes into a doc on a new Storyflow board for the client.
2. Write the objective first, with a number, a baseline and a date: "4,000 first orders by 30 June, from zero." If the client cannot give a number, the brief is not ready, and the open question goes on the board as a to-do with an owner.
3. Describe the audience as a situation the client's customers are in ("returned two moisturisers this year"), not an age band. Storyflow's in-app AI has a Profile my target audience workflow that drafts a first pass from the notes on the board.
4. Write the insight as a tension the audience would recognise, then the single message as one sentence they could repeat to a friend. One message per brief; a second message is a second campaign.
5. List the deliverables as a table on the same Storyflow board, one row per asset: channel, format, quantity, due date, owner.
6. Split the budget into working media (what buys reach) and production (what makes the work), with fees and contingency on their own lines.
7. Build the timeline backward from the launch date, with a sign-off date for every stage. In Storyflow, that is a table with date cells, rows kept in date order.
8. Set three to five KPIs with a baseline, a target and a date, then share the wall by view link. Record the client's sign-off in a note with their name and the date, and export a dated PDF of the board as the record.

For the intake call itself, how to run a project kickoff covers the agenda, and how to write a campaign brief for a client walks the nine sections at length. This guide is the library of finished examples.

A studio running several clients keeps one card per brief, so nobody has to ask which version is signed. Studio Jules and its clients are fictional.

The Storyflow 8-Line Brief Rule

Most brief templates add fields until nobody fills them in. The rule below caps the brief at the decisions that cannot be made by anyone but the client.

The rule, defined

The Storyflow 8-Line Brief Rule: before any creative work starts, the client signs eight lines (objective, audience, insight, single message, deliverables, budget, timeline, KPIs), each answered in one sentence or one short table, on one wall of the Storyflow board where the work will happen. It is our editorial recommendation, built from production logic rather than from research. Everything else the agency needs goes in a linked doc on the same board, where it can be as long as it has to be.

Why eight lines and not twelve

The encyclopaedia summary of the creative brief lists 13 components: background, target audience, a profile of the typical user, key insight, objectives, single message, desired customer behaviour, tone of voice, mandatories, deliverables, timeline, budget and approvals. Take away the four that are not decisions (background is context, tone usually lives in the brand guidelines, mandatories are fixed rules, and approvals are the sign-off note itself), fold the user profile into the audience and the desired behaviour into the objective, split the objective from how it is measured, and eight decisions remain, each with a client behind it. Each of the eight also feeds a later document: objective and KPIs feed the wrap report, audience, insight and message feed the creative brief, and deliverables, budget and timeline feed the production plan and the media brief.

Why the lines must be one line

A one-line answer cannot hedge. "Raise awareness among young professionals" survives a long paragraph and dies in a single line, because a single line shows there is no number in it. The same IPA and BetterBriefs findings show that only 6% of UK agencies were clear on the strategic direction in client briefs and only 38% of creative agencies were clear on the target group (IPA and BetterBriefs). Short lines are where vagueness has nowhere to hide.

What stays off the eight lines

Background, research, brand guidelines, past results and legal rules stay off the wall and in a doc beside it. Mandatories get their own note under the eight lines, because they are not choices: a calorie count, a donation receipt rule, a disclosure on creator posts. The examples below carry a mandatories line for exactly that reason.

When to break the rule

A small internal job (a single social post, an email) needs four lines: objective, audience, message, due date. A public tender or an RFP comes in the client's own format, so answer their questions in their order and keep the eight lines as your internal check. A brand platform or rebrand is not a campaign at all; it needs a brand strategy, not a campaign brief.

The brief sits in the first wall, so every later wall can be checked against it. The label is fictional.

Campaign Brief vs Creative Brief vs Media Brief

A campaign brief sets what the campaign must achieve, a creative brief sets what the work must say, and a media brief sets where and when it runs; in Storyflow, write all three on three walls of one client board so each inherits the lines above it.

Which one the client writes

The client writes, or at least signs, the campaign brief, because only the client can commit the budget and the objective. The agency writes the creative brief from it, and in a well-run account the client signs that too. The media brief is written by whoever buys the media; media planning turns the objective into a channel mix, reach, frequency and scheduling.

How the three hand off

The handoff fails when a line changes in one document and not the others. If the budget drops from $180,000 to $140,000, the deliverables in the creative brief and the flight dates in the media brief both have to move. On one Storyflow board the three walls sit side by side, so the change is visible in one place; campaign brief vs creative brief goes deeper on the first two.

Objectives, insight and creative direction share one board with the shot list that comes later. Vireo Apparel is fictional.

How to Read the Eight Examples

Every example below is fictional: invented clients, invented agencies, illustrative budgets in US dollars. The structure is the point. Each brief follows the eight lines, adds a mandatories line, and ends with what makes it work and how it sits on a Storyflow board.

Read the one closest to your client first, then read the one furthest from it. The furthest one usually shows the line your own brief is weakest on.

Example 1: DTC Skincare Launch Brief

Sola Skin, a direct-to-consumer skincare brand with one bestselling cleanser, is launching a barrier-repair moisturiser. The agency is a six-person social studio. The client's own customer emails supplied the insight: most complaints about other brands were about stinging, not results.

Mandatories: no claim that the product treats a skin condition, because claims to treat or prevent disease can make a cosmetic a drug in FDA's reading of intended use. Every creator video carries a disclosure in the video itself, in words and on screen, as the FTC's guide for influencers asks.

What makes it work

The insight names a behaviour the client can verify in its own returns data, and the mandatories line stops the one claim that would turn a cosmetic launch into a regulatory problem.

How it sits on the board

In Storyflow, give each creator a doc on the brief wall with their three videos, the message and the disclosure wording, so a creator brief is a copy of one doc rather than a new document. The static ads get Facebook's feed ratio written into the deliverables table: as of November 2026, Facebook's ads guide recommends 4:5 at 1440 x 1800 pixels with a 27-character headline. For the creator side of this brief, the influencer campaign plan and the UGC brief template carry the detail.

Example 2: B2B Software Pipeline Brief

Ledgerline sells accounts-payable software to companies of 200 to 2,000 staff. Pipeline has been flat at about 180 sales-qualified opportunities a quarter for a year. The client wants a campaign that sales can use, not a brand film.

Mandatories: every number in an ad comes from the report's own survey, with the sample size stated on the asset. No competitor named.

What makes it work

It funds a reason to talk (the benchmark report) as well as the ads that capture demand, so the campaign reaches controllers who are not in market this quarter. Binet and Field's analysis for the IPA put the optimum budget split between brand building and activation at 60:40 in The Long and the Short of It (2013) and at 62:38 in Effectiveness in Context (2018) (IPA). Those figures are not specific to B2B, so read them as a direction for Ledgerline rather than a target; the direction is that a brief which spends everything on capture has nothing working on next quarter's buyers.

How it sits on the board

In Storyflow, the report outline is a doc on the brief wall, and the survey questions sit in a table next to it so the creative team can see which finding each ad will use. Sales enablement gets its own wall: six email templates as docs, one per stage. The marketing brief template has the same fields for an in-house team without an agency.

Example 3: Restaurant Group Opening Brief

Sorrel & Ash runs three neighbourhood restaurants and opens a fourth in eight weeks, in an area with bars but few sit-down dinner places. The agency is Harbourline Studio, a four-person studio, and this brief is the one the worked example later in this guide builds from intake notes.

Mandatories: calories do not have to appear on menu assets, because FDA's menu labelling rule covers chains with 20 or more locations (FDA); the brief notes this so the design does not have to change if the group grows. Waitlist emails carry a physical address and an opt-out honoured within 10 business days (FTC CAN-SPAM guide).

What makes it work

The objective counts covers, which the restaurant's booking system already records, so nobody argues about measurement after opening. A follower target would have been easier to hit and impossible to connect to revenue.

How it sits on the board

In Storyflow, the 20 dishes are rows in a table on the brief wall (dish, chef's note, plate, shoot order), and the shoot cannot be booked until the chef marks every row final. The campaign timeline template holds the eight weeks.

A shoot that depends on a final menu gets its own stages on the board, so the date only moves when the brief allows it.

Example 4: Nonprofit Year-End Appeal Brief

Wrenfield Food Bank raised $360,000 from 3,100 donors last December. Its development director wants more donors back, not just bigger gifts, and the board has approved a modest budget.

Mandatories: every gift of $250 or more gets a written acknowledgment that names the organisation and the amount and says whether any goods or services were given in return (IRS). Stories use first names only, with written consent from each family.

What makes it work

The insight comes from why donors lapse, so the creative has to report results before it asks again. The deliverables follow: a thank-you card is a campaign asset here, not an afterthought.

How it sits on the board

In Storyflow, the letter is a doc, the reply card is a second doc, and each family story is a note with its consent status beside it. The thank-you sequence gets its own wall, because it runs after the campaign ends and is the part most often forgotten.

Example 5: Retail Seasonal Brief

Hollis & Hearth, a homeware retailer with 22 stores and an online shop, sold $13.7M between 1 November and 31 December last year. This year's brief sets a target against the market, not just against last year.

Mandatories: every price and promotion date checked by the client's legal team before print; every product shown in stock at all 22 stores on 1 November.

What makes it work

The target is defended against a market number: the National Retail Federation forecast 4.2% growth for November and December 2026 ([NRF](https://nrf.com/media-center/press-releases/nrf-forecasts-2026-holiday-sales-growth-as-consumers-remain-resilient)), so 6% is an argument for share, not a guess. It also uses NRF's own season dates, 1 November to 31 December, so the read-out compares like with like.

How it sits on the board

In Storyflow, the film and its cutdowns are three rows in the deliverables table, each with its slot: as of November 2026, YouTube's ad formats cap bumper ads at 6 seconds and run non-skippable ads at 15 or 20 seconds depending on region, so the 6-second cut gets its own row and its own edit. The point-of-sale print date is the hardest deadline on the board, so it sits at the top of the timeline table.

Budget lines, deliverables and dates sit on neighbouring walls, so a change to one is visible next to the others. Vireo Apparel is fictional.

Example 6: App Launch Brief

Pairfold is a budgeting app for couples, launching on both app stores after a closed beta. The founders have a small budget and one strong number from the beta: couples who linked both partners' accounts in week one were still using it a month later.

Mandatories: creator videos disclosed in the video and on screen (FTC); no savings figures in any ad unless the beta data supports them.

What makes it work

The objective measures the behaviour that predicts retention (a linked partner), not just installs, so the creative has to show two people using the app.

How it sits on the board

In Storyflow, the 12 creator videos are rows in a table with date cells, rows kept in date order, beside a doc with the hook each creator tests. Vertical video for TikTok in-feed ads runs at 9:16 with at least 540 x 960 pixels as of November 2026 (TikTok). The product launch planner shows the launch side of the same board.

A launch brief turns into phases and tasks on the same board, so the brief stays visible from the first to-do to the last.

Example 7: Local Service Business Brief

Brackenford Plumbing runs nine vans and wants more planned work. Emergency call-outs pay the bills, but water heater replacements carry the margin, and they are 15% of revenue today.

Mandatories: the client's licence number on every asset, per the client's own legal check; the booking page asks only for name, phone, address and heater age.

What makes it work

The office call script is a deliverable, because the campaign is judged on booked jobs and a booking happens on the phone. The SBA's marketing guidance makes the same point from the other side: compare what marketing costs with the sales it brings in (SBA).

How it sits on the board

In Storyflow, the call script is a doc on the brief wall, and a weekly to-do assigned to the office manager logs booked jobs in a table, so the KPI is counted where the brief is. That is the whole reporting system for a business of nine vans.

Example 8: Music Release Brief

Hollow Pines, an indie folk band, releases its second album through a small label. The first album found its audience slowly, through a single that listeners shared. The label's marketing manager writes the brief; the band signs it too.

Mandatories: every recording delivered with its ISRC, the 12-character code that identifies a recording rather than the song; the radio edit and the album version each need their own (ISRC).

What makes it work

The share card is a deliverable, because the insight says the album spreads person to person, so the brief pays for the thing people send.

How it sits on the board

In Storyflow, a release table carries one row per recording with its ISRC, artwork status and delivery date, so a missing code is visible before the distributor deadline. The album release plan holds the 16 weeks.

A rollout of singles, teasers and videos reads best as a pipeline, one card per asset, beside the brief that set the order.

What the Eight Examples Have in Common

Eight industries, one pattern. These are the habits that make a brief signable, and the ones to check first when yours is not.

The objective has a number, a baseline and a date

All eight objectives say how many, compared with what, by when. "4,000 first orders by 30 June, from zero" can be checked on 1 July. In the IPA and BetterBriefs findings, only 30% of UK marketers said they had clear evaluation criteria for the work coming off a brief (IPA); a number in the objective is the first of those criteria.

The audience is a situation

None of the eight audiences is a demographic alone. "Controllers whose close runs past day seven" tells a copywriter what to say; "finance professionals 35 to 55" tells them nothing. Write the situation first and add the age band only if the media buy needs it.

The insight is a tension the client recognises

Each insight is a sentence the client nods at in the meeting: "they inherit it", "nowhere to sit down", "permission to stop searching". If the client has to be talked into the insight, it is an opinion, not an insight, and it belongs in the research doc until customers confirm it.

The budget splits what buys reach from what makes the work

Every budget line separates working media from production and fees. The split matters because the two move differently: cut production and the work gets worse, cut media and fewer people see it. The client should choose which, on the record.

The timeline runs backward from a date that cannot move

An opening night, 1 November, a release date, a quarter end: each timeline starts from a date that cannot move and counts back to the sign-off. A timeline that starts from today and runs forward hides the spare days nobody has; the rules for writing it follow in the next section.

Campaign Brief Template: The Blank Wall, Filled for Harbourline Studio

Copy the columns, not the answers. The rows below are Harbourline Studio's brief for Sorrel & Ash (Example 3), with the owner and sign-off for each line, so you can see who answers what.

The campaign brief template page has the board version, and the creative brief template has the fields that come next.

Worked Example: Harbourline Studio, From Intake Call to Signed Brief

The team and client are fictional. The order of work is the point: notes first, eight lines second, gaps third, sign-off last.

Day 1: the intake call

Harbourline's account lead runs a 40-minute call with the Sorrel & Ash owner and the general manager of the new site. The notes go straight into a doc on a new Storyflow board named for the client, unedited, including the owner's line that "people round there have nowhere to go for dinner". That line becomes the insight four days later.

Day 2: the eight lines from the notes

The strategist asks the in-app AI for a campaign brief from the notes doc, using the Brief my campaign workflow. It asks two clarifying questions (the opening date and whether the budget includes the opening event), then writes a draft straight onto the board, which the strategist keeps and edits down to eight lines. The objective in the draft says "drive awareness of the new location", so the strategist rewrites it with the number the owner gave on the call: 1,200 covers in 14 days.

Day 3: the gaps become to-dos

Three lines are not ready: the insight has no source, the budget has no split, and the shoot date depends on a menu that is not final. Each becomes a to-do on the board with an assignee and a due date. The strategist books 30 short conversations with residents to test the insight; the producer gets the budget split from the owner.

Day 4: deliverables, budget and timeline as tables

The producer turns the deliverables into a table (asset, channel, format, quantity, due date, owner) and the timeline into a second table with date cells, rows kept in date order, counting back from opening week. The print date moves to week 5 after the printer quotes a ten-day turnaround.

Day 5: sign-off and the next walls

The owner opens the board by view link, signs in to comment, asks for one change (the opening event budget drops by $1,000 and paid social rises by $1,000), and approves. The account lead writes the sign-off note (name, role, date, the one change) and exports a dated PDF of the board. The creative brief goes on wall 2 and the media brief on wall 3, both drafted from wall 1, and the production plan follows from the signed brief on the same board.

Day columns with a checklist each: the same day-by-day shape as Harbourline's five days, from the intake call to the signed brief.

Writing the Lines Clients Push Back On: KPIs, Budget and Timeline

The objective, budget, timeline and KPIs are the four lines a client edits most, because they are the four that commit money. Write them so the edit is a choice, not a correction.

A KPI has a baseline, a target and a date

"Engagement up" is not a KPI. "Repeat bookings within 30 days: 25% of week-one diners, against 19% at the third site" is. Three to five KPIs is enough; with more, nobody knows which one decides whether the campaign worked. Put the primary KPI first and write which system counts it (the booking system, the store tills, the donations database).

Activity is not an outcome

Posts published, emails sent and impressions served measure the agency's work, not the client's result. Keep them in the media brief as delivery checks, and keep the campaign brief's KPIs for results the client's own systems record.

Budget lines: working, non-working and contingency

Split the budget at least three ways: working media (paid placements that buy reach), production and fees (photography, video, design, creators, agency time), and contingency (5 to 10% held back, released only by the client). The Vireo Apparel plan in the board above holds a $1,000 contingency inside a $20,000 total for exactly this reason. Agree in the brief who can spend the contingency.

Timelines: count back from the fixed date

Write the fixed date first, then the hardest supplier deadline (the printer, the venue, the distributor), then every sign-off date. Give the client two review rounds per stage and put the round dates in the table. In Storyflow, a timeline is a table with date cells, rows kept in date order; there is no calendar view, so the table is the schedule.

The single message test

Read the single message to someone outside the account. If they repeat it back in different words that mean the same thing, it is one message. If they ask "which is it?", it is two, and one of them goes.

Tone comes from the brand; the single message comes from the brief. Keeping both on one board stops the message drifting into a tagline. Acme is fictional.

Do This in ChatGPT or Claude

You can run most of this from a chat. ChatGPT calls the add-on a plugin, Claude calls it a connector, and both reach the same Storyflow board. This route runs on your assistant's plan and uses no Storyflow AI credits; it is separate from the in-app AI in the worked example above.

Install in ChatGPT

Open the Storyflow listing in ChatGPT and select Install plugin, sign in to Storyflow, and choose which projects ChatGPT may use. Read access is always on; you decide whether it may also make changes. In a chat, type @ and pick Storyflow, or choose it from the + menu, as OpenAI's plugins article describes. Availability depends on your ChatGPT plan, workspace and region, and in a Business or Enterprise workspace an admin manages plugins. The connection ends after 30 days, and ChatGPT asks you to sign in again. The ChatGPT campaign plan and ChatGPT creative brief pages show this job in ChatGPT.

Connect in Claude

In Claude, go to Customize, then Connectors, choose Add, then Add custom connector, name it Storyflow and enter https://mcp.storyflow.so/mcp, then sign in, as Anthropic's custom connector article describes. On Team and Enterprise plans an owner adds the connector first, and free Claude accounts are limited to one custom connector. Setup for every assistant is on the Storyflow MCP page, and the Claude campaign plan page shows the job in Claude.

Prompts to copy

Pick Storyflow first, then paste. Replace Sorrel & Ash with your client.

1. "Read the intake notes doc on my Sorrel & Ash board and write a table on a new wall called Brief v1 with eight rows: objective, audience, insight, single message, deliverables, budget, timeline, KPIs. Use only what the notes say."
2. "For every row in Brief v1 that the notes do not fully answer, add a note under the table with the question I need to ask the client."
3. "Rewrite the objective row so it has a number, a baseline and a date, and keep the old wording in a note beside it."
4. "Build a deliverables table on the same wall with columns Asset, Channel, Format, Quantity, Due date and Owner, one row per asset in the notes."
5. "Make a timeline table with a date column, counting back from an opening on 14 May, with a sign-off date for each stage, rows in date order."
6. "Add a to-do for each open question, due this Friday."
7. "What changed on my Sorrel & Ash board since Monday, and who changed it?"
8. In Claude: "Read the client's attached RFP PDF and list, in a note on my board, every requirement that maps to one of the eight brief lines, with the page number."

What lands on the board

Tables, notes, docs, walls and to-dos appear on the board, where the client can open them by view link. The plugin can set a due date when you give one; it cannot set a to-do's assignee, but it can fill a table's Owner column with people who already have access to the board (if any name matches nobody, the whole column becomes plain text with the names as written). A photo attached in a ChatGPT chat does not reach Storyflow, so ask for the upload link. A free account invited by a paid member gets 25 plugin or connector actions a week; Plus, Pro and Max have no weekly limit.

What to check by hand

Check every number against what the client said, because the assistant writes what the notes say and the notes can be wrong. Check the insight with real customers. Check the legal lines with whoever owns them. The sign-off note is yours to write, with the client's name and the date. For the full chat route, see how to write a campaign brief with ChatGPT or Claude.

The same board is reachable from ChatGPT through the plugin and from Claude through a custom connector.

Draft the Lines With Storyflow's In-App AI

The in-app AI is a different route from the chat plugin: it lives inside Storyflow, uses Storyflow AI credits, and needs a paid plan. It suits the moment you have notes on a board and want a first draft beside them.

What to put on the board first

The AI reads the current board plus up to five documents and three other boards you attach. Put the intake notes, the client's last campaign report and the brand guidelines on the board or attach them, and it drafts from those instead of from general knowledge. It can also search the web when you ask, which helps for a market number like the NRF forecast in Example 5.

What it drafts

The Brief my campaign workflow asks a clarifying question or two, then writes a brief straight onto the board; if it misses, one undo reverses the whole turn. Profile my target audience drafts an audience profile from the same notes. From a signed board, ask for a designed creative brief, a one-pager or a .docx file of the brief for a client who wants a document. In Storyflow's own recorded run, turning messy notes into an organised board took about 3 minutes, against an estimated 45 minutes by hand.

What you still decide

The draft will not know the number the client has in their head, the insight only customers can confirm, or which line the client will fight. Cut it to eight lines, rewrite the objective with a number, and leave the open questions as to-dos with owners.

Where to Build It: Storyflow vs Docs, Decks, Forms and Project Apps

Storyflow is our product, and it is listed first on one basis: a campaign brief turns into creative and production work, and on a Storyflow board the eight lines, the references and the plan sit together. The other approaches follow by the job each does best.

Storyflow board

Best at keeping the brief where the work happens: the eight lines on wall 1, the creative brief and media brief on walls 2 and 3, the deliverables and timeline as tables, and the client on a view link. Real limit: it runs in a browser, has no e-signature, and the schedule is a table rather than a calendar. Choose it when the brief has to survive into the shoot, the edit and the report on one project.

A shared doc

Best at long-form text the client's lawyers can redline. Real limit: a doc holds words well and everything else badly, so the references, the deliverables tracker and the schedule end up in three other files, and the doc is never opened again after sign-off. Choose a shared doc, to send procurement a redlined brief, when the client's process requires one; keep the working version on the board.

A slide deck

Best at presenting the brief back to a room, which is a good habit: reading the brief aloud surfaces the line nobody agrees on. Real limit: decks get copied, emailed and edited out of sync. Choose a slide deck, to present the signed brief to a client board, when the audience reads only decks; in Storyflow, presentation mode steps through the walls fullscreen, and decks export as PDF.

An intake form

Best at collecting the same answers from many clients in the same order. Real limit: a form cannot ask a follow-up, so "raise awareness" goes in unchallenged. Choose an intake form, to collect first answers before the call, when you handle many small briefs a month.

A project management app

Best at tasks, dependencies and charts of who does what when. Real limit: the brief becomes the description field of a parent task. Choose a project management app, to run the hundred tasks after the brief is signed, when the campaign needs dependencies and a critical path, which Storyflow does not have.

Campaign Brief Mistakes and Fixes

Each of these turns up in briefs that looked finished. Each has a fix that takes minutes before sign-off and days after it.

An objective with no number

"Raise awareness" cannot be met or missed. The fix: ask the client what number would make them renew the agency, and write that.

An audience written as a demographic

"Women 25 to 45" describes half the media plan and none of the copy. The fix: write the situation the audience is in, then the age band if the media buy needs it.

Two messages in the single-message line

"Natural and affordable" is two campaigns. The fix: ask which one the client would keep if the budget halved, and keep that one.

A deliverables list with no formats

"Social assets" leads to a reshoot when someone asks for 9:16. The fix: one row per asset with channel, format and quantity, as in every example above.

A budget with no split

A single total lets every stage assume it has the money. The fix: working media, production and fees, and contingency as separate lines, with the contingency owner named.

A timeline with no sign-off dates

Deadlines for the agency and none for the client is how launches slip. The fix: a sign-off date for every client review, in the same table as the agency dates.

KPIs that count activity

"40 posts published" is a delivery check. The fix: KPIs the client's own systems record (orders, covers, donors, booked jobs).

Mandatories left in someone's head

The disclosure rule, the receipt rule and the licence number get forgotten until the legal check. The fix: a mandatories note under the eight lines, with the source of each rule.

Sign-off by thumbs-up in an email thread

Nobody can find it in week six. The fix: a sign-off note on the board with name, role and date, plus a dated PDF export of the board.

Storyflow's Honest Limits for Client Briefs

Storyflow earns its place when the brief has to become a plan on the same project. Here is what it does not do for this job.

What it lacks

• Signatures and paperwork: no e-signature, proposals, contracts or invoices. Sign-off is a note with name and date plus a dated PDF export.
• Scheduling: no calendar view, no timeline chart, no dependencies and no time tracking. Dates live in table date cells, with rows kept in date order.
• Versions: no version compare and no frame-level approval status. Export a dated PDF at each sign-off.
• Publishing: no social post scheduling or publishing. If the job is scheduling and auto-publishing the campaign's posts, use a social scheduler.
• Device and export: browser only, with no native desktop or phone app, and no PPTX export; decks present fullscreen and export as PDF.
• Plans: Storyflow is paid-only during early access, with Plus at $7.99 a month billed annually ($9.99 monthly). Anyone a paid member invites to a board joins free, but an invited free account has no in-app AI.

What stays yours

Storyflow's position is plain: "We will never add AI video generation. The creative work stays yours." The AI will draft lines and tables from your notes. Whether the insight is true, whether the number is right and whether the client means it are judgments only you and the client can make.

The Bottom Line

The eight examples cover eight industries and use the same eight lines. That is the lesson: a client campaign brief is not a form to fill but a set of decisions to get signed, and every one of them can be written in a sentence. A brief is finished when the client has signed a number, not when the template is full. Build it in Storyflow on the board where the work will happen, with the eight lines on the first wall and the creative brief, media brief and plan beside it, starting from the brief to project board flow, and the next stage starts from what was signed rather than from memory.