Write the campaign brief
everyone builds from.

Ten sections cover almost every campaign: background in a few lines, the business objective with a number, the target audience described as people, the insight, the single-minded message, the deliverables with format, length and channel, the mandatories such as logo rules and legal lines, the budget split between production and media, the dates including the client's review days, and how success is measured and who approves. List what the client has not decided yet rather than leaving it out.

A campaign brief covers the whole campaign: the business objective, audience, message, channels and media, budget, timing and measurement. A creative brief is the part written for the people making the work: the insight, the proposition, the tone, the mandatories and the deliverables. On a small campaign one document does both jobs. On a larger one the campaign brief is signed with the client first, and the creative brief is written from it for the creative team.

Often the terms are used interchangeably, but a marketing brief can be broader. A campaign brief describes one campaign with a start and an end. A marketing brief might cover a product launch across several campaigns, a quarter of activity, or a brief to an agency for an ongoing retainer. The sections are largely the same: objective, audience, message, deliverables, budget, dates and approval. What changes is the scope, so state it in the first line of the brief.

The deliverables list becomes the production plan. Give every deliverable a row with its specs, an owner, a due date and a status, then work back from delivery through edit, shoot or build, pre-production and client reviews, with the client's feedback deadlines as real dates. Note dependencies, such as copy approval before design. In Storyflow the AI drafts that plan on the same board as the signed brief, so a change to the brief sits beside the plan it affects.

Short enough that the client reads all of it before signing, which usually means the decisions fit on one screen or one page. Supporting material does not need to be cut; it needs to sit behind the decisions. Audience research, brand guidelines, competitor examples and the detailed budget belong in attached sections or nested boards that someone opens when needed. A long brief with the objective on page four is a common reason a team builds the wrong thing.

One named person on the client side with the authority to say yes to the work, plus the agency or team lead accountable for delivering it. Write both names in the brief. Feedback can come from many people, but approval cannot, otherwise the campaign is steered by whoever replies last. Approve the brief before concepts begin, because every concept answers the brief, and changing the question afterwards wastes the concepts already drawn.

Storyflow is built for a brief that has to carry references and become the production plan: the template, the moodboard, the budget table and the plan sit on one board, the AI drafts and checks the brief, and the client reads it by link without an account. Google Docs is the right choice for a text brief that legal will redline, Notion for filing many briefs in a searchable database, and Miro for running the briefing as a live workshop.

AI drafts one well from real material and is poor at inventing one from nothing. Give it the client's email, call notes, a deck or last year's brief and it structures the sections, pulls out the objective and audience, and marks what the client has not decided. In Storyflow the AI reads the whole board, so it can check the brief against the research there. It proposes; the objective, the message and what goes to the client stay your call.

Write each objective as a metric, a baseline, a target and a date, and name where the number will come from. Lifting trial sign-ups from the current monthly figure to a stated target by the end of the campaign, measured in the client's analytics, is an objective. Brand awareness is a topic. Keep to one primary objective and at most two secondary ones, and check that the brief's deliverables and channels can plausibly move the number you chose.

Most free templates come as Word or Google Docs files, and they are fine for a text-only brief. The limitation is that references, budget and dates end up in separate files. Storyflow's template is a board, which keeps them together, and it still produces documents when someone needs one: export the board as a PDF, or ask the AI to turn the brief into a Word file that procurement or legal can redline.

Not yet. Storyflow is paid-only during early access, with plans from $7.99 a month billed annually ($9.99 monthly). A free plan launches before the end of 2026, and anyone a paid member invites to a board joins free. Clients reading a brief through a view-only link never need an account, so briefing a client or bringing in a freelancer is not a cost decision.