Write the creative brief, share it,
and plan the production from it.

A creative brief is the agreement, made before work starts, about what a piece of creative work has to achieve, for whom, and within what limits. It records what the work has to do and how success is measured, who it is for, the one thing it must say and why that is believable, the tone, the exact deliverables, the mandatories, who signs it off, the dates and the budget. It stops competently made work from answering the wrong question.

Ten things cover almost every job: what the work has to do and how success will be measured; who it is for; the single thing it must say; the reasons to believe it; the tone, shown with examples; the deliverables, with format, length, quantity and where each runs; the mandatories; who signs it off; the dates, including when feedback is due; and the budget. Each field should be specific enough that a reasonable person could disagree with it.

Write what the work has to do first, narrow enough that you could fail at it. Then work backwards: who has to change their mind, what single idea would change it and what proof makes it credible. Show the tone with three examples rather than adjectives. Specify the deliverables exactly, name the approver, add the dates and the budget, and list what is still unconfirmed. Then have someone who will make the work mark anything they cannot act on.

Share one live version by link rather than an attachment. In Storyflow the client opens the brief from a view-only link with no account and signs in to comment beside the part they question. Name the approver inside the brief, ask for sign-off by a date, and record who approved it and when. Once a brief exists as several emailed files, two people can approve different versions, and nobody notices until the first draft of the work arrives.

Give everyone one template with the same parts in the same order, and make three of them non-optional: the deliverables spec, the approver and the dates. In Storyflow that is one brief board you duplicate for every new job, so each brief has the same parts and tables. Review briefs before work starts, not after. For a searchable archive of every brief with properties and filters, a database tool such as Notion or Airtable does that better.

It depends on how much of the brief is visual. A text-only brief with tracked wording changes works well in Google Docs or Word. A brief for a shoot, a campaign or a brand job keeps half its meaning in references, which a document pushes into a drifting attachment. In Storyflow the brief can be a Doc on the board, with the tone examples and the production plan beside it. Either way, the client reads one live version.

The brief says what and why; the production plan says how, who and when. The brief covers what the work has to do, for whom, what it must say, what is made, who signs it off, and its budget and dates. The plan covers phases, owners, dates, approvals, dependencies and spend. The client agrees the brief and it rarely changes; the team updates the plan weekly. On one board, every plan change can be checked against the brief.

Six things: the scope, taken from the brief's deliverables; the phases, worked back from the delivery date; an owner for every phase and task; the approval points, each with a date; the dependencies, meaning what the client owes you and by when; and the budget, with each line tied to a deliverable. In Storyflow those sit beside the brief in a table with date, person and status cells and in tickets with assignees and due dates.

It can write a first draft to react to, which beats filling empty fields. Storyflow's AI drafts a brief from the client's email, notes or document as a Doc or as cards, reads the whole board, lists what the brief leaves unanswered and builds the production plan from it. It cannot know the client's real objective or the unwritten constraint, so rewrite what the work has to do and who it is for yourself. It proposes; you decide.

Yes, at least as a range. A brief for a film with no budget invites a concept the client cannot afford, and the rejection costs a round. With the budget in the brief, scope and cost are agreed together, and a later request can be checked against both. In Storyflow the budget is a table beside the brief with a Sum row under the cost column. Accounting, invoicing and detailed production budgeting stay in the tools built for them.

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. A client reading a brief from a view-only link needs no account at all. Plus includes unlimited boards, images, files and links and the AI that drafts briefs and plans; Pro adds AI image generation.