Every section of the brief,
and what each one is for.

Background and business problem: Three to five sentences on what is actually happening: the product, the market position, what changed, and why this project exists now. Not a company history. The test is whether a freelancer who has never met the client could read it and understand what is at stake commercially.

The objective, stated so you could tell whether it happened: What has to change, in the world, because this work exists. Not 'raise awareness'. Something closer to 'get lapsed subscribers to open the app once in January'. If you cannot describe the evidence you would accept as proof, it is not an objective yet. And a brief with three objectives has none, so pick.

The audience, as a person: Everyone aged 18 to 65 means the brief has not been written. Name what they currently believe, what they do instead, and what would have to be true for them to change. A creative team can write to one recognisable person and cannot write to a bracket.

The one insight underneath it: One line about that person that is true, slightly uncomfortable, and not already being said by a competitor. This is the hinge between the audience section and the proposition, and it is the line most briefs skip.

One thing, written as one sentence: The single-minded proposition is the one thought you want left in someone's head afterwards, in plain language, with no 'and'. It is worth a whole meeting on its own. Teams that skip that meeting spend the equivalent time later in rounds of work that are each half right.

The discipline of cutting to one: Every stakeholder has a message they want in. Six messages produce work that says nothing, because attention is not divisible. Put the rejected messages in a visible parked list on the canvas rather than deleting them, so people can see their point was heard and consciously set aside.

Reasons to believe: Three or four pieces of evidence that make the proposition credible: the ingredient, the guarantee, the test result, the fifteen-year track record. If the reasons-to-believe box is thin, the proposition is a claim, and the board shows you that before the client does.

Tone and brand personality: How it should sound and feel, expressed with references rather than adjectives alone. Attach two things it should feel like and one thing it must never feel like. The negative example does more useful work than three positive ones.

Mandatories and constraints: Legal lines, regulatory claims you cannot make, logo and clear-space rules, licensing on music and talent, the budget ceiling, and anything the client has already promised a retailer. Mandatories are where projects die when they surface late, so surface them in the brief.

Deliverables and specs: Every asset, with format, aspect ratio, duration, language versions, and where it runs. A brief that says 'social assets' will produce an argument about whether that included nine-by-sixteen cutdowns, and that argument always happens on the last day.

Timings and key dates: Not just the delivery date. The date the concepts are presented, the date feedback is consolidated, the date the legal review closes, and the date after which nothing changes. Reviewers behave differently when they can see which slot is theirs.

Who approves it: Name the people, not the departments, and cap the list. A brief nobody signs is a wish list. Signing is what converts the document from an opinion into the thing the work is measured against, and it is the section most often left blank.

The brief is what the work gets judged against: That only functions if people can see it while they judge. In Storyflow the brief sits on the same infinite canvas as the moodboard, the campaign board, and the finished creative, so 'is this on brief' is a question you answer by scrolling rather than by opening a folder.

References live in the brief, not attached to it: Drag in images, PDFs, decks, links, and frames from YouTube or Vimeo. The reference sits next to the section it explains. A Word file with eleven attachments is a brief that nobody reads past page one.

Feedback lands on the line it is about: Comments attach to the specific block, so a note about the proposition stays on the proposition. Nobody reconciles an email thread against paragraph numbers, and the approval history stays with the brief.

Share it without exporting it: Send a view-only link and a client or freelancer opens the full brief in a browser with no account. Export to image or PDF when someone's process demands a document, while the canvas stays the live version.