Your creative brief was 3 pages long. Full of brand guidelines, target demographics, and strategic objectives.

The creator delivered exactly what you didn't want.

Here's why: Creative briefs aren't instruction manuals. They're inspiration engines.

Most briefs kill creativity with overthinking:

Result? Creators spend more time checking boxes than creating breakthrough concepts.

🎯 One Objective (Maximum) Bad: "Increase awareness, drive conversions, build brand affinity" Good: "Get people to click and visit our product page"

🎯 One Emotional Goal Bad: "Appeal to health-conscious millennials" Good: "Make them feel frustrated with their current solution"

🎯 One Success Metric Bad: "High engagement and brand recall" Good: "CTR above 2.5%"

1. The Context (One sentence) "People are struggling with [specific problem] and current solutions [specific failure]"

2. The Objective (One sentence) "Get them to [specific action] by making them feel [specific emotion]"

3. The Key Message (One sentence) "[Product] helps [target] achieve [specific outcome] unlike [alternative]"

4. The Proof Point (One sentence) "We can prove this works because [specific evidence/social proof]"

5. The Inspiration (Reference examples) "Style reference: [link to similar creative that worked]"

The more constraints you give creators, the less creative they become. But zero constraints leads to chaos.

Sweet spot: Crystal clear objective + complete creative freedom on execution.

Can someone read your brief in under 2 minutes and immediately know:

If not, simplify until they can.

Your turn: How long is your current creative brief template?