Top 10 Creative Brief Templates for Marketing Managers

A Creative Brief acts as a roadmap for marketing projects, aligning the team on objectives, target audience, message, and logistical details, ensuring a coherent and targeted strategy. Using a Creative Brief Notion template streamlines this process by pre-organizing essential elements such as goals, deliverables, budget, and timelines in a centralized, easily accessible format. Before diving into creating your own Creative Brief, it's worthwhile to explore these Notion templates to simplify and enhance your planning process.

What Should Creative Brief Templates Include?

Choosing the right Creative Brief Template is crucial for streamlining your marketing projects. Here are key components to look for in an effective template:

Project Objectives: Clearly defined goals help ensure that all team members understand what the project aims to achieve.
Target Audience: A section dedicated to detailing who the campaign is aimed at, including demographics and psychographics.
Key Messages: Highlight the core messages that need to be conveyed through the marketing campaign.
Budget and Timeline: Comprehensive breakdowns of the budget and project timelines keep everyone on track and accountable.

Selecting a template with these components will help you manage campaigns more effectively and align your team towards common objectives.

What Should Creative Brief Templates Avoid?

Choosing the right creative brief template is crucial for streamlining your marketing projects. However, some elements can hinder rather than help. Here are three key components to steer clear of:

Overly Complex Sections: Avoid templates with too many detailed sections. They can make the brief cumbersome and difficult to use, leading to confusion rather than clarity.
Undefined Objectives: Ensure the template clearly separates and defines project objectives. Vague or ambiguous objectives can derail the project's focus and effectiveness.
Excessive Jargon: Choose templates that use clear and simple language. Templates filled with industry jargon can be inaccessible to team members not familiar with the terminology.

Remember, the best creative brief templates are those that simplify the communication process, ensuring everyone on the team understands the project's goals and requirements.

1Small Design Agency Task Management

This template helps to organise incoming work from the client account management teams into a creative design team at a small design agency. Often there are competing creative deadlines across account management teams which can lead to miss management of task priorities. On this template both the management team and creative team have their own workspace which is connected together, providing a way to manage creative tasks.

A template preview for Small Design Agency Task Management

2Influencer brief

The influencer brief template is your go-to resource for streamlining collaborations with influencers. This template organizes all vital campaign information, such as campaign objectives, content examples, talking points, and deliverables. By providing a clear brief, your team can ensure influencers align with your brand's vision, ultimately leading to more impactful promotions.

3Brand Design Brief

Ugh, tired of design drafts that miss the mark?

You know, the ones that look kinda pretty, but don't really connect with your audience or boost your sales?

Been there, done that. That's why I created this super-simple Brand Design Brief Template.

Think of it as your magic wand for crafting a brand that:
Turns heads with stunning visuals that capture your unique vibe.
Speaks to your ideal customers like they're old friends.
Crushes the competition by standing out from the crowd.
Drives real business results, not just likes and shares.

No more design drama, Just a clear roadmap that helps you and your designer:
Understand your target audience inside-out. Who are they? What makes them tick?
Unleash your creative vision. Playful? Sleek? You name it! ✨
Spot your competitive edge. What are they doing right (and wrong)?
Fuel your designer's imagination. Share visual inspo to spark their creativity.
Align design with your business goals. Let's make it happen!

4Brand Foundations Framework

You can use this visual framework is a tool to help you structure your brand foundations and map out the hierarchy of your brand narrative and supporting messaging. Use it as a reference for a more robust messaging guide, or use it as a template and fill in each block with your actual mission statement, vision statement, and so on.

5Content Deliverables

Devin Reed's Content Deliverables Template is designed to help you effectively plan and track your content deliverables for an entire quarter. This template lets you record the deliverable name, its status, project description, demand, target audience, lift, and ETA. The option to view by status, lift, or ETA gives you the flexibility to manage your content projects in a way that best suits your workflow. Simplify your content planning and stay ahead of your deliverables with this efficient Notion template.

A template preview for Content Deliverables

6Product and Content Idea Generator

The Idea Generator template revolutionizes the way individuals, teams, and companies generate ideas by providing a systematic and focused approach. It eliminates distractions and shiny object syndrome, allowing users to concentrate on important ideas that truly matter. With this template, users unlock their creative potential, develop innovative solutions tailored to their target market, gain confidence in execution, and explore new perspectives that challenge traditional thinking. By leveraging the Idea Generator, individuals and organizations can optimize their productivity, generate winning ideas, and confidently bring their solutions to life.

A template preview for Product and Content Idea Generator

7Creative Brief

A simple document to help you organize all requirements and information needed to enable smooth collaboration with agencies and freelancers.

8Approving Campaigns/ Briefs with External Agencies

This template efficiently organizes campaign information, including goals, target audience, and key messaging. It features a table for tracking tasks and deliverables, an approvals checklist, and an integrated Calendly booking page for effortless scheduling of review sessions with agencies and internal teams.

A template preview for Approving Campaigns/ Briefs with External Agencies

9Design Brief

A simple document to help you organize all requirements and information needed for effective execution of design projects.

10Creative brief

Creative projects have many moving parts. This creative brief lets you gather all the necessary information and materials in one place — goals, deliverables, timeline, budget, and more. Get aligned with internal or external teams to set expectations and move forward with clarity.

Closing Thoughts

Utilizing these templates streamlines the planning process, ensuring that all critical elements are covered efficiently. This leads to clearer objectives and more cohesive campaigns.

Adopting these tools not only saves time but also enhances team collaboration. Start implementing them today to see immediate improvements in your project outcomes.

What is a Deliverables?

Deliverables refer to the final outputs or products that are to be delivered to a client at the end of a project, as specified in the creative brief.

What is a Target Audience?

The target audience is the specific group of people identified in the creative brief that the project's messaging and marketing efforts are aimed at.

What is a Unique Selling Proposition (USP)?

A unique selling proposition is a factor presented in the creative brief that describes how a product or service is distinct from and better than the competition.