The Campaign Brief

Free Campaign Brief template: the one number a campaign moves, one audience and one belief with checkable proof, channels worked back from the target, and how you will judge it. Word template.

Word + Google Docs · Free

What this resource helps you do

Decide the one number, the one audience and belief, and how you will judge the campaign - before any money is spent.

Get the brief from AAJ's free marketing templates library.

Who the Campaign Brief is for

I wrote this for founders and small marketing teams who are about to put real money behind a campaign and want to know, afterwards, whether it worked. Most campaigns I review went wrong in the brief: it asked for awareness among a category, or listed eleven audiences, or never said how anyone would judge the result.

What makes this brief different is that it decides the measurement before launch - the metric, the comparison, the number that means it worked, and what would make you stop - while nobody is invested in the answer. It also works the budget backwards from the target, so a plan that cannot add up is caught before the money moves.

It will not make a weak idea work. It gives your team one page of decisions to argue about before the spend, instead of after it.

What's inside

The number this campaign moves
Who it is for
The one thing we want them to believe
The offer and the ask
Mandatories and no-gos
Channels and budget, worked backwards
How we will judge it
Timeline, owners and one approver
The creative brief
The read-out
Before you send this brief
Running it with your agent

Work the channel budget backwards with the Paid Media Budget Allocator, code what people tell you with the Self-Reported Attribution Coder, and plan the channels with the Demand Gen Playbook. Or Run it in your agent.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should a campaign brief include?

One business number with today's figure and a target date, one audience, the one thing you want them to believe with reasons they can check, the offer, the mandatories, the channels and budget worked back from the target, how you will judge it, owners and dates, and a creative brief for whoever makes the work.

Why decide the measurement before launch?

Because after launch everyone is invested in the answer. Writing down the metric, the comparison, the number that means it worked and the stop rule beforehand is what lets the read-out say a campaign did not work when it did not.

Can a campaign have more than one goal?

It should have one number. If two numbers matter equally, there are usually two campaigns - two audiences or two messages - and each deserves its own brief.

Is the template free, and what format is it?

Free, in exchange for an email address. It is a Word .docx you can type into directly, and it opens editable in Word, Google Docs, Pages and LibreOffice.