A brief is not a wish list. Here are the eight lines deciding whether the first delivery is usable.
The eight lines settling everything
Eight, and they fit on one page.
The product and its exact reference, with a photo.
The sentence to remember, written out in full, in the language of the shoot.
The format and the length: vertical, sixteen by nine, and the length expected.
The required shots: what has to appear, even if the rest is free.
What is forbidden: the list discussed above.
The rights: duration, territory, channels, and whether paid advertising is included.
The delivery date, in working days after the product arrives.
And the name of one single person to contact in case of doubt.
One note on method: if a ninth line appears, check it is not an aesthetic preference disguised as an instruction.
What to remove from the brief
Four elements doing more harm than good.
Visual references taken from international campaigns: they produce imitations, not videos.
The word-for-word script, except in regulated categories where it is mandatory and approved with a lawyer.
Internal vocabulary: the product's code name, the team's abbreviations, the names of tools.
And detailed editing instructions, which belong to the person editing.
One direct consequence: a shorter brief gets better deliveries, provided its binding part is precise.
What is specific to Brazil
Five points to build in, and they change the result.
Improvisation is a local skill, not a fault: creators often deliver better when the wording is left to them.
The country is immense and diverse: accent, food, weather and setting vary enormously, and a brief imposing a single setting excludes half the candidates.
Product delivery times weigh heavily: the calendar counts from receipt, never from the order.
The advertising disclosure is said and shown inside the video, not only in the caption, and the applicable rules are checked before publication.
And payment on a fixed date matters more than a higher rate: that is what keeps regular creators.
The paragraph nobody writes
The one explaining why the video exists.
Three sentences are enough: who will see it, at what moment, and what decision is expected from that person. A video aimed at an audience that does not know the brand is not the same as a video aimed at somebody who has been hesitating over a basket for three days.
Two immediate effects. The creator picks a relevant angle without being told. And the back and forth drops, because disagreement then concerns details, not intention.
One simple way to check: ask the creator, before the shoot, to sum up in one sentence who they are speaking to. If their sentence does not match yours, the brief failed, and it is better to find out before than after.
What a brief must fix
| Element | What it avoids | Length |
|---|---|---|
| The product and its reference | Filming the wrong model | One line |
| The forbidden sentences | A complete reshoot | Three lines |
| The formats and naming | An export to redo | Two lines |
| The date and delivery channel | An unseen delay | One line |
What is specified when the brand is foreign
The expected language variant, the currency quoted, the units of measure and the cultural references to avoid. Four lines that prevent a whole adaptation afterwards.
What you ask the creator before the shoot
A photo of the set and the first line of the script. Two minutes of checking avoid a whole day being redone.
What is checked at delivery
Four points, in this order.
Compliance: disclosures, permitted sentences, absence of what was forbidden.
Technical usability: framing, sound, light, delivered format.
The presence of the required shots.
And only then, taste.
One last marker, useful to teams ordering in volume: keep a written record of what worked in each batch, and feed it into the next brief. A brief learning from one batch to the next beats a perfect brief written once.
Sources
Checked on 4 September 2026. Thresholds and rates change: where this guide and the official source disagree, the official source is right.
