A bad brief costs more than a bad creator. The creator can be replaced; a vague brief produces unusable deliverables that nobody can fix afterwards, because the scene no longer exists.
In Spain it has to have one more quality: surviving the journey.
Your brief will be summarised before it arrives
A significant share of commissions goes through an intermediary. What leaves the brand as three pages reaches the creator as one paragraph, sometimes as a message.
What gets lost on the way is never the product name. It is the constraints: what must not be said, what has to appear on screen, the exact length, the delivery format. In other words everything that makes a video usable.
The remedy is structural. Write the brief so that the essential part fits into ten lines at the top of the document, and the rest is context that can be lost without harm. If the intermediary passes on only the first block, the order still works.
The ten lines that belong at the top
The product and what it does, in one sentence. The customer problem it solves. The format and the length. The number of different openings expected. What must be shown on screen. What may not be claimed. The language and, where relevant, the second version requested. The delivery date. What is included in usage rights. And the name of the person to ask a question to.
That last line is the one systematically forgotten, and it is the one that prevents the most reshoots. A creator with nobody to write to guesses, and guesses badly.
What makes a brief usable
A constraint rather than an intention. Writing that the video must be authentic says nothing. Writing that the product must appear in the first five seconds, held in hand, says something.
The problem before the feature. Give the creator your customers' real objection, the one after-sales hears every week. That is the material that makes a good opening.
Three suggested openings, not one. You will get three versions to test in advertising, and the creator will know which register you are after.
The list of prohibitions. Depending on the category, claims are regulated. That list protects the brand and saves the creator from improvising a phrase that would expose you. When in doubt the reference is the competent authority, never a competitor's communication.
What adds weight without helping
The brand story, the visual identity, the values. None of that helps someone who has to film thirty seconds in their kitchen, and it is precisely what takes the place of the ten useful lines.
Excessive visual references do the same: three precise examples beat a folder of twenty.
What to ask for beyond the main deliverable
A version without burned-in captions, for distribution in another language. Cut-out shots with no face, reusable on the product page. And the original file rather than a recompressed send.
Those three cost almost nothing to capture at the same time and multiply the uses of one order. They belong in the ten lines, not in an appendix.
What a brief must fix
| Field | What it prevents | Length |
|---|---|---|
| The goal in one sentence | A video people like that serves nothing | 1 line |
| What cannot be said | A full redo after approval | 3 lines |
| Format and length | An unusable file | 1 line |
What is most often missing
Who approves, the expected date, the rights duration and the release channel.
What to ask when the brief is vague
Three written questions, one grouped answer, and a quote that repeats the answers word for word.
After delivery
Say what worked, precisely, and what did not. A creator who receives useful feedback delivers better next time, and the cost of briefing falls with every order. It is the only known way to bring the price down without cutting the rate.
