The brief we ask you to fill in

This is what we ask for before a campaign starts. Every question here changes the work — none of it is filing.

The business

1. 1What do you sell, in one sentence a stranger would understand? If this takes a paragraph, that is the first problem to fix and we should talk about positioning before channels.
2. 2Who buys it? A job title, a company size, a place they already spend time.
3. 3What happens after they hear about you? A signup, a sales call, a download. This decides what we are optimising.

The constraints

• What can we not say? Regulatory limits, claims legal has refused before, competitor names.
• Who approves? One name. Approval by committee is where timelines go.
• What is off limits? Channels you have been burned on, communities you have been banned from.

The history

• What have you tried, and what happened?
• What is working now that we should not disturb?
• Is there an agency before us whose work is still live?

The last question is the one people skip and the one that saves the most time: what would make you consider this a failure in three months? It is usually a different answer from what success looks like, and it is more useful.