I’ve reviewed hundreds of creative briefs over my 15+ years in marketing, and most are either ineffective or actively harmful. They’re often too vague, leaving creative teams guessing, or so prescriptive that creativity is suffocated before it starts. When done right, however, a creative brief becomes a powerful performance tool.

It can be the difference between a $2M campaign that drives $8M in revenue and one that delivers mediocre results and endless revisions. After managing millions in ad spend across hundreds of campaigns, I’ve learned which elements actually drive performance and which are just noise. In this article, I’ll walk through a real creative brief from a campaign that generated just over $2M in tracked revenue on a $350K investment (5.7x ROAS), breaking down exactly what mattered, and how you can apply it to your own campaigns.