Most disappointing UGC starts as a disappointing brief. We see the same two versions every week. One runs to eleven pages and includes the founder’s origin story and a colour chart. The other is two lines long and contains the word “authentic” twice. Both come back as videos that look fine and say nothing in particular.
A brief that works answers the questions a creator would ask if you were standing in their kitchen. It fits on one page, and it makes the decisions only you can make, so the creator can spend their effort on the part you can’t do.
Start with one person and one problem
Describe the viewer the way you’d describe a friend. “Women 25 to 44” gives a creator nothing to say. “She has bought three retinol serums, gone red and flaky on all of them, and given up” gives them an opening line.
Then pick one problem. Your product may well solve six. A 30-second video can carry one, so choose the one most likely to make that person stop, and save the other five for the next brief.
What goes on the page
- The takeaway. One sentence the viewer should remember, written the way a customer would say it: “This is the first retinol I’ve ever finished.”
- The viewer and their problem. Two lines, as above.
- Proof. Two or three facts the creator can say out loud, such as “fragrance-free”, “30-day returns” or “one bottle lasts about three months”.
- Must say and must not say. Your approved claims, the ones legal won’t allow, and how to pronounce the product name.
- Shots you need. Three or four at most: product in hand, product in use, label close enough to read, the result if there is one.
- Reference. One or two videos you like, with a note on what you like about them. “The way she opens the box in one take” is useful. “The vibe” is less so.
- Deliverables. Length, aspect ratio, number of hook variations and the due date.
What stays off it
Leave out your brand values, your funding history and the deck you showed the board. None of it will end up in the video, and all of it pushes the useful lines further down the page.
Leave out the full script too, unless you’re in a category where every word needs sign-off. Hand a creator a paragraph your team wrote and they’ll sound like a person reading a paragraph your team wrote. Talking points let them say the same thing in their own words, and those words are why you hired them. If one line must be exact, mark that line and leave the rest loose.
Adjectives can go as well. Fun, premium, relatable: every brand wants these and no two creators will read them the same way. A reference video does the job in ten seconds.
Plan around the product
A surprising number of briefs ignore the product’s own timeline. If your serum takes two weeks to show anything, a creator who received it on Tuesday can’t talk about results on Friday, and you wouldn’t want them to pretend. Ship early, and tell them what a fair first impression looks like. If the product needs assembly, a full charge or a particular kind of light, say so up front. Creators would much rather hear it now than reshoot later.
Expect to rewrite it
The first brief for a new product is a draft, whatever the file name says. When the videos come back, notice where three creators stumbled over the same line or skipped the same point. That usually means the brief was unclear or the point was weak. Fix it, and the next round gets easier for everyone.
Brands sometimes ask how long a brief should take to write. An hour or two, most of it spent deleting things. If you finish in ten minutes, you probably haven’t chosen anything yet.