Most UGC briefs are written for the wrong audience. The agency spends three hours making a beautiful PDF, attaching brand books, and writing florid descriptions of brand values. The creator opens it, scrolls for 90 seconds, then films something based on what they remember from the first paragraph. The video comes back wrong.
The problem is not the creator. The problem is the brief.
A UGC brief is not a brand book. It is an instruction manual for someone making a 20-second video on their phone. Treat it that way.
What a usable brief actually contains
After looking at about 300 briefs that produced usable video on the first try, the structure is shockingly simple. Six sections, no more than half a page when printed.
1. Product, in one sentence
Not the brand story. The product. One sentence. The creator does not need to know the founder backstory. Save that for the brand book.
2. The audience this video is for
Be specific enough that the creator can picture one person. Not women interested in skincare, but women 22-34 with sensitive skin who have tried two brands and felt let down.
3. The hook, give them three options
Do not give one hook. Hooks are the single most important moment and the easiest place for creators to freeze. Give them three. They pick one or riff on it.
4. The structure, in seconds
This is what most briefs miss. Tell the creator how long each section should be. 0-3s hook, 3-8s problem, 8-14s product in use, 14-22s CTA card. A creator with this structure knows the video before they pick up the phone.
5. The CTA, copy-paste ready
Give them the words. Better, give them the words as text-overlay-ready copy.
6. The do-not list
This is where briefs save you the most pain. List five things creators should not do. The do-not list is more useful than the do list, because it eliminates the failure modes you have seen before.
What to leave out
Do not include the brand mission statement, the full color palette, a 12-page brand book, three Pinterest mood boards, or anything that takes more than 2 minutes to read. If your brand insists on the brand book, put it as an appendix.
A note on length
Briefs over 1 page lose creators. Briefs over 2 pages get skimmed. Briefs over 3 pages get apologized for, and that apology is the problem. If your brief is 3 pages, it is two briefs. Split it.
The brief is the contract
A clear brief means fewer revisions. Fewer revisions means lower production cost. Higher margin on the campaign. The brief is not paperwork. It is leverage.
Want to skip the writing?
We built a free UGC brief generator that produces the exact structure above. Punch in your details, copy the result, paste into Notion. If you want this baked into your full agency workflow, that is what Briefbase is for.
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