The two-page influencer brief: what to put in and what to leave out

A creator delivers a video that misses the point, and the brand's first thought is that the brief went unread. Occasionally that is fair. More often the brief itself made the priorities impossible to see: eleven key messages, a forty page brand book attached, and the one rule that could not be broken buried halfway through a paragraph about tone of voice.

Creators treat a brief the way most of us treat a long email from a client. They skim it for the things they are expected to do. A brief written with that in mind gets followed. A brief that ignores it gets interpreted, and interpretation is where the reshoots and revisions come from.

Open with the reason for the campaign

Write the objective in one sentence, as plainly as you would say it across a table. Get people in their twenties in Dubai to download the new app in its first two weeks. Fill a Riyadh restaurant for its opening weekend. Introduce a skincare brand to people who have never come across it.

No other line in the brief works as hard. A creator who understands the purpose can make sensible decisions you never thought to specify. A creator handed only a list of instructions can do nothing more than tick through the list.

Choose one message and one audience

A brand always has more to say than fits in a thirty second video, and the brief is where someone has to make the call. Decide the single thing viewers should remember and give it a line of its own. Anything else goes under a nice to have label, on the understanding that most of it will be left out.

Describe the audience as people, not as a persona slide: their age, their city, what they care about. The creator knows their followers much better than you do, and if the brief is aimed at an audience they do not have, they will say so.

Make the non-negotiables impossible to miss

What a creator most needs to find quickly is the handful of requirements that are not up for discussion. Keep that list brief and put it where the eye lands:

• The brand handle to tag, spelled exactly.
• The link or promo code, and where it goes.
• How the product has to appear, for instance being used rather than simply held up to the camera.
• The paid partnership label, plus "Ad" at the start of the caption, in the same language as the post.

Follow it with an equally short list of what to stay away from: competitor products in the frame, claims the brand cannot support such as "the cheapest" or health benefits, music not licensed for branded content, and anything that breaches local media content standards.

Offer ideas, not a script

Everything beyond those two lists is a suggestion, and the brief should say so. Present ideas as starting points and make it clear that the creator's own approach is welcome. A script produces something that looks like an advert, and people scroll straight past adverts. You are paying for the way this creator speaks to their audience, so leave room for it.

Turn deliverables into something you can check

"A reel and some stories" is a hope, not a deliverable. For every piece of content, state the platform, the format, the length, the language and the due date. If an English video needs Arabic subtitles, write that here rather than raising it at the feedback stage.

Give two dates instead of one: the date the draft is due for approval, and the window in which it should go live. Name the person who approves on the brand side and how long they have to respond. If a creator does not know there is an approval step, they will post before anyone has looked, and that will not be their mistake.

A brief that does not let you judge whether content met it gives the creator no way to judge it either.

Agree the reporting before the fee

State which insights you want after the content goes out and by when: reach, views, likes, comments, shares, saves and link clicks, within a week for feed posts. Stories need a shorter deadline of their own, since they vanish after twenty four hours. Putting this in the brief means it is agreed before payment, which is the only moment you have real bargaining power to get it.

Keep the legal terms in the contract

A brief is a creative document. Obligations belong in the agreement: the permit or licence the creator needs in the country where the content is published, the disclosure they must use, usage rights, exclusivity and payment. List disclosure among the must-haves so nobody forgets it on the day, but resist turning the brief into a contract. Creators skim contracts as well, and a brief that reads like one gets skimmed the same way.

Before you book anyone, confirm they hold the permit required where the content will be published.

Use the brief again when the draft arrives

A well-built brief earns its keep a second time at the review stage. Feedback moves faster when both sides can point to the same line: the key message is missing, the code is not on screen, the product is only being held up. If a comment cannot be traced back to anything in the brief, it is usually a new requirement, and it is better to recognise that before sending it.

Store the brief, every draft and the final approval together under the campaign, so no one has to dig through a chat thread for the right version.

If you are planning creator work in the UAE or Saudi Arabia and want a second pair of eyes on the brief before it goes out, the ALXO team would be happy to read it with you.