We have seen hundreds of briefs over the years. Some arrive as beautifully crafted documents with clear objectives, target audiences, and measurable outcomes. Others arrive as a single line in an email: "We need a video." The quality of the brief directly shapes the quality of the work. A strong brief does not just tell a production company what you want. It tells them why, for whom, and what success looks like. Without that foundation, even the most talented team is guessing.
At McGill Productions, the projects that deliver the strongest results are almost always the ones where the client invested time upfront in getting the brief right. This guide walks you through exactly how to do that.
Before you think about style, format, or platform, ask yourself one question: what does this video need to achieve? Is it brand awareness for a new market? Lead generation for a product launch? Recruitment for hard-to-fill roles? Internal comms for a company restructure?
The objective shapes everything that follows — the tone, the length, the distribution strategy, even the budget. A brand film designed to build emotional connection with a new audience is a fundamentally different piece of work to a product explainer targeting existing customers. If you try to do both in one video, you will do neither well.
Tip: Write your objective as a single sentence. If you cannot, you probably need more than one video.
"Everyone" is not a target audience. The more specific you can be, the more precisely a production company can craft something that resonates. Think about demographics, yes, but also psychographics. What does your audience care about? What are their pain points? Where do they spend time online?
For our Protein Works campaign, for example, the audience was not just "people who buy protein powder." It was 18-to-34-year-old fitness enthusiasts who were tired of generic product shots and wanted something that felt authentic. That specificity shaped every creative decision, from the sound-first approach to the lo-fi visual style, and it delivered 9.5 million views.
Share your brand guidelines, tone of voice documents, and any existing assets that help a production company understand who you are. But be careful about being too prescriptive about creative execution. The best production companies bring ideas you would never have thought of on your own — that is what you are paying for.
Give them the rails to run on, but leave room for the work to surprise you.
Two of the most common mistakes in briefing are hiding the budget and underestimating the timeline. Both create problems that ripple through the entire project.
If a production company does not know your budget, they cannot scope the project effectively. They might pitch a concept that requires three shoot days and a cast of twelve when your budget supports one day and a skeleton crew. Or they might play it safe and propose something underwhelming. Either way, you waste time and erode trust.
On timeline, a typical branded content piece needs six to ten weeks from brief to delivery. Rush jobs are possible, but they cost more, and corners get cut. Build in time for pre-production — that is where the strategic thinking happens.
A brief should be a starting point, not a finished document. The best outcomes come from a genuine conversation between client and production company, where both sides ask questions, challenge assumptions, and arrive at a shared understanding of what the project needs to be.
Come prepared, but be ready to adapt. The production company you have chosen has done this hundreds of times — let them bring their experience to the table.
A good production company will come back to you with a creative response — a treatment or proposal that demonstrates how they would approach the project. This is where you will see whether they have understood your objectives, your audience, and your brand.
If the response does not feel right, say so. It is far cheaper and easier to change direction at the treatment stage than during production or post-production. The brief is a living document. Refine it until everyone is aligned.
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