Chad Hetherington

The year is 2999, and you’re in the market for the new video briefs — digital boxer briefs that roll continuous nature and wildlife clips while you wear them. OK, maybe not.

But the year is 2023 and you are looking for information about a corporate video brief — the document kind — as well as integral components and questions to answer while putting one together to ensure that your videos deliver.

This is everything you need to know about a corporate video brief, and a template to get you started (skip to the template here).

Why You Need a Corporate Video Brief

A corporate video brief goes by many names. You may have heard it referred to as any of the following:

  • Project brief.
  • Creative brief.
  • Video production brief, or simply production brief.
  • Video production creative brief.

Whatever you choose to call it, it’s more than just a style guide for video production work. Beyond using it for personal reference, it’s a document that can easily be handed out to agencies and freelancers who you’re having produce a video for your organization. And if you’re not producing video, you should be!

These days, video is where it’s at. So much so that 70% of marketers who classify themselves as ‘non-video’ plan to produce it to some extent in 2023.

The brief itself should outline everything from style preferences and restrictions to voice over artist recommendations and more. A strong brief will help inform production companies about the:

  • Style.
  • Script.
  • Visuals.
  • Length.
  • Tone of voice.
  • Method of deployment.

The document itself, before anything comes of it, allows you to ponder the purpose of the video before production starts to ensure the final product aligns with your business goals. Furthermore, if you’re outsourcing the production, a detailed and comprehensive video brief will increase your chances of receiving more appealing proposals from production companies.

But beyond the brief, the product produced from it — i.e., the corporate video — brings about bountiful benefits for businesses. With a solid corporate video strategy and high-quality videos to show for it, brands are able to:

  • Strengthen their brand identity.
  • Increase brand awareness (95% of marketers say video helps them do this).
  • Create new opportunities for audience engagement.
  • Give their search engine optimization (SEO) efforts a boost.
  • Appeal more greatly to social media users.
  • Recycle and repurpose video into other forms of valuable content.

Who Needs a Video Brief?

Anyone and everyone who wishes to partner with a third-party agency for video production needs a creative video brief. Whether you’re a large, well-known organization, small business or solo creative, handing off a carefully crafted video brief to your partner in production will only clarify (and simplify) the production process. And, as a result, you’ll end up with a better product.

The Components of a Corporate Video Brief That Delivers

Before diving into some questions that will help you deduce what kind of information to include in a corporate video brief, let’s get its integral components straight. If you want a brief that delivers, it should include:

  • A project overview.
  • Pertinent team members or contacts.
  • Project deliverables and scope.
  • Budget and resource constraints.
  • A tangible, specific goal for the video (but more than one objective is always good).

But that’s a lot to take in at once. So before we give you a template to work from (with example answers, even!), let’s break these sections down into questions.

Questions To Answer Before Building Your Video Brief

An effective corporate video brief requires lots of detailed information — much more than just bullet-type notes. That’s why it’s necessary to get a sense of what’s important to the brief, and what instruction will help your chosen agency produce the best possible piece (or pieces) of video content.

This is a list of questions, split up into categories, that organizations need to think about and answer ahead of building their brief.

Questions to get started:

  • What is the purpose of the video?
  • Who is your target audience?
  • What is the ideal timeline for this project?
  • What’s the budget for this video?

Questions to dive deeper:

  • What are the key messages of the video?
  • How will you measure the video’s return on investment (ROI)?
  • How long should the video be?
  • Who will write the script?

Questions to finalize the brief:

  • What are the most important things to include in the video?
  • Is this a piece of evergreen content?
  • What’s the call to action (CTA)?
  • How will the video be distributed? Or where will it be posted?

Now, to funnel all of that into one, cohesive brief that clearly communicates the project, your intentions for it, timelines, deadlines and delivery criteria. Once all of this is organized in one easy-to-access place, your chosen video production agency will be set up for success when it’s time to start producing.

Before we move onto the template, just a few important notes.

When answering these questions, be as specific as possible. Here’s an example of a bad answer, and a good one:

What is the purpose of this video?

Bad answer: To increase brand awareness.

Instead, provide more context. Like this: With this video, we’re aiming to increase brand awareness by commuting our core values as a company and positioning ourselves as knowledgeable experts in our industry.

The difference is night and day. The more specific you can be, the better, more high quality of a product your chosen agency can deliver. Apply this in-depth approach to all parts of the brief and you’ll be golden.

Use Our Corporate Video Brief Example To Get Started

Now that you know everything that goes into an effective video brief, it’s time to put together your own to see how it looks when it all comes together.

You thought we’d leave you hanging? Of course not. We’ve already assembled the perfect video brief template so you don’t have to worry about creating your own from scratch. All you have to do is download it and fill it out.

Download it here.

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But don’t leave just yet. You know how to build the brief, but let’s talk about different types of corporate video and how to choose the right one for your project.

What Is the Right Kind of Corporate Video for Your Company?

Different types of video are best suited for certain use cases, so it’s important to understand what those uses are, and what type of video will drive the best results.

We’ve already dove into this in detail in another blog (linked here), thanks to Brafton Content Writer, Ben Crosby. But for our intents and purposes, here are a few to consider, and who/when they’re best suited for:

1. Explainer Video

Explainer videos are short, sweet, and digestible pieces of content that are best used to visually demonstrate — or explain — something to your customers. If you provide some kind of service, you may choose to produce an explainer video that introduces potential customers to it while illustrating how it works.

2. Social Media Video

Social media is a powerhouse for content creation. Videos that you plan to send out on these platforms should be optimized according to the limitations of each. Each social platform hosts a unique video format, length restrictions and more. So making note of those differences and what works best on certain platforms is crucial.

Anyhow, you may choose to produce a social media video to increase brand awareness, advertise a product or give your brand some personality.

3. Testimonial Video

The last example we’ll share here (sorry, you’ll have to click through to Ben’s post if you want more) is the testimonial video. If your goal for the project is customer acquisition or generating new leads, this type of video is great for that.

They offer real life accounts, from real customers, about your brand experience. Have a customer talk through what it’s like to use your product, how great your customer service team is or reasons why they recommend you to others who are looking for the same thing.

Briefs aren’t just for one-off projects, either. Make sure to use one while developing a video marketing strategy to bring clarity to the proposal, approach and execution.

Start Building

By now, you should be set up with everything you need to create a comprehensive video production brief (template included!) that will bag you top-notch video content that delivers. Remember, for your agency to do their best, you have to provide your best — and that starts with a detailed brief.