The brief is the highest-leverage document in a UGC campaign, and most brands write theirs wrong. The default template — brand guidelines, tone of voice, mood board, three reference videos — is a branded content brief. It tells the creator how to make something that looks like an ad, which is exactly the opposite of what UGC is supposed to do.
UGC works because it doesn't look like advertising. The moment you brief it like advertising, you've eliminated its only structural advantage.
What the brief is actually optimising for
A UGC brief has one job: give the creator enough constraints to be on-brand and enough freedom to be themselves. Get the ratio wrong and you produce one of two failure modes — generic content that ignored the brief, or branded content that ignored the creator.
The fix is to brief outcomes, not outputs. Outcomes are “what this video needs to do.” Outputs are “what this video should look like.” Most briefs are 80% outputs. Strong briefs are 80% outcomes.
What to include (in order)
- The job.What problem does this video solve for the viewer in three seconds? “Why this product is worth $89” is a job. “Show product in use” is not.
- The hook brief.Don't write the hook for the creator. Give them three or four hook angles — pain point, transformation, contrarian take, social proof — and let them pick the one that lands in their voice. Hooks written by brand teams sound like ads.
- The proof point.What's the one thing the viewer needs to believe by the end? One claim, not five. Multiple claims compete for attention and the viewer remembers none of them.
- The CTA.Not “buy now.” Something the viewer can plausibly do at the moment of watching. Save for later, share with a friend, click to learn more. The platforms reward intent signals, not just clicks.
- The constraints.Things the creator must do (mention the brand name, show the product, hold for a beat at the end). Three or four max. More than that and you're back to writing a branded content brief.
What to leave out
Mood boards, font specs, colour palettes, three-act structures. None of these are how creators think. They're how brand teams think, and the gap between those two ways of thinking is where most UGC campaigns lose performance.
You also don't need to specify the format. Don't tell the creator to make a “talking head with B-roll.” Let them choose. Their gut for what works on their platform is better than yours, because it's the platform they live on.
The single test
Read the brief back. If a creator could shoot something on-brand and on-strategy without you ever having to revise it, the brief is good. If the brief implies you'll be sending revision notes saying “more energy in the hook” or “show the product earlier,” the brief was too vague. Fix it before you send it.
The best UGC briefs feel almost too short. That's because they trust the creator to do the part they're good at — and reserve direction for the part that the brand actually owns: the outcome. Getting the brief right is the first thing we do when we manage a UGC campaign end-to-end.
