How to write a video brief

A video brief is five decisions written down before anyone opens an editor: what the video should make someone do, who that someone is, the one thing they should remember, what material exists to show it, and the shape and length it has to fit. Everything else in a brief, tone, brand notes, the wording of the ask, hangs off those five. Get them into a few plain sentences and the first draft is usually close. Leave one out and the draft fills the gap with a guess.

The brief matters more, not less, when a generator writes the first draft. A human editor rings you with questions. A generator reads the words you gave it and builds from those.

The five things a video brief has to say

Advertising guidance keeps arriving at a short list. Google’s ABCD framework for YouTube ads sorts effective video into Attention, Branding, Connection and Direction: hook people with the story, brand early and often, help people think or feel something, and ask them to take an action. Google says following those guidelines can deliver as much as a 30 percent lift in short term sales likelihood and a 17 percent lift in long term brand contribution. Each of the four is something a brief either sets up or leaves to chance.

The published brief behind the Replyline launch video is three sentences: “Promo for Replyline’s new Saved Replies feature. Support teams answer the same question 40 times a day; saved replies cut first reply time 41 percent in beta. CTA: try it free.” Goal, audience, pain, proof and ask are all in there. The six scene, 27 second landscape video that came out of it has no scene the brief did not ask for.

Start with the goal, as one action

Write the goal as the thing a viewer does after watching, not as a feeling. “Raise awareness” gives nobody anything to aim at. “Start a free trial”, “book a table for Friday” and “use the code before Sunday” each tell the writer where the last scene is going and what every earlier scene has to earn.

One action per video. A launch video that asks people to try the feature, read the changelog and follow the company splits its closing seconds three ways and gets none of them. If there really are three actions, there are three videos, and each can be shorter for it.

The goal also decides the type of video. A promotional video sells and ends on an ask. A tutorial teaches one task and should not end on a sales line at all: the dashboard tour closes on “That’s Lumen.” after the viewer has watched an alert being set, which was the point of the whole video. Decide which of the two you are writing before anything else.

Name the audience by the moment they are in

Demographics rarely change a video. The moment the viewer is in does. “Support team leads” is a job title. “Support team leads who answer the same ticket forty times a day and suspect there is a faster way” is a moment, and it hands the writer the problem scene for free: Replyline’s second scene is the line “Same question, forty times a day.”

Write down three things about the audience: what they already know, what is annoying them right now, and where they will be when they see the video. A person scrolling a phone with the sound off needs the message in the words on screen. A person who clicked a link in an onboarding email will give a tutorial its full length. That last point also decides the format, which comes at the end.

Write the one message, then cut the second

Planners call it the single minded proposition: the one sentence the video has to land. For Replyline it is “answer it once, send it every time”, and it became the narration of scene three almost word for word.

The test is simple. Read the message aloud and ask whether a viewer could repeat it to a colleague after one watch. If you need “and” to finish the sentence, you have two messages. Keep the one that serves the goal and move the other to the next video.

The message is also where honest claims live. The Replyline stat scene shows 41 percent with “across 32 beta support teams” underneath, so the number arrives with its denominator. Put the source of every number in the brief, right next to the number, so it cannot fall off on the way to the screen. If the video will use generated pictures of people, note that too, since some platforms expect a label; the rules are summarised in do you have to disclose an AI generated video.

List the assets and the proof

A brief should say what exists, not what would be nice. Product screenshots, photographs of the actual shop, a logo, a price list, the report with the number in it. For each one, say what it shows and whether it must appear. A listing video built on six photographs of the flat, like the Lisbon listing example, plans itself around those six pictures. A brief that promises “some photos” gets placeholders.

Proof is the asset people forget. A launch needs one number, a quote or a before and after. A sale needs the offer written exactly, exclusions included: the 48 hour sale video says “Excludes gift cards” in its closing scene because the brief said so. Terms that are not in the brief do not reach the final scene.

The W3C’s accessibility guidance makes a related point. Information that only lives in the pictures, a chart, a price, a name on a card, is missing for anyone who cannot see it, and it says integrated description is easier and better when it is included in the script from the start. So if a number or a chart is the point of a scene, write it into the brief as words the narration can say.

Set format and length last

Format follows the audience’s moment. Phone viewers on Reels, TikTok or Shorts get vertical 9:16; a website, a listing portal, YouTube or a slide in a meeting get landscape 16:9. LinkedIn’s video ad specification accepts 16:9, 9:16, 1:1 and 4:5 at anything from 3 seconds to 30 minutes, which is a reminder that the platform will not make this choice for you.

Length follows the goal. Vidyard’s benchmark of close to a million videos made on its platform in 2024 found that 65 percent of viewers stay to the end of a video under a minute, against 20 percent for videos over twenty minutes. Wistia’s 2026 report, covering more than 13 million videos, puts the average engagement rate for videos under a minute at 52 percent. A promo with one action rarely needs a minute; a tutorial with five steps needs as long as five steps take. The length arithmetic by placement is in how long should a promo video be.

The table under this post turns all of it into fields and fills them in for the Replyline brief. Where the published brief left a field implicit, the table writes out what it implied, so you can see what a complete one looks like before you write your own.

Common mistakes

A goal with no verb. “A video for the new range” has no last scene. Say what the viewer does.

Two messages joined by “and”. The video splits its scenes between them and lands neither.

Numbers without a source. A stat nobody can trace gets cut in review or, worse, survives it.

Adjectives instead of assets. “Premium, modern, clean” is a mood, not material. Name the pictures you actually have.

Writing the whole script inside the brief. A brief that dictates every line leaves no room to fit words to scenes. Give the message and the must include lines. If you do have a finished script, label it as the script.

Forgetting the fine print. Offer terms, licence numbers and legal lines belong in the brief, or they are missing from the final scene.

Build it

The AI video generator takes a brief of up to 8,000 characters, plus up to 8 images and 5 documents. Documents are summarised rather than transcribed, so type the exact numbers and wording into the brief itself. You pick one of three types: Promotional, Tutorial, which needs the Starter plan, or UGC, which needs Pro. The length you choose becomes a scene budget, 3 to 6 scenes for short, 4 to 9 for standard and 6 to 12 for long, and the format is landscape or vertical. Narration, voice and captions can then be changed scene by scene in the builder. The steps are in the tutorial on making a promo video with an AI voiceover.