The Detailed Brief and the meeting

The Detailed Brief is the first thing the client sees from you. It should show their problem more clearly than they wrote it, and end on the questions for the meeting.

The sections [proven], each opening on a strong image under a readable heading:

1. Cover: project, brand, "Detailed Brief", the date, your name, one hero frame.

2. What you asked for: the restatement, one page, the locked items unchanged.

3. What we understood: the problem, the one objective, the audience and your role, in four short lines.

4. The brand today: what it stands for, its assets, its recent work.

5. The market and competitors: their ads, one line each on what they claim; the category's codes.

6. The audience: who they are, how they talk, two or three real voices, paraphrased.

7. What we learned: the human truth in one sentence, and what the film must do in one sentence.

8. Films that solved a similar problem: two or three, each with one line on what it teaches.

9. Opportunities: three to five.

10. The film could feel like this: two or three mood frames in the film's possible look, one line each.

11. Questions for our meeting: the only client page that asks questions.

12. Next steps and credits.

Images:

• Generated frames [best available, not yet validated for the count]: one cover hero, two or three mood frames, and a product frame if the pack is known, made from the client's real product photos and always pristine. Make them at the brief's main ratio; show verticals vertically. How they are made: Still prompts, storyboard frames and diagrams → Presentation and storyboard frames. Get the estimate approved before generating (see Planning, budgets and takes → Costs and the estimate).

• Every frame passes the full-size check before it goes on a page: faces, hands and touch points, labels and any Arabic, letter for letter (see The quality bar → The hard stops). A failing frame gets one model edit pass where possible, at most two, then a new image; never a pixel edit.

• Other brands' films (competitors, award films, the brand's own past ads) appear only here, as stills with a plain credit line (title, brand, agency, year), clearly marked as other brands' work. Never as your look. The client's own reference pictures never stand in for your visuals either.

• No real person's or celebrity's name in any prompt (decided).

Writing (decided): the client voice in The stages and gates → Writing for the client. A voice-note line is quoted only after it has been checked.

Before the meeting:

1. Build and review it on a working link, updated in place and never sent (see Client presentations → Page types and storyboard pages and Client presentations → The rhythm check and the pre-send check).

2. Write the talk track for a 15–20 minute meeting (how: Client presentations → Films, words and nothing internal). Decks are often forwarded and read alone, so every page must also make sense on its own.

3. Approve it yourself, then freeze the version shown in the meeting on a new link, with a PDF of the same version, and log the send (see The stages and gates → Approvals and the send log).

After the meeting: write the client's answers into the project file, each marked "from the meeting, {date}". Close the questions they answered, confirm or update the locked items letter for letter, confirm the language table and the decision-maker, and log each answer that changes something. A core element the client changes in the meeting is their right: log it, and weigh its knock-on effects before acting.

The client standard

The Detailed Brief's client standard, for Stage 01 (Brief). Solid is your minimum.

Sources

• Adam Wells, LBB, "The Silent Treatment" (treatments read alone in inboxes).

• Jakob Nielsen and Anna Kaley, NN/g, "PDF: Still Unfit for Human Consumption".