A good brief for a branded series fits on one page. It names the audience by what they already watch, states the one thing the brand wants that audience to think or do afterwards, lists what the brand can offer a show that nobody else can, and says how success will be measured and what must be approved. It leaves the format to the studio and the voice to the host. Everything else can be settled in development.
What the brief is for
The brief gives the studio enough to propose two or three formats and a shortlist of hosts, and it rules out ideas that would never get approved. A brief that tries to write the show usually produces an ad with a running time. A brief that says too little produces a format the brand cannot use.
After reading a good brief, the studio can tell the brand which creators it would cast, why, and what the first episode would be about.
Describe the audience by what they watch
Demographics alone do not help much with casting. "Adults 25 to 44 with an interest in home improvement" describes several million people and no particular show. It is more useful to name the channels, podcasts and kinds of video the audience already chooses: restoration videos, long cooking streams, car builds, explainers about money.
That matters because a creator-hosted series reaches the creator's audience first. If the brief names what the audience watches, the studio can look for hosts whose own viewers match it, and check that match against each channel's audience data during casting.
State one objective
Pick the change the brand wants and write it in one sentence. "People who watch home renovation content should think of us when they buy tools" is an objective. "Raise awareness, drive consideration and grow our community" is three objectives, and a series built to do all of them tends to do none of them well.
Write it in terms that can be measured. Google's Brand Lift, for example, measures ad recall, awareness and consideration by comparing people who saw the content against a matched group who did not (Google Ads Help). If the objective maps to one of those, the measurement plan follows from it.
List what the brand brings
This is the most useful part of a brief and the part most often left out. A series needs a premise, and the premise usually comes from something only the brand has:
- access to places, people or processes the audience cannot reach on their own
- experts who know the subject from the inside
- products the host can use, test or build with
- archives, history or a problem the brand is working on
- money for a project the host could not fund alone
A brand that sells paint can give a host a workshop and a season of finishes to test. A bank can give a host a real small-business owner to follow for a year. The list does not need to be long. One good item is often enough to build a format on.
Say what must be approved
Be specific about the limits, because it saves weeks later. Include any claims the brand's legal team has to review, product statements that must be worded a certain way, subjects or categories the series must avoid, and who signs off at each stage. Our process asks the brand to approve the format, the host, the measurement plan and the cut of every episode, so the brief can name the person responsible for each.
Disclosure is not up for negotiation, so it does not need to be argued in the brief. Every episode says it is paid for, out loud and on screen near the start, as the FTC's guidance expects (FTC).
Say where it should run
State whether the brand expects the series on its own channel, on the host's channel, or both, and whether it has a budget for paid seeding. A series released on the creator's channel opens in front of an existing audience, while a series released only on a new brand channel has to find one. If the brand has a launch, a season or a date in the calendar the series should meet, put it here. Our guide to distributing a branded series explains the options.
Decide how it will be measured
Write the measures into the brief. A lift study needs a control group planned in advance, and attention metrics, such as watch time, average percentage viewed and returning viewers, need agreed reading dates. YouTube audiences keep arriving for weeks after a release, so we read a season at 7, 30 and 90 days.
Give a budget range and the dates
A range is enough. It tells the studio whether to propose a season, a single special or a Shorts run, and it avoids a development round spent on something the brand cannot fund. Add the dates that are fixed: a launch, a trade show, the end of a financial year.
Leave these out
Leave out the script, the jokes, the host's lines and the episode titles. The host's voice is the reason their audience watches, and a brief that writes it for them usually removes the thing the brand was paying for. Leave out the rest of the marketing plan unless it changes the series. And leave out audience figures the brand wants to hit unless they come with a budget for paid seeding, because views on a creator's channel follow the size of the creator's audience.
An example one-page brief
From a brief like this, a studio can propose a format (one machine restored per episode, with a visit to the factory in the finale), a shortlist of restoration hosts whose audiences match, and a release plan. If you have a brief in any state, send it to us.
Source notes
- Google Ads Help: About Brand Lift. Viewed 5 Oct 2026.
- Federal Trade Commission: FTC's Endorsement Guides: What People Are Asking. Viewed 5 Oct 2026.