How to Brief a Video Production Company

Commissioning video for the first time can feel daunting. There's decisions to be made, lots of stakeholders with opinions, and the anxiety that if you don't get the brief right, the whole thing could go sideways before a camera has even been switched on!

The good news is that a good brief doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't need to be long, perfectly formatted or written by someone with a marketing degree. It just needs to answer the right questions clearly and honestly. We'll take you through what those questions are.

Why the brief matters more than you think

A video production company can only work with what you give them. The brief is where your objectives, your audience, your budget and your timeline come together into something a creative team can actually respond to. A vague brief produces vague ideas. A clear, thoughtful brief produces work that is focused, purposeful and far more likely to achieve what you actually need it to.

It's also worth knowing that a good production company will interrogate your brief, push back on assumptions, ask uncomfortable questions, and sometimes tell you that what you've asked for isn't quite what you need. That's not awkward, it's valuable. But they can only do that if you've given them something substantive to work with in the first place.

What to include in your brief

The objective Start with the most important question: what do you need this video to do? Not what you want it to look like, not how long it should be, but what is it for? Is it to generate leads, explain a product, communicate internally, build brand awareness, support a sales conversation? Be as specific as possible. "We want a company video" is not an objective. "We want to reduce the amount of time our sales team spends explaining our proposition in initial meetings" is.

The audience Who is this video for? Be specific about who you're trying to reach - their role, their sector, what they care about, what they know about you already and what they don't. A film made for a procurement director at a FTSE 250 company needs to do something very different to one made for a first-time consumer encountering your brand on Instagram. The production company needs to understand who they're making it for.

The message If the audience takes away one thing from this video, what should it be? Just one thing. Most briefs try to communicate too much, which leads to films that communicate nothing effectively. Being forced to distil your message to a single idea is a useful discipline, it clarifies your own thinking as much as it helps the production company.

Where it will live Will this video be on your website, your social channels, shown at an event, sent to prospects by email, broadcast on TV? The answer shapes almost every creative decision - the length, the format, the tone, the technical specifications. A film designed to be watched in a boardroom presentation needs to work very differently to one that needs to stop a scroll on LinkedIn.

The budget This is the one clients most often leave out of a brief, and it's the one that matters most. We totally understand the instinct - nobody wants to show their hand before they've seen what they're getting. But withholding your budget doesn't protect you, it just makes it harder for a production company to give you a useful response. If you tell us you have £15,000, we can tell you honestly what that gets you and make sure our proposal fits. If you don't tell us, we might come back with something brilliant that's three times your budget, which wastes everyone's time. Give us a number, even a ballpark one.

The timeline When do you need the finished video? And are there any fixed points along the way such as a launch event, a board presentation or a campaign 'go-live' date that the production schedule needs to work around? Be honest about deadlines. If you need it in three weeks, say so upfront rather than halfway through the process.

Examples If there are films that you've seen, whether it's your own previous work, a competitor's video or something completely unrelated that captures a tone, a style or an approach you like, share them with us. References are incredibly useful. They don't constrain the creative process, they give us guidance on the route you wish to take.

Common briefing mistakes to AVOID

Briefing by committee. This is a big one. The more people who have input into a brief before it reaches a production company, the more diluted and contradictory it tends to become. By all means involve stakeholders in signing off the final film, but try to have one person own the brief from the outset.

Describing the solution rather than the problem. "We want a two-minute animated explainer" is a solution. "We need to explain a complex product to non-technical buyers in under three minutes" is a problem. Brief the problem and let the production company recommend the solution - it may be an even better idea than what you had in mind originally. Leaving out the awkward context. If there are internal politics around the project, previous videos that didn't land well, stakeholders with strong opinions, or sensitivities around the subject matter, tell us. We'd always rather know upfront than discover it halfway through production. Assuming we know your business. Even if you've worked with a production company before, every project needs a fresh brief. Don't assume anything carries over from previous work. And whoever you're working with, us or anyone else, share everything. The product detail, the company culture, the internal shorthand. The more embedded a production company is in your world, the more authentic the work becomes.

What happens after you submit a brief

A good production company will come back to you with questions before they come back with ideas. It means they've read the brief carefully and want to make sure they understand what you need before they start developing creative concepts.

At Klaxon, we'd always rather have a conversation first, a proper call to get under the skin of the brief before we put anything on paper. It saves time, produces better proposals, and usually throws up something useful that wasn't in the brief to begin with. From there you'd typically expect a creative proposal covering the creative approach, a production plan and a budget breakdown.

And if you're not quite ready to write a full brief yet? Get in touch anyway. Sometimes the best starting point is a conversation, and we're always happy to help you work out what you actually need before you commit to anything.