Campaign brief from stakeholder notes

Use this workflow when campaign inputs sit across meeting notes, emails, slide comments and chat messages. You will produce one campaign brief that separates agreed facts from assumptions and gives approvers clear decisions to make.

This is for marketing managers and campaign leads who need a usable brief before creative, media or web work starts. Do not ask the model to invent missing strategy. Use it to organise, expose gaps and draft the document.

1. Collect and label the source material

Create one working document called Campaign brief source pack. Put every stakeholder input in it before you draft anything. Include the source name above each item, such as Sales call notes, Product email, Brand team comments or Previous campaign review.

Collect these inputs where available:

• The business problem or opportunity.
• The requested campaign outcome.
• Audience descriptions, research excerpts and customer language.
• Product or offer details.
• Existing positioning, brand guidance and mandatory claims.
• Channel, format and delivery requirements.
• Campaign dependencies, including approvals, web pages, assets and internal teams.
• Constraints, such as markets, excluded audiences, deadlines, budget supplied by the stakeholder, or words that cannot be used.
• Links or references to recent competitor activity, if the team expects a competitor scan.

Remove personal information that is not needed to write the brief. Do not paste private customer data, unpublished commercial terms or credentials into a third-party workspace unless your organisation has approved that use.

2. Make a decision ledger before drafting

Read the source pack once and create a short table. This prevents an attractive draft from hiding unresolved choices.

Item	Record	Owner or status
Confirmed decision	What the sources explicitly agree	Named approver
Working assumption	A reasonable interpretation not yet approved	Needs confirmation
Conflict	Two sources that point in different directions	Needs decision
Missing input	Information needed to brief production or measurement	Request from owner

For example, Target existing customers is a confirmed decision only if the sources state it. Prioritise lapsed customers is an assumption unless someone has agreed it. If one note asks for awareness and another asks for immediate leads, log a conflict. Do not merge the two into vague wording such as “drive engagement”.

Use the source pack and ledger with the model you are using. Its available features and handling requirements can vary, so check the current guidance in the xAI documentation overview before you use internal campaign material.

3. Generate the first brief draft

Ask for a structured draft, not a polished creative document. Paste the source pack and decision ledger, then use this instruction:

Create a campaign brief for stakeholder approval from the source material below.

Rules:
- Use only supplied facts for confirmed statements.
- Label unsupported but plausible interpretations as Working assumptions.
- Put contradictory instructions in Open decisions. Do not resolve them.
- Do not create performance targets, audience facts, product claims, legal wording or competitor claims that are not supplied.
- Write in plain British English.

Use these sections in this order:
1. Approval requested
2. Background and problem
3. Business objective
4. Campaign objective
5. Priority audience
6. Audience insight or evidence
7. Proposition and reason to believe
8. Single-minded message
9. Desired audience response
10. Channels and deliverables
11. Mandatory requirements and exclusions
12. Measurement inputs supplied
13. Dependencies and handover
14. Working assumptions
15. Open decisions
16. Source notes

For each section, state “Not supplied” where the source pack contains no usable input.

The approval requested field should be specific. Write what the stakeholder is approving now, for example the audience, proposition, channel scope and deliverable list. Do not ask them to approve “the campaign” if media selection, offer terms or landing-page copy still require separate decisions.

Keep Source notes at the end. List the document or meeting note behind significant claims. This gives an approver a way to challenge a point without reopening the whole brief.

4. Turn the draft into an approval document

Edit the draft before sharing it. The brief should be short enough to read in one sitting, but complete enough that a copywriter, designer or agency can identify the requested work.

Make these edits in order:

1. Replace vague verbs. Change increase awareness to the stated intended audience response, if supplied, such as recognise the service as an option for renewal planning.
2. Separate the business objective from the campaign objective. The first is the commercial or organisational aim. The second is the change this campaign is expected to create.
3. Check that the proposition is one offer or value claim, and that the reason to believe is evidence supplied by the stakeholder.
4. Limit the single-minded message to one sentence. If it contains two unrelated promises, move the second into supporting messages or open decisions.
5. List each deliverable as a count, format and destination when known. For example: Three paid social copy variants for the existing product page.
6. Move every uncertainty into Working assumptions or Open decisions. Do not leave it buried in a paragraph.

5. Check the brief before sending it

Run a final check with the ledger beside the brief. This is where most approval problems become visible.

Use this table to diagnose common faults:

If you see this	It usually means	Do this
A precise target with no source	The draft invented specificity	Mark it Not supplied or ask the objective owner
Several audiences described as equally important	No prioritisation decision exists	Ask for a primary audience and any secondary audience
“Premium”, “simple” or “trusted” with no proof	Positioning language has replaced evidence	Add supplied proof or remove the claim
A channel list but no deliverable list	Production scope is unclear	Name the asset, format, quantity and destination
Open decisions fill half the brief	The meeting has not made enough decisions	Send the ledger first, not a false-ready brief

Read the brief from the viewpoint of the next team. A creative team should know the message and mandatory elements. A web team should know which page or journey is affected. A campaign lead should know who approves the unresolved decisions.

6. Send for approval and hand over the result

Send the brief with a short approval note. Name the sections that need a response and set out the consequence of no decision, such as delayed creative development or an incomplete landing-page scope. Avoid asking stakeholders for general feedback.

After approval, save three items together: the approved brief, the final decision ledger and the source pack. Record any changes made during approval in the ledger. This becomes the handover record for copy, design, media, web and reporting teams.

When it does not work

If the model produces smooth but generic copy, return to the source pack and require Not supplied for every unsupported field. If stakeholders disagree, stop drafting around the disagreement and send the decision ledger to the named owner. If the brief keeps changing after approval, identify which field changed, update the ledger and ask for a new approval on that change rather than treating the original sign-off as cover for new scope.