A good brief gives an idea somewhere to go. Use this short exercise to turn a customer question into a message your team can discuss, refine, and test.
The example below uses a fictional project workspace. Replace the details with what you know about your own customers and product.
Describe the audience and the moment
Start with a situation, rather than a broad label such as “small businesses.” For example: a five-person design studio is beginning a client project and needs a simple way to collect feedback.
Write the question they might ask:
How can we keep client feedback organized without adding another complicated tool?
Treat invented questions as hypotheses. If you have a real customer quote, use that instead and keep the original context.
Connect the need to a capability
List the product capability that directly addresses the situation. Be precise about what exists today. If the product is still being developed, say so.
For this fictional workspace, the brief might connect shared feedback threads to the need to keep comments attached to a project. It should not promise that every project will finish faster.
Draft two useful angles
Try writing one message around the task and another around the experience:
- Task: Keep project feedback in one shared place.
- Experience: Give your team a clearer view of the next step.
Neither is automatically the better choice. Compare both with the customer’s question and the evidence you have.
Review before using the brief
Check that the audience is specific, the need is recognizable, and the product promise is accurate. Remove any claim you cannot explain or support.
Keep the finished brief short enough that someone else on the team can understand the idea without hearing the whole conversation. You can return to the GPTAd workspace preview to see how we’re thinking about organizing these inputs.