Creative brief template for Fintech

The creative brief with three columns a regulated financial product needs: which product the asset sells, which cleared claim it carries, and where the disclosure that travels with that claim actually sits.

Everything else is the general creative brief, unchanged. One row per asset, a hook written as what happens, one message with a proof beside it, the specs up front and an honest must-avoid.

Write it after the claims have been cleared and before anybody designs anything. An asset built around a claim that has not been reviewed is an asset that will be rebuilt, and the rebuild always lands after the flight was meant to start.

Use it again whenever a rate, a fee or a term moves, because the asset list is how you find every piece of creative carrying the old number.

In this category the sentence comes first and the design is built around it. That reverses the usual order, in which a concept is developed and copy is fitted to it, and briefs that ignore the reversal produce work that has to be undone.

The claim carried column is where the reversal is enforced. It holds the exact cleared wording, with its review reference, and the asset is built to display that wording rather than an improved version of it. Paraphrase is the specific risk: a line that reads better may claim something slightly different, and the difference is usually invisible to everybody except whoever wrote the original.

So the rule in the brief is plain. What was reviewed is what runs. If the wording is awkward in the format, the options are a different format or another review, not an edit in the editing tool.

The disclosure placement column exists because some placements simply cannot carry what the claim requires.

A short vertical video with a text overlay limit may have no room for a fee summary at a size anybody can read. A square static might. A search ad has no room at all, which is why the disclosure usually lives on the landing page and the ad carries only the short form.

Deciding this at brief stage costs a line in a sheet. Deciding it at review costs the asset, because the fix is rarely a tweak — it is a different composition, a different length or a different placement.

So the column records where the disclosure sits and, implicitly, whether it fits. Where it does not, the row changes before anybody builds it.

Reviews in this category read pictures as well as words, and briefs often forget that.

Imagery that implies wealth, ease or a guaranteed outcome is making a claim visually. So is a depiction of somebody being approved, a shot of a purchase that implies affordability, or a scenario that suggests the product does something it does not. None of those appear in the copy, and all of them can fail a review.

The must avoid column is the right place for this, written specifically: no imagery implying approval, no lifestyle scenes that read as a result of the product, no depiction of a purchase the claim does not support. Written that way, it is a rule the person making the asset can apply to a situation nobody anticipated.

The strongest proof here is usually the number itself, stated plainly and backed by the page the click lands on.

That makes the relationship between the asset and the page unusually tight. The claim in the ad and the claim on the page have to be the same claim, in the same words, with the disclosure the review specified. A page that has drifted — a rate updated in one place and not the other — turns a compliant ad into a misleading one without anybody editing the ad.

Write the landing page into the row, and write what has to be true on it. The creative brief is the last document before things are built, which makes it the right place for that check.

The most practical benefit of briefing this way arrives on the day a rate, a fee or a term changes.

Every asset in the sheet names the claim it carries and the review that cleared it. Filter on either, and you have a list of every piece of creative holding the old number, with its owner, its format and its placements. That turns what is otherwise a scramble through ad accounts into a work list that can be assigned.

Keep the rows after the assets are live for exactly that reason. A creative brief in this category is also a register.

One specification here is not optional: the minimum type size for any disclosure carried inside the asset.

It belongs in the specs column alongside dimensions and duration, because it constrains the composition. An asset designed without it will be re-laid out when review points out that the disclosure is unreadable, and re-laying out a finished asset is more expensive than designing to the constraint.

Where the size cannot be met in the format, that is the signal to move the disclosure to the page and carry the short form in the ad.

Assets aimed at people who began an application are not the same assets as the ones aimed at a cold audience, and they should never be the same row.

The audience is defined by a financial circumstance, which narrows what may be said to it. The safe brief is a reminder rather than a reference: the same product, the same cleared claim, the same disclosure, and nothing that implies knowledge of where the reader got to. An asset that says you did not finish is making a statement about the reader that the brief never cleared.

Give those assets their own rows with their own review reference, and put the constraint in must avoid so that whoever builds them does not have to remember it.

Seven checks. One row per asset, each naming one product. Every claim carried is the cleared wording with its reference, not a paraphrase. Every disclosure has a placement that can display it at the specified size. No asset carries a rate or comparison absent from the review. Must avoid names the paraphrases, the implied claims and the imagery that are out. The landing page is named with what has to be true on it. And every due date leaves room for review and a re-edit before the day the asset is needed.