A ten field campaign brief that forces strategic decisions in sequence, with the Stranger Test, the Subtraction Test and the Friday Test. Explained in full below, and free to download, keep and teach from.
Most campaigns fail on paper before they fail in the market, and they fail in a recognisable way. The objective is really three objectives. The audience is described as people like us. An opinion is written in the insight field. Six channels are funded at a level that would support two. The metrics chosen are the ones that go up regardless of whether anything worked.
A brief with ten fields in a fixed order prevents most of that, not because the fields are clever but because the order is enforced. Each answer constrains the next one. A single named objective makes the audience question answerable. A single audience makes the insight either true or obviously invented. A real insight makes the message write itself, and a written message makes it visible which channels were chosen out of habit.
Students use it as the spine of a team campaign from strategy through to a client pitch. Small businesses use it because it is the shortest document that still makes an agency conversation productive.
If the objective still succeeds with a channel removed, the channel was never load bearing.
One measurable outcome with a date on it. One primary segment, described as a specific person rather than a demographic band. Then one insight, which has to be something true about that person, not something you believe about the category. The insight field is where opinions hide, and an invented insight is the most expensive error in the document because everything downstream inherits it.
One sentence the audience should remember, and the reason they should believe it. If the message needs two sentences, there are two campaigns, and running them together means neither lands.
Channels ranked, chosen because the audience is already there rather than because the channel exists. Assets mapped against each channel so nothing is commissioned without a home. Then real numbers for money and duration.
Metrics that would move only if the objective moved. Then what could kill this, and what the early warning looks like, written down while everyone is still calm enough to think about it honestly.
The Stranger Test, where someone outside repeats the objective and message back without help. The Subtraction Test, where each channel is removed in turn to see whether the objective survives without it. And the Friday Test, where the brief has to produce a concrete plan for next week naming who makes what. A brief that cannot survive all three is a description of an intention.
Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, a newsletter, a podcast tour and a campus poster run.
ObjectiveTwo hundred applications to a spring intake from final year students at three named universities, by 15 March.
Removing each in turnRemove the podcast tour. Objective survives, and nothing else weakens.
Remove LinkedIn. Objective survives. Final year students are not there yet.
Remove the newsletter. Objective survives. There is no list to send to.
Remove the campus posters. Objective is in trouble. Three named campuses is the entire audience definition.
Remove Instagram. Objective is in trouble.
Two load bearing channels, not six. The same budget across two rather than six is the difference between a campaign that registers and one that is technically present everywhere.
This is the working document for the team campaign, and the pitch is assessed on the thinking it contains rather than on the deck built over it. Fill it in with the team present rather than dividing the fields between people, because the order is the point and the constraints only bite if everyone watches them bite.
Useful before spending anything, and most useful before briefing an agency, because it converts a conversation about tactics into a conversation about the objective. The Subtraction Test alone will usually pay for the two hours. Pairs with the Mission and Vision Framework, which supplies the strategic constraint the objective should sit inside.
The worksheet above is yours with no conditions attached. If an annotated edition would help, the one with a completed example in every field and the notes on where people get stuck, that is what this is for.
One message per instrument, nothing else. Students in the class do not need this, the annotated version is handed out in the session.
Everything here is original teaching material developed for university courses and corporate training in Seoul. Use it, adapt it, teach from it. When quoting or summarising, cite Matthew Clement, CareerComms, and link this page.
If it is useful in your classroom, it has done its job.