There is one tool I use for everything. It’s called a Customer Journey.

It’s name implies that it’s just for customer experiences, but that isn’t true. I use it to walk through the before, during, and after…of any problem.

Working on your hiring process? What happens before, during, and after someone is hired?

Acquiring customers? What happens before, during, and after closing a customer?

Reviewing a campaign? What happens before, during, and after the campaign?

Working on a marketplace? What happens before, during, and after a customer buys OR a vendor starts selling?

This tool takes practice. Most people give up on it too early because on the surface it looks like a waste of time. But over the years you find that a customer journey enables you to break down problems faster, while enabling groups of people to deliver work that contributes to the same overall problem.

What makes this easy to learn is that everyone goes through this process in their head. People mentally build their own map and work through how they are going to solve it. All a customer journey does is take everything out of your head and map it into a structure that everyone can use.

How To Make A Journey

You start by taking a problem you’re working on and then go through the before, during, and after for that problem. Lets use a generic problem…completing the morning with my three little kids. Ultimately we need three kids who are fed, dressed, happy, and mentally ready to start their day.

I would start a journey by listing…what happens before they wake up, during wakeup, and after they wakeup?

Before

• i wake up (without waking up my wife).
• do my stuff (breakfast, coffee, work, etc.)
• grab the kids (hearing, picking up, and taking to our room).

During

• kids wake up (cuddle, make a plan, etc)
• do their morning list (teeth, bathroom, clothes, etc)

After

• eat breakfast (make, serve, and sit with them)
• clean breakfast (clear table, clean, etc)
• first play (suggest, decide, and play)

Once you have everything down you can start grouping steps.

Continuing the example above, I started by listing each morning thing I did…bathroom, drink water, make coffee, eat breakfast, etc. After seeing all the steps on paper I then realized that really this was all one step for "do my stuff." Everything I listed was all the same effort with the same goal of completion without making up my kids. So I grouped it as one step.

My morning journey would look something like this.

Once I have a customer journey I can then look at each step and come up with solutions to better solve it. Continuing with "do my stuff," I would generate ideas that improved the process.

• closing their bedroom doors first to cut down noise and light
• pre-make my bowl of cereal the night before.
• plastic bowl and spoon so it makes less noise when eating.
• cold coffee in the am instead of hot coffee.
• laptop pre-charged so don’t have to make noise with cables, plugging in, etc. …etc.

Once I had potential solutions I would refine my customer journey. I might even add a new column, such as "the night before." Here I could list out steps I could take the previous day to make my morning better.

Why It Matters

A customer journey helps you scale.

Lets say I added my wife to this problem and together we were working to improve our mornings. If she had her own mental map and I had mine then we won’t get very far. Secondarily if she didn’t have a mental map and just jumped into "make breakfast" the solutions could be in conflict to the broader problem we’re trying to solve over the long term.

Scale this out and say you had a team of five people working to make our family mornings better. Without the entire problem mapped out you get into solution mode without context to how the solutions impact the overall objective. Therefore when each person finishes their work you then have to make changes if the solutions don’t fit together. If everyone first started by looking at the same customer journey you’d get 5x the amount of mental horsepower on how to reduce steps and build solutions that scale across the steps.

Now substitute my family morning problem for any problem in your company.

How To Start

If you have time, I’d recommend learning customer journeys on your own before bringing them to your team. Start with a piece of paper and learn how to map out steps, edit them, and brainstorm ideas.

Your structure is…

• Before, During, and After stages placed left to right on top of the page.
• Start listing out all the steps that coincide with each stage.
• Group similar steps until you have a handful per stage.
• Refine the detailed steps within each vertical grouping.
• Brainstorm how you’d start solving problems to reduce / simplify steps.

A template for this could look something like this.

Then practice this for any problem your company is facing. It will help you think about the whole problem and point out holes in the team’s work. It will also help you look at how to group the work while ensuring their solutions aren’t in conflict to the larger problem they are solving.

Once ready I’d start creating digital versions of the customer journey you then use with the team. Trello or Google Spreadsheets works well for this. Their first step is to learn how to read them and yours is to learn how to explain them.

This will go on for a few projects until the team is ready to start writing their own. Keep in mind they will need to go through your same learning curve so don’t get frustrated when their initial customer journeys are terrible.

A secondary caution is that customer journeys are best if created by one and edited by many. Multiple authors is hard as you need one person who ultimately refines this to one experience.

If you don’t have time to develop this skillset on your own before teaching it, then you’ll have to accelerate it with just your leadership team. You’d ask to see a customer journey for major projects they are working on which will force them to learn the skill faster. You won’t care how they do it other than you can follow their logic while showing you how big the problem is.

When To Use It

Personally I use them all the time. Even if just on a scratch piece of paper, it helps me understand the whole problem and how the team is solving it. I can edit work better if I have a clear journey.

Within a team environment we only create them for major projects or brand new experiences. They are included in our Creative Briefs, but not used for every project. Coincidentally, the project leads who use customer journeys often deliver tighter projects. Their teams appreciate that the details were thought through and people are scrambling to patch holes that were missed.

Please keep in mind any changes to team process can take time so if you implement a Customer Journey be patient as your culture learns to use them.

Conclusion

This is the tool I use more than anything else in creating and running a company. I use it in a variety of ways and whenever I help a new startup the discussion always ends up in a customer journey discussion.

To help, I created a basic template in google docs. You are welcome to copy it and improve it for your own needs. You are welcome to email or DM if you need help with your own customer journeys.

Customer Journey Template

(below are a few examples i outlined.)

Example – Product Roadmap

This is an example for how you’d build a product roadmap.

For this example I’ll assume I’m a startup who is looking to make tools to improve the manufacturing of products. These would be software based tools to make it easier for smaller companies to manufacture better products.

I would start with a single manufacturing type, lets say soft goods. Once I had a journey for this segment I’d repeat this exercise for each new market we’re entering…lets say consumer electronics was next.

To map out soft-goods I would interview potential customers to understand what they do today before, during, and after they manufacture a new product. Without coming up with solutions I would just start listing, interviewing, and looking at their existing tools. I’d do this with a handful of different companies with different types of soft goods. Ultimately I’m trying to create a mental map of me being on their team, manufacturing new products.

I would then group my steps such as…

• Research the market
• Concepts
• Prototypes
• Factory selection
• Manufacturing setup
• First samples
• Second samples
• Production
• Shipping

I would then flow steps within each grouped column to deeply understand how they solve these steps today. It would help me better understand all the problems from their POV.

Once I had this mapped out I would then look at which problem I can solve first with the resources I have. This would be product one, version one. Over time I would add new versions to my first product followed by new products that tackle different problems within the journey.

I could add new products within my first market (soft-goods) or take this same playbook to similar markets (consumer electronics).

If done right, this journey could take me 10 yeas to execute with products and services.

Example – A Marketplace

This is an example for how you’d build a marketplace journey.

In this example you have to map out two customer journeys. The first for the supply side of the marketplace. The second for the demand side.

To map out the supply side I’d work through before, during, and after the joining of the marketplace. I’d look at how people do this today with other marketplaces to get the core steps down of what people have to accomplish. I would then look at which of these problems we would have to solve first and in which order.

To map out the demand side I’d go through a similar process to look at before, during, and after making a first purchase. Assuming that after a first purchase I can start a relationship I’d be focused on what the major steps are, followed by how we’d solve those steps.

It’s important to note you can solve these customer journeys in a variety of ways. The solution isn’t always a new feature, product, or service. Sometimes you solve it with content or marketing or sales. You can also ignore whole problems until you have time to really solve them.

We created a similar journey for Moment Travel. It’s a marketplace for photography trips. We’re 18 months in and on version 3 of the journey as we learn what works to improve the Guide and Customer steps.

Example – Internal Process

This is an example if you are creating any internal team processes.

We recently improved the first two weeks at Moment. This work was part of a customer journey I had built and refined a few years ago…working at moment.

To start I built a journey for before, during, and after joining the company. I looked at how other companies do this and interviewed people on the team who recently joined.

I started with lots of lists for steps people go through. I then grouped those steps…

• Discover the job.
• Apply
• Filter and interview
• Project to hire
• Close
• Day 0
• Week 1
• Week 2

Ultimately this work has resulted in two separate journeys. The first is process within Moment before, during, and after hiring someone. The second is the new employee process before, during, and after they join. They are connected but separate journeys.

Over time we have picked off chunks of this journey work on.

1. Project to hire: We spent a few years improving our process between interviewing and selecting the potential employee.

2. Application: Later we went back and simplified our application process through one tool and one internal process.

3. First Two Weeks: Now five years in, we are shipping a 1.0 version that improves your firs two weeks at Moment.

By having a broader customer journey we were then able to decide what to work on and in what order.

Startup founders are told to write investor updates. You can search google for lots of articles about why. You can even find "fill in the blank" templates.

I’ll skim the advice for you…engaged, positioning, intros, want to help, in the loop, etc. You’ll notice a trend. All of the reasons given are to benefit other people.

I think that is bad advice.

Yes people in and around your business need to know what’s going on but investor updates aren’t the way to do it. If people want an update you can just email them this every day…"This is hard. I got kicked in the teeth again today and the hill we’re trying to climb looks more like a mountain. Please make more hours in the day and send help that doesn’t drain my bank account."

Instead try Business Updates.

What’s A Business Update?

They are similar to an investor update, but different. First, Business Updates are for you. Others read them, but the purpose is to help you run a more successful business. Second, they are about the past and not the future. We aren’t hyping. We’re learning.

Business Updates analyze the past few weeks. They force you to look at the data, ask what happened, and come up with new hypothesis’ to test next. They are uncomfortable, especially when something isn’t working. But over time you’ll come to realize they are the most important tool to teaching you how to think, distill, and run your business. Public companies write quarterly updates (i.e. earnings calls) and the best CEOs write annual shareholder letters (See Bezos).

It doesn’t matter if you are bootstrapped or venture funded. Business Updates teach you how to analyze and communicate results. I call this business speak and you need it to raise, hire, and scale. Because if you can’t distill your business then there is no way you can execute it.

That’s cool, but I just started my company so what am I going to write about?

Everything you’re learning. Even if your updates start as product specific learnings, that’s ok. It’s a start.

When do I start sending updates?

As soon as you can and BEFORE you raise money. These updates will demonstrate that you are serious about building a successful company.

How frequently do I write them?

More than once a month. Once the business is mature you can push out the timeline. I started with an update every other Sunday. Three years in, I moved it to every three weeks. And now five years in, I publish about once a month.

Who do I send them to?

The people closely involved in the long term success of your company. This includes current employees, investors, advisors, and board members. Yes, even board members get the same updates as everyone else. You don’t have time to send different updates to different people. Over time you will forget who you said what to, so it’s easier to just be transparent from the beginning. It will make sense later.

Are they a lot of work?

Yes, especially when you start. You’ll quickly realize that to write about your business you have to be able to measure it. To be able to measure it you need tools to track it. To have tools to track it you have to have thought about what to measure and why.

Eventually you come full circle to realizing…shit I have to prioritize learning into the foundation of the company.

Bingo.

Wait, so how do I keep my investors hyped?

You don’t. You let the numbers do the hyping.

Ok, so how do I get my investor to help?

Ask them. Learn how each can help and message them when you need it. Unless they wrote the largest check, they have limited hours to help. Therefore be selective and specific in your asks.

Huh, sounds like a giant waste of time.

It is…if you don’t plan to build lots of startups. It’s actually easier to just write investor updates than to write Business Updates. With investor updates you just keep writing about the amazing stuff you are going to do and you can skip over the actual results.

Business updates on the other hand require you to be vulnerable. You have to look at results, especially the shitty ones, and decide what you’re going to do about it. Not everything you will try is going to work. But the process of trying, measuring, learning, and improving will deliver.

Update Structure

You are welcome to make your own structure, this is mine.

Intro Paragraph

I take the biggest learning since the last update and elevate it to the top of the email. This provide me with space to dive deeper into a single topic to analyze what happened, what we learned, and what we do about it. This section can include a few charts / images and about 2-4 paragraphs of analysis.

Need Help

In the early years I would list a single ask. The more specific you are the better. Overtime I took this section out and just messaged people with specific asks as needed.

Business Update

The rest of the email is a repeating pattern of single metric/chart with a short paragraph of analysis. I’m not writing accomplishment check lists, providing functional updates, or talking about the future. Instead I go over the last two weeks, looking at our dashboards and asking myself…what happened…why…what happens next?

In answering my own questions I start to find interesting pieces of data. These are small learnings we can use to improve future decisions. As I find these threads I pull out a single piece of data, screen shot it, and write a short paragraph of analysis about it. This pattern repeats itself for a few hours until I’ve gone through what we’ve learned since the last update.

It’s ok if your updates are short to start. As the business matures you will have more to analyze and learn from.

Writing Style

The language in Business Updates is business speak. The best way to learn it is to read quarterly updates and annual shareholder letters from your favorite public companies. Bezos consistently writes the best ones and if you read them over the years you can see how he think and talks about his business.

My rules….

• No hyping.
• No promising the future or talking about what your’e going to do next.
• Only cover the past.
• One visual data point per paragraph of analysis.
• Be vulnerable. You don’t care if it’s good or bad news. Your job is to report on it, what you learned, and what you plan to do about it.
• Don’t try to have all the answers. You just have to talk out loud to what you’ve learned and put down your next hypothesis to test.
• Don’t hide shitty data. The results are what they are so dig into them.
• Don’t organize it functionally. Review and publish what you’ve learned about your whole business, not just the functional accomplishments. Because no one cares how you structure your business or what the functions are shipping. They do care about your results and the decisions you will make going forward.

Sending Details

Pick a cadence to send your updates and don’t waiver from it. Whether good news or bad news, you ship your updates. Consistency wins.

Your entire startup journey is an unproven hypothesis. The faster you realize that you have no idea about what’s going to work, the faster you start learning. The numbers won’t lie so don’t worry about hyping something that isn’t real.

No matter how you publish your updates what matters is that you ship and don’t waiver from what you started. The quickest way to lose investor trust is to stop publishing.

Here is how I send my updates…

• It’s an email. I used Mailchimp in the past and now I use Klaviyo.
• It’s a text based email, not a marketing email.
• I try to send it on Sundays around 4pm pst. I found open rates were better on Sundays.
• I put current employees, investors, advisors, and board members on the update.
• When new employees join they get added to the updates list as part of the company on-boarding process. The opposite happens when they leave.
• I also archive all of the updates on a private webpage so future members can go back and read what we’ve learned.

Intro Examples

I can’t post current examples because we share financial data so I went into our archives and pulled out a few example intros. These are examples for how I would start a Business Update.

Intro Example – 1

[screenshot]

iPhone X has arrived. Even though it’s just a phone, it is arguably the most advanced camera ever made. Good news for us, is that our gear already works with iPhone X so we can capture immediate sales. Our lenses work. Our Photo Case is available for pre-order. And a new Battery Photo Case is going to be announced 11/14 for pre-order.

[screenshot]

It seems obvious in retrospect but it has taken us years to learn how to launch our capture products on time with each new phone. From the products to the content to the commerce we’re getting faster at capitalizing on launch day. Comparing our results to last year, both in dollars and percentage growth, we see just how important it is to have compatible products to sell. Last year our products weren’t yet available for purchase, which had a dramatic impact on weekly sales. This year we’re in stock or just a few weeks away from shipping.

Intro Example – 2

Our 72 Hour Sale just about crushed us.

This year we decided to close for Black Friday weekend and instead offer a 72 hour sale from Monday – Wednesday of the following week. The response blew past our most aggressive forecast, bringing in $270K on the first day alone. Comparing orders placed this holiday season to last season we saw 743% year over year growth. (Keep in mind we recognize revenue when we ship).

[screenshot]

This result was both amazing and terrible. On one hand it was amazing to have thousands of customers interested in buying Moment. We reached a level of momentum and excitement that surpassed even our biggest days on Kickstarter. On the other hand we instantly sold out of key products, which left little for customers to buy on the last day. To make matters worse we accepted some orders that were beyond our stock on hand.

Since the sale ended we have been in overdrive restocking products, releasing shippable orders on a daily basis, and managing a massive load of customer service emails. Backorders have been the largest contributor to the massive volume of emails we have received this season compared over last year.

[screenshot]

Despite dealing with backorders the team has managed to keep our customers happy. Which is never easy when thousands of people are anxious to have their order shipped.

[screenshot]

We are almost out of the woods as we expect to ship all open orders early this week, just in time for the holidays. Even though we haven’t had time to recap the holiday season one thing is clear, we left a lot of sales on the table by running out of stock.

Forecasting and inventory management is clearly an area we need to improve upon in 2016.

Intro Example – 3

It’s good to be shipping.

Launching and running a Kickstarter is exhausting but shipping might be even worse. Over the last three weeks we have shipped 12 new cases, four new lenses, and a new lens adaptor with two different suppliers across two warehouses, while using airplanes and boats to move the product. To add to the shipping complexities we received 7,150 emails alone in June, up 62% from the previous month.

Despite the stress of delivering we’ve managed to maintain a customer service happiness score of 85/100, reduce our first response time 3.5 hours, and reduce our overall response rate down by 27%. The whole team starting their day by answering 5-15 emails has made Kickstarter a massive team effort.

Best of all, the initial response to Moment 2.0 is higher than any previous launch. You can see the #momentgear feed or find YouTube reviews like the one below.

Business Update Examples

These are snippets from the middle of the update. It shows examples of analysis with a screen shot of data. I didn’t include actual screen shots so you’ll have to imagine. But generally I post a single chart.

Now that we are installing RJ Metrics we can begin to understand the business even better. The basis of our thesis is that Moment can grow to be a company with one million customers who on average spend $100 a year. Not counting our latest Kickstarter campaign we have passed an important milestone of our first 10K customers who on average have spent over $125 with us.

[screenshot]

In selling out of our Wide Lens we’ve quickly realized the impact of our best selling product. Looking at the items per order over the last few weeks with and without the Wide Lens, it becomes clear to us that a lot of people come to Moment to buy the Wide and in the process by other items. This makes its absence greater than just the direct loss in sales.

[screenshot]

Adding our first US warehouse continues to prove that people want cheaper, faster shipping. The conversion rate ratio between US and International reached as high as 5x during the peak holiday season. Adding Amazon FBA in the coming days will offer Prime shipping for Moment products for US customers. Next we’re working to move our international warehouse in-region, to reduce the tax and shipping shock our customers experience at check out.

[screenshot]

We have maxed out performance on the current platform and the only way to make speed and shopping improvements is to move platforms. While making that move, one of the key learnings over the lats month is that what we place “above the page fold” matters. A few months ago we tested putting add-on accessory products below the add to cart button, i.e. below the fold. Our items per order dropped significantly. Moving those accessory items back above the fold has resulted in much higher attachment rates.

[screenshot]

What has surprised us the most about being on Kickstarter is that our existing sales have not tanked. We figured the introduction of new products would bring existing sales to a halt. Instead the announcement of new products has only increased overall sales, now averaging about $15K per day. This tell us that next time we should go faster in designing and announcing new products. [screen shot would go here]

Extra Tip

Writing a business update isn’t just for the CEO to do. You can ask the same of your leadership team before every board meeting. Instead of making slides in deck have them each write a short business update about what they’ve learned since the last board meeting. This teaches your own leadership team business speak and how to analyze / distill their work. You’d be surprised, but this skill is not done. Even experienced operators don’t know how to write tight business updates.

Before each board meeting, the leadership team writes a collective business update. It goes something like this.

Intro

The first page is mine to summarize the business and the traditional areas around cash, revenue, margins, spend, and team.

By Team

Each exec writes their own section. The template varies a little bit but generally the premise is to analyze what they have learned.

• List annual goals at the top of the brief and mention if ahead, on track, or behind. This reminds the board what the team is focused on.
• Go through their business and talk about 5-7 learnings since the last update. Each short paragraph is focused on a single core metric / learning that they analyze.
• These sections are written in business speak and not product speak. That means they are using business words and writing about the impact of their results.

Discussion Topics

At the end of the update I list 2-3 discussion topics for the meeting. We spend at least two thirds of the meeting on the discussion topics.

….hope this post helps. Please feel free to copy or use any of it to run your company.

Everything gets a brief. It does’t matter if we’re launch a product, a service, or a campaign…it has a brief.

Why a brief?

A brief forces you to write. And writing forces you to distill.

Why the f*%@ should I care?

You shouldn’t if you don’t want to win. This is a tool that makes everything you launch better and more consistent. Ultimately it will deliver measurable results.

A lot of people, especially in chaotic startups, underestimate how hard it is to distill a plan into words. They think it takes too much time to write and so they don’t. Or they assume that words take away from the organic nature of creating. It doesn’t, it improves it.

Putting words down makes you hone in the why, the what, and the how it’s different. It forces you to research and to think…how is the world doing this today and how can we do it different?

I didn’t start Moment with a brief. I wish I had, it would have been tighter. Instead, The Brief has been something we’ve developed the last three years into a staple for everything we do.

If you start using briefs, expect it to take time for your team to embrace it. You will get push back like this…why do we have to write all this down? Because it makes the work better. It makes it clear from 50′ down to the details why, what and how.

You’ll get this too…But everyone digests information differently, not everyone likes long docs. True, but we use words. You are welcome to add images, but words are a basic form of communication and we practice getting better at them.

And this…but I communicate better by talking. We can do that too, after you read and edit the brief. Because writing makes what you talk about more specific.

I didn’t work at Amazon, but everything they launch has a brief. Albeit a long one, but they use words to distill why, what, and how. It forces people to write down their assumptions and to validate if they were right or wrong. That learning is invaluable as you build competencies into the company.

How you execute off of a brief is up to you. We’ve evolved and struggled our way through this because it takes just as much discipline and process for people to pick up their sections of the brief and deliver them. We’ve tried check lists, Trello cards, and most recently Monday.

There are three levels you want your team to graduate to…

1) Read One – Reading, digesting, and executing their parts of the brief. Believe it or not, it takes practice to teach people how to read and understand it. They won’t ask questions and you will assume from that they understood it. This isn’t necessarily true. Reading and executing is something you have to work on internally until it becomes second nature.

2) Run One – The top of every brief has a project owner. It doesn’t mean they have to be author, but they do need to be the one who gets everyone to deliver. The best project leads are both charismatic and organized, two skill sets you need to get a group to execute.

3) Write One – Writing great briefs is hard. It takes a lot of re-writing and most people don’t want to do that. They think the time is better spent do anything other than writing. To do this well, one person in the company has to be excellent at this. Over time this has to grow into multiple, excellent brief writers. It doesn’t mean that writers have to run briefs. But it does mean they have to be excellent at creating break through ideas and distilling those into a plan.

I made a Brief Template for you and put in google docs. You are welcome to take it and make it better for your company.

Overview

This is your one pager. Anyone should be able to pick this up and understand the brief. If the project is really complicated, this section can be longer than one page, but that is the exception and not the rule.

Project Owner: This is the person who is going to run the project.

Problem: Distill this into a single sentence. You have to keep asking your self "why" until you are at the root problem you are trying to solve. This is harder than it looks.

What: This is an overview of what the project is about. If it has multiple parts then add "+" bullet points to list those. Here is where you want to really think about how this is different than anything else on the market. To do this section well is hard, you have to come up with a unique approach.

Measure Success: This how you keep score and should be 1-5 core metrics you care about. These metrics help you improve and measure future projects.

Dates: These are just high level dates. You can move to a more detailed project document to keep track of the more granular delivery dates.

Documents: How you organize your project folder is as important as the brief. From the folder to the sub folders to the key documents, finding things during the project should be simple.

Creative Direction

This section is not for everyone. One person on the team should write this section and do it for every project when you are small. That can be the CEO, a designer or a creative on the team. What’s critical is this person use the same template and process every time. If you don’t know how to do this then make friends with an awesome Art Director and have them teach you. Very few people know how to do this well.

Visual Theme: This is hard for people to wrap their head around but the template above has an examples. It’s about taking two contrasting inspirations, identifying 2-3 traits per, and then putting them together to create something new. The sentence is Blah (trait 1, trait 2, trait 3) meets Blah (trait 1, trait 2, trait 3).

Imagine…Apple (minimalism, detailed, precise) meets Patagonia (big beautiful images, adventure, and connection).

That mashup contains two polar opposites. Together they provide inspiration so your team can make something totally new.

Mood Board: This is also hard. You have to pick just 6-8 images that represent the visual theme you outlined. Each image should come from a side of the mashup. In the case of Apple and Patagonia you have to go deep in researching each brand and selecting specific image that represents the mash-up of (minimalism, detailed, precise) and (big beautiful images, adventure, and connection).

People get too literal in thinking this mood board has to include the exact fonts and colors they want to use. You can include these items, as long as the images selected come directly form the mashup and not other sources of inspiration.

Campaign Name: The external name for the campaign. It should be short and easy to understand.

Inspire: More to come about how to write messaging, but this is a 3-5 word phrase or short sentence that sets the inspire level of the campaign. Such as…Small Camera. Big Films.

Explain: If you ignore everything else and just practice explain level messaging you’re ahead of the game. Here is where we write a 1,2,3 that the public will read to understand what your campaign is about. It should be actionable and easy to understand.

Example…. Introducing the Moment 58mm Lens. Closer, tighter, crispier shots. Buy it today, save 20%.

How – By Phase

You can do this part of the brief any way that you want. The purpose is for one person to think through the whole experience of the campaign and then break out all the parts you have to launch. This isn’t a long checklist. Instead it’s organized into clear phases and within each phases chunks of experiences that have to ship together.

How: Each phase of the project starts with a new How section. This makes it clear to the team for how this project rolls out. Often we’ll have Teaser, Launch, and Post Launch phases to every project.

Touch Point Template: As we get into each piece we have to launch we use the same template with a title, problem, statement, and bullet points of what has to happen. This again reinforces people learning how to distill problems and then come up with ways they want to solve those problems.

Downloadable Template

If you missed it above I created a google doc with this template that you can use and make better for your company.

The Brief – Template

If you have any questions, email me or dm me.