Most UGC briefs fail in one of two directions. They say too little, and the creator guesses. Or they say too much, and the creator recites.
A UGC brief is a one-page document that tells a creator what the video must achieve, who it needs to reach, and where it will run, without telling them how to say it. Written properly, it takes about ten minutes. The difference between a good brief and a bad one shows up directly in your ad account, because the brief decides whether you get an ad or a very pretty placeholder.
Amaya Lala is a UK-based UGC creator specialising in luxury beauty and fashion content for brands. Between her work as the face of the LoveYours Collection, campaign modelling for Kurt Muller womenswear and ongoing ad and interview content for Just Foster, we read a lot of briefs at Love Yours Media. Here is what the good ones share, what they deliberately leave out, and a worked template you can adapt this afternoon.
Why bad briefs produce safe-but-dead content
A creator who doesn't know what you want will give you the safest possible read of your product. Good lighting, pleasant delivery, no opinion, no friction. It looks professional and it dies in the feed, because it gives the viewer no reason to stop. Worse, it teaches you nothing. When a generic video underperforms, you can't tell whether the product failed, the angle failed, or the creative simply never had a point of view.
"When a brief is just a product link and a deadline, I'll make something polished, because polished is the safe interpretation," Lala says. "The briefs behind my best-performing ads tell me who the viewer is and what she's sceptical about. Then I know exactly what to say to camera, and how to say it like I mean it."
The real cost of a weak brief is rarely the video fee. It's the ad spend behind a creative that was never going to work, and the two weeks of testing time you don't get back.
The seven things every UGC brief needs
Seven items. None of them needs more than a sentence or two, and together they fit comfortably on one page. If your brief covers all seven, it is already better than most of what reaches working creators.
1. The product, and the one job of the video
Every video gets one job. Stop cold scrollers. Convert people who already follow you. Handle the price objection. A video asked to build awareness, explain ingredients and drive checkout at the same time will do none of those things well. Write a single sentence beginning "This video exists to..." and cut everything in the brief that doesn't serve it. If you genuinely have three jobs, you have three videos, which is exactly what a testing pack is for.
2. The audience, specifically
"Women 25 to 45" is a media-buying setting, not an audience. A creator needs a person. "She's mid-thirties, has tried retinol twice and stopped both times because her skin flared, and she's tired of being promised miracles" is a person. From that one line, a creator can choose vocabulary, tone, pacing and which objection to deal with first. It is the highest-leverage line in the whole brief, and the one most often missing.
3. Platform and placement
Say where the video will actually run. TikTok organic, Meta Reels paid, Stories, or all of them. Placement changes the cut: 9:16 vertical with the key action kept inside the safe zones, a hook built for the first two seconds, subtitles burnt in because much of Meta is watched on mute. A 30-second TikTok and a 15-second Stories cut are different edits, not the same file uploaded twice. If you need both, say so up front and both get delivered.
4. Hook angles to test, not lines to read
Give two or three angles and let the creator phrase them. Problem-first: "my skin barrier was wrecked and I did it to myself." Result-first: the morning-after skin check. Routine-slot: "the last thing I do before bed." Angles are strategy, and strategy belongs to the brand. Wording is delivery, and delivery belongs to the creator. If you're commissioning a testing pack of three videos, the three should vary by hook angle, not by outfit.
5. Mandatory claims and compliance no-gos
This is the one place to be word-exact. List the claims the video must include, with approved phrasing, and the phrases it must never include. For UK beauty brands that means working inside the CAP Code: a cosmetic can "support the skin barrier" if you can substantiate it, but it cannot "treat eczema", and "clinically proven" needs a study behind it. Two short lists, must-say and never-say, protect everyone and save a re-edit later.
6. Reference ads
Two or three links, each with one line on why. "We like the pacing here." "This is the energy, not the setting." One anti-reference is just as useful: the ad in your category you never want to be mistaken for. Skip the forty-image moodboard. References without reasons simply transfer the guessing from the brand to the creator, which is the problem you were trying to solve.
7. Usage intent
State where the content will run and for how long, because anywhere reputable, usage is priced separately from creation. Our usage rights are licensed per 30-day window, per platform, from £40, and always agreed in writing before delivery. Declaring intent in the brief means the quote is right the first time, and there's no renegotiation mid-campaign when the ad starts performing and you want to keep it running.
What to leave out, deliberately
Leave out the shot-by-shot script. A creator reading your lines one by one is an expensive autocue session, not UGC. The entire commercial value of creator content is delivery that sounds like a person who chose her own words. Viewers clock recitation almost instantly, and the gap between a recited line and an owned one is visible in the first comment section you scroll past.
The honest exception is regulated wording. If a claim must be said exactly, fence that phrase inside the must-say list and leave everything around it free. Word-exact claims, free delivery. That combination keeps legal comfortable and the video alive.
Also leave out: ten mandatory messages (pick two), the demand that the logo appears in the first second (the hook lives there, and it has work to do), and brand fonts on every frame. None of these survives contact with a feed.
A worked example: the ten-minute brief
The product below is invented for this template. It is not a client, and the brand does not exist. Steal the structure, not the cream.
| Product | Mireille Overnight Barrier Cream, £38. Fragrance-free night cream with a 5% ceramide complex. |
|---|---|
| One job | Convert warm Meta traffic: people who have seen the brand but haven't bought. |
| Audience | Women 30 to 50 with dry, reactive skin. Has tried strong actives and been burned. Sceptical of miracle language; persuaded by routine and honesty. |
| Platform | Meta Reels and Stories, paid. 9:16, 20 to 30 seconds, subtitles burnt in, hook that works with sound off. |
| Hooks to test | 1) Problem-first: the over-exfoliation confession. 2) Result-first: the 7am skin check. 3) Routine-slot: the boring last step that changed everything. |
| Must-say | "Fragrance-free." "With a 5% ceramide complex." |
| Never-say | "Cures", "treats eczema", "dermatologist recommended", any healing claim. |
| References | Two links with one-line reasons. One anti-reference: the hard-sell countdown ad we never want to resemble. |
| Usage | Meta paid, UK, initial 30-day window, renewal likely if it performs. |
That table runs to roughly 150 words. Reading it, a creator knows the viewer, the job, the fence lines and the finish line. Nothing in it tells her what to say, which is precisely why what she says will sound true.
What happens after your brief lands
Briefs come to us through one contact. Love Yours Media in London represents Lala end to end and handles filming, editing, sound, subtitling, delivery, rights and invoicing, so nothing gets lost between an agency layer and the person on camera.
The flow is short and fixed. We come back with hook treatments and any questions the brief raises. You receive a one-page agreement covering deliverables, rates and usage, in writing, before anything is shot. Then delivery runs on a 48-hour turnaround: edited, subtitled, cut to the placements named in your brief.
"A good brief actually gets you more than you paid for," Lala says. "If the angles are clear, I'll shoot extra hook variations while the set is lit, because another take costs minutes. When I'm guessing, I protect the one safe version instead."
Rates are public and flat: one video from £125, a testing pack of three for £330, a monthly eight from £1,200. Lala shoots on a Canon camera with a DJI Mic Mini 3 under studio lighting, and delivers native content in English and Arabic where the audience calls for it.
If you have a product ready to test, send your brief. Ten minutes on your side, 48 hours on ours. If you're still deciding what to commission, our services page sets out the rates and what each pack is actually for.