Your campaign card sets the economics; your brief sets the output. It's the only steering you get over thirty independent clippers, and most buyers waste it — either a vague "make it go viral!" or a ten-page style bible nobody reads. The working brief is one screen that answers five questions. Here it is.
The five questions a brief must answer
1. What is this content, and what's the goal? One line of context, one line of goal — because "grow my channel" and "sell tour tickets" produce different clips from the same source. Goal-aware clippers cut toward conversion moments, not just funny ones.
2. What moments do you want (and NOT want)? The highest-leverage section. Name three moment types with an example each ("crowd-work interactions — like the dentist bit from the Chicago set"), and name the exclusions explicitly: moments you regret, topics that trigger platform policy problems, anything mid-drama. Clippers honor exclusion lists — they protect their slots by not gambling on rejected content.
3. What's the style floor? Two or three mechanical requirements, maximum: captions required, your handle tagged, logo-free, hook within one second. Every additional rule costs you clip variety — and variety is what you're buying. Specify the floor, not the ceiling.
4. Where should clips live? Platforms ranked by your goal: discovery skews TikTok, subscriber conversion skews Shorts, shareability skews Reels. Multi-platform submissions earn clippers more bounties anyway — tell them where the priority is.
5. What does great look like? Link two or three existing clips (yours or the genre's) that nail the vibe. One example replaces five paragraphs of adjectives.
The template, assembled
About: [Who you are + content type]. Goal: [one line]. Cut these: [3 moment types with examples]. Never these: [exclusions]. Every clip: captions, @handle in caption, hook in the first second. Platforms: [priority order]. North stars: [2–3 links].
That's the whole brief. It fits in the campaign's brief field, gets actually read, and turns a crowd into a direction.
Briefing after launch
The brief keeps working after go-live: when early submissions arrive, message your best clippers with one steering note ("clip 3's style — more of exactly that"). Accepted clippers get notified when you raise pay; pair a raise with a steering note and the whole pool re-aims mid-campaign. The per-campaign leaderboard shows whose output to amplify — and who to hire directly after.
A page of steering, thirty edits of leverage. Write the brief like the asset it is.