5 Questions to Ask Before Starting Your Next Creative Project

Before you start another “priority” project, stop. Ask five questions.

Because without true definition marketing projects will fall short of expectations. The brief is vague. The audience isn’t clear. The KPIs are fuzzy. And a month later, everyone’s wondering why the work “didn’t land.”

High-performing marketing leaders know: the success of a creative project is decided before it begins.

These five questions help you pressure-test your next initiative before your team touches a pixel or writes a line of copy.

1. What do we want the audience to think, feel, and do after this?

It’s not enough to say “drive awareness” or “increase engagement.”
What do you actually want to change in your audience?

Think: What new belief are we trying to instill?
Feel: What emotion are we trying to evoke?
Do: What specific action should they take?

When teams skip this, creative gets watered down. You end up with content that looks nice but doesn’t move anyone.

Example:
Let’s say you’re launching a new B2B platform. “Generate leads” isn’t a creative direction. But saying, “We want prospects to feel confident that this platform is the only one built for their growth stage, and book a demo to learn more” — that’s a story. That’s a brief.

Tip: Put this question at the top of every creative brief. Make sure your strategist and creative lead can answer it in one sentence before moving forward.

[link to pillar page: marketing team playbook]

2. What does success *look like — and feel like — to us?

Most teams define success too late. They chase metrics after the launch instead of designing around them.

Yes, you need KPIs. But KPIs are just signals — not the full picture.
Success is also about how your team feels during the project: are they clear, confident, and decisive, or reactive and burnt out?

Example:
If your campaign goal is “grow newsletter signups by 20%,” success could look like that number — but it might also feel like alignment across the team, clarity in decisions, and momentum in delivery.

The best marketing leaders define both. They ask:

• What will we measure quantitatively (KPIs, conversion, reach)?

• What will we measure qualitatively (clarity, creative energy, internal trust)?

You can’t scale success if your team doesn’t understand what “good” feels like.

3. Who’s this really for — and what’s keeping them up at night?

Marketers say “know your audience” so often it’s become white noise.
But most briefs still describe audiences as demographics, not humans.

“Women 25–40 interested in wellness” isn’t an audience — it’s a data point.
Try this instead: “A working mom who’s done pretending she has time for 12-step routines and wants a simpler way to feel in control again.”

That version? Your designer will picture her. Your copywriter will write for her. Your strategist will build empathy, not assumptions.

Ask:

• What’s their context right now?

• What problem do they think they have vs. the one we solve?

• Why haven’t they solved it yet?

When you know what keeps them up at night, your creative becomes specific — and specificity sells.

Harvard Business Review: Empathy-driven marketing

4. What guardrails will protect creative energy?

Creative teams will reach burnout VERY fast if you let ambiguity thrive.

Before you brief, ask:

• Where will collaboration happen?

• Who decides what’s “final”?

• How do we handle feedback?
  

Example:
Define up front:

• What to do if you send a project going off the rails?

• What to do if you are getting conflicting feedback (hint, it’s usually due to a lack of clarity in the end goal)

It sounds small, but it’s the difference between focused momentum and death-by-draft.
Don’t kill your creatives and make spend endless hours sussing out what feedback means.

5. What will we learn from this — even if it fails?

Every project teaches you something: about your team, your audience, your process.
But only if you plan to look for it.

Before you start, decide:

• What are we testing or validating here?

• How will we capture lessons learned?

• Who’s responsible for documenting it?

High-performing teams do short retros. They don’t wait until the end of the quarter. They ask:

“What worked? What didn’t? What do we do differently next time?”

When you make learning part of the workflow, you scale judgment — not just execution.

Example:
After a campaign, instead of just reporting “CTR improved 15%,” dig deeper: What messaging pulled best? Why? Did the audience respond to emotion or proof? That’s what sharpens the next brief.

Failure isn’t fatal if it’s documented. But repeating mistakes because no one captured insights? That’s wasteful.

Key Takeaways

• Define impact first. What do you want your audience to think, feel, and do?

• Design success. Clarity and alignment are as important as metrics.

• Humanize your audience. Write briefs for real people, not personas.

• Protect creative focus. Clear guardrails beat endless approvals.

• Learn fast. Treat every project as data for the next one.