Campaign Brief Agreements

Multiple departments work together to plan campaigns. Not surprisingly, during the planning process there is a substantial amount of healthy discussion, debate, and negotiation that goes on between departments about strategy, goals, and tactics.

However, at the end of the planning process a project team must create a “campaign brief.” This brief serves as an agreement between all parties about the specific action steps each department will take for the campaign. Mobilisation, for instance, will be responsible for writing and sending the campaign emails.

Now here’s the key: after that plan is complete, no further sign-off is needed for Mobilisation (or any other department) to execute on their pieces of that campaign.

In our example, since Mobilisation is explicitly responsible for writing the outreach emails, they would do so with full autonomy over writing, content, and tactics. They do send the draft to the Campaigner, who reviews it only for factual inaccuracies – not for language or approach. This keeps everyone working in their specific areas of expertise, and avoids the campaign getting bogged down in interdepartmental conflict.

A campaign planning document includes:

• Campaign goal
• Communication keys (talking points)
• Message/slogan
• Target
• Call to action
• Activities
• Action team and volunteers
• Online mobilisation
• Press

Every department has the autonomy to do the work they do best. As Executive Director Martin Prieto told us:

“It used to be that the campaigner might want to check every corner of every piece. Every written graphic, whatever. They want to sign off everything. Now, there’s no more signoff. The only signoff is the brief. The moment the brief is agreed, the autonomy is given. It delegates to everyone that they deliver the task that was agreed.”