How to Write a Creative Services Brief for a Queensland Government Quote Request

A useful Queensland Government quote request brief covers seven things: agency context, audience, behaviour objective, deliverables, brand and compliance requirements, budget, and timeline. Writing one for a government project is different from a commercial one. The approval environment is more complex, the stakeholder landscape is broader, and the supplier needs more context upfront to quote accurately.

Agency and project context

Start with who you are and what the project is. Name the agency, the team, and the communication objective. Not just “we need a video” but why the video needs to exist, what problem it's solving, and how it fits within a broader campaign or communication strategy if one exists. This context shapes every creative decision the supplier will make. A supplier who understands why a project exists produces better work than one working only from a deliverables list.

The audience

Define the audience specifically. Age, location, and demographic markers are a starting point. What matters more is what the audience currently believes, what they currently do, and what's stopping them from doing what the campaign needs. If audience research exists, include it or summarise the relevant findings. If it doesn't, say so. A good creative supplier may recommend audience research as a first step, and that's a useful conversation to have early rather than discovering the gap mid-project.

The behaviour or action objective

What does the audience need to do after seeing this campaign? This is the single most important sentence in the brief and the one most often missing. “Increase awareness of flood preparedness” is not a behaviour objective. “Prompt residents in flood-prone areas to complete a household emergency plan before the start of storm season” is. The second version gives the supplier a clear target and gives the agency a benchmark for evaluating whether the work is doing its job.

Deliverables

List what needs producing. Be specific about formats, lengths, and technical specifications where they're known. If a media buy is already committed, include the placement formats. If there's openness to the supplier recommending the channel mix, say so. Don't let the deliverables list substitute for the strategy. Deliverables should follow from the communication objective and the audience.

Brand and compliance requirements

Include any whole-of-government or agency brand guidelines that apply. Note any accessibility requirements: WCAG compliance for digital content, captioning for video, audio description requirements. Flag any sensitivities around language, imagery, or community representation. Surfacing these requirements at the brief stage is significantly less expensive than encountering them during final approvals. Suppliers working on government projects expect them.

Budget

Include a budget range or invite the supplier to propose one. Government procurement culture sometimes treats budget as something to withhold to get a lower price. In creative services it doesn't work that way. A supplier who doesn't know the budget will either underprice and deliver less than expected, or overprice and miss the shortlist. A realistic budget range produces a quote that's actually scoped for what's needed.

Timeline

Include all relevant dates: quote response deadline, project commencement, key milestones, and final delivery. Flag fixed dates, ministerial announcements, campaign launch windows, reporting deadlines, that can't move. Flag dates that have flexibility. Timeline is one of the most common sources of scope variation in government creative projects, and establishing it clearly in the brief protects both agency and supplier.

Contact and clarification

Name the person who can answer clarification questions and how they want to be contacted. Suppliers working on government quote responses often have questions about scope, audience, or technical requirements. Making it easy to ask those questions before the response is submitted produces better quotes.

What a complete brief should cover

Where Welcome to the Fold sits

Welcome to the Fold has been responding to Queensland Government creative briefs for more than twenty years. We're appointed to the Queensland Government Creative Advertising Preferred Supplier Panel (GGS0120-25) and six other government panels. If you're developing a brief and want to talk through scope, approach, or budget before you issue the quote request, we're happy to do that.

For the version aimed at agency briefing a creative partner directly, see how to brief a creative agency as a government communicator.