Kickoff brief template for your new agency

Use one company-controlled brief to give the PR provider an authorized objective, scope, evidence base, decision map, risk boundaries, access, measurement plan, change process, and exit record. The company program owner maintains it. Fact, risk, account, and asset owners approve their domains. The format also works for freelancers, fractional leads, in-house hires, and hybrid teams.

Keep program control with the company

• Program control. [Program, term, review dates, company owner and backup, provider leads]
• Version control. [Version, approval date, change log, review triggers]
• Company storage. [Brief, source repository, decision log]
• Classification. [Confidentiality and handling rules]

Do not include passwords, privileged advice, unnecessary personal data, or unrelated confidential material.

Define the objective and signed scope

• Business condition. [Problem, opportunity, deadline, evidence]
• Stakeholder objective. [Audience, baseline, desired response, measure, target, date]
• PR contribution. [How communication may help; non-PR dependencies]
• In scope. [Products, markets, languages, stakeholders, services]
• Out of scope. [Exclusions and owner of adjacent work]
• Opportunity classes. [Earned editorial; paid or sponsored; controlled publishing; analyst, award, event, or community]
• Channel controls. [For each class: outcome owner, payment, labeling, approval, third-party control]
• Milestones. [Dates, dependencies, confidence, decision owner]
• Company capacity. [Experts, spokespeople, approval and specialist time]
• Provider assumptions. [Condition, validation owner, deadline, consequence]

Reconcile every field with the signed scope of work. The brief does not expand the contract.

Link claims to evidence and permission

For each fact, quote, image, data point, biography, or other asset, record:

• Primary source. [Record, date, reporting period, method, limits]
• Use status. [Public, confidential, restricted, expired]
• Rights status. [Consent, license, permitted channels and term]
• Claim owner. [Fact or asset owner, approver, approval date]
• Correction route. [Fact owner, communications owner, response target]

Link the approved message version, prohibited or disputed claims, third-party permissions, upcoming material changes, and authorized source access. The provider may research, draft, and flag gaps. The company retains responsibility for facts, permissions, legal positions, operating promises, and final authorization.

Assign authority, approvals, and escalation

For strategy, claims and assets, outreach or publishing, interviews or responses, incidents and corrections, and measurement, record:

• Company accountable. [Name and backup]
• Provider executes. [Name and backup]
• Verification owners. [Fact, asset, legal, compliance, privacy, security]
• Approval target. [Approver, response time, effect of delay]

Name who may stop work, speak for the company, approve sensitive disclosure, accept a paid commitment, grant access, and authorize spend. Use the responsibility split and approval workflow for operating detail.

For each conflict or legal, safety, security, customer, people, financial, policy, confidentiality, or ethics risk, record [affected work, reviewer, required evidence or decision, escalation trigger, stop authority]. Include local-law review where relevant.

Keep accounts, assets, and security transferable

For each workspace, CMS, email or social account, distribution service, database, monitoring tool, analytics property, shared drive, and reusable asset, record:

• Ownership and recovery. [Company or provider owner, administrator, recovery contact]
• Access control. [Roles, approver, authentication, review date]
• Permitted data. [Classification, use, location, access limits]
• External processors. [Subprocessors, tools, AI use, model-training status]
• Incident route. [Contact, notification target, evidence preservation]
• Retention and exit. [Export, editable format, license, return, deletion, hold, timing, fee]

Use company-controlled accounts where continuity requires them. Mark provider-owned and nontransferable items. Link the inventory to what the company keeps.

Make measurement support a decision

For each objective, record [baseline, target, period, activity, output, audience response, outcome, organizational impact, data source, method, owner, causal limit, review decision]. AMEC's Integrated Evaluation Framework supplies the measurement sequence.

Also record approval delay, blocked dependencies, fact errors, correction time, complaints, incidents, and invalidated assumptions. These diagnose operations; they do not substitute for stakeholder outcomes. State whether each review can continue, change, pause, or end the work.

Record change control and exit before work begins

For every proposed change, record [requester, affected scope, cost, timing, dependency, risk, measurement effect, company and provider approvers, decision deadline, work status].

Before kickoff ends, confirm [accepted scope, first priorities, owners, response targets, access, risks, measurement, unresolved items, due dates, blocking conditions].

For exit, record [provider-created artifacts, source records, permissions, communication status, editable formats, rights, licenses, company storage, account exports, nontransferable items, transition timing and fee, data return or deletion, legal holds]. Test the record against the offboarding process.

Funding disclosure. PressFriendly runs agency kickoffs and benefits when companies hire PR support. Buyers should apply these controls to our work as they would to any provider.