The GACCS Marketing Brief
A five-part brief — Goals, Audience, Creative, Channels, Stakeholders — to align before you make anything big.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 93%
Before starting any big marketing project, fill out a lightweight brief covering five elements: Goals, Audience, Creative angle, Channels, and Stakeholders. Sharing it up front (especially between product and marketing on a launch) gets buy-in early, catches wrong-audience or wrong-channel mistakes before work is done, and lets teams move much faster.
Origin
Emily Kramer's framework, published in her MKT1 newsletter; she abbreviates it 'GACCS' (pronounced 'gacks') because it's more fun to say than 'GACS'.
Core principles
- 01Align on the brief before doing the work, not after
- 02The Creative element forces you to articulate what makes this different and stands out from other companies
- 03Stakeholders splits into the DRI, who needs to weigh in, and the contributors/helpers — including product people
- 04Getting buy-in on messaging and channels early prevents expensive rework
How to run it
- 1
Goals
State what you are trying to achieve with this project — an impact outcome, not an activity count.
- 2
Audience
Define who this is for.
- 3
Creative
Name the unique angle — what will make this different and stand out from other companies. This carries the highest-level messaging.
- 4
Channels
Decide how this will be distributed and how you'll get the word out.
- 5
Stakeholders
Identify the DRI, who needs to weigh in, and who the contributors/helpers are — this is where you fold in the relevant product people.
Pro tip On a product launch, have the PM share what's being built, then have marketing return the GACCS so both sides sign off on audience, channels, and messaging before any asset is produced.
In the wild
Without a GACCS, marketing writes a blog post for a launch and shares it with product, who respond that it's the wrong audience and the wrong thing — after the work is already done.
→ Wasted effort; sharing the GACCS up front would have caught the mismatch and saved the rework.
Common mistakes
Sharing finished assets instead of the brief
Producing a blog post or launch asset first and only then showing product means wrong-audience or wrong-angle problems surface after the work is done, forcing rework that a five-line brief would have prevented.
Treating the brief as heavy process
Skipping GACCS because it feels like overhead — in reality it is a short brief that lets teams get buy-in early and then move much faster, so the up-front minute saves large downstream time.
Is it for you?
Best for
Marketing and product teams coordinating launches or any big marketing initiative at a startup
Not ideal for
Tiny, routine, low-stakes tasks where a written brief would be more overhead than the work itself
From the transcript
“this is just a marketing brief that that i recommend you do before you make anything and make anything big in marketing”
“it's just what are the goals what's the audience what's the creative or unique angle”
“the second c is the channels or how this is gonna be distributed how are you gonna get the word out about this”
“the last fews are the stakeholders like who's the dri and who needs to weigh in then who's going to be the helper who are…”
“you're not just like sharing with (45:00) product like here's a blog post that i wrote for the launch they're like what this is the…”
From the episode
How to build a powerful marketing machine
Emily Kramer (Asana, Carta, MKT1)