How to write a UGC brief for your app

A creator can film from a brief that fits on one screen. They can't film from your product roadmap, and they shouldn't have to guess what the app is for. Most bad UGC videos come from a brief that was either three words (“make it viral”) or three pages. Here's the middle, in six parts.

1. The hook: the first sentence they say

Write it yourself, as a line of speech, in the viewer's words, about the viewer's problem. Not “introducing the new way to track habits.” Try “I kept forgetting to drink water until I made it a game.” Give two or three options and say the creator can improve on them. The hook is the part you'll test, so it's the part worth thinking about.

2. The one thing to show

Pick a single feature or moment. Not the whole app. If the viewer remembers one screen, which one? Say exactly where it is in the app, so the creator doesn't spend ten minutes hunting for it.

3. Shots

Three to five lines. For example:

This is the bit people skip, and it's the bit that stops a creator sending you a video of the login screen.

4. Length, format, platform

Fifteen to thirty seconds, vertical, 9:16, with captions burned in. Say where it will run (your TikTok, a Meta ad, both). If you'll run it as an ad, say so: the creator should leave a second of quiet at the start and avoid music they don't have rights to.

5. Do and don't

• Do: use the real app, their own phone, their own words. Show the moment it helped.
• Don't: say “best app ever,” invent features, show other people's data, or mention pricing unless you asked for it. If AI tools are fine (editing, b-roll, voice), say so; if an AI-generated person isn't, say that too.

6. What happens after

How many revisions you'll ask for (one is normal), when you need it, and what you'll do with it. A creator who knows the video is going into a paid ad will film it differently from one who thinks it's a story post. On Appcrush the offer sets price, count, deadline and revision rounds, and you have 30 days after the first delivery to ask for changes within the brief.

Or let the first draft write itself

Paste your App Store, Google Play or website link on the Appcrush homepage. In about ten seconds you get five hooks, a shot list and the kind of creator to look for, all read from your own listing. Edit it, cut what's wrong, post it as the job. If the listing itself is the weak point, run Roast my app first: the UGC hook it gives you is the one that fixes what's losing installs.

One screen. One hook. One thing to show. Shots, length, do and don't, what happens after. That's a brief.