Most agency briefs are a discovery call away from a real number. Ours is not.
If you send five specific inputs in a single email, you get a line-item quote back inside four business hours, with a neighborhood-mapped install plan and a real start-and-complete date. No kickoff call required.
This piece is the template for those five inputs, plus the three brief mistakes that slow every quote down.
The five inputs that get you a quote
1. City or cities
Not “the East Coast.” Not “major metros.” Specific cities, named.
Why this matters: tier-1 cities (NYC, LA, SF, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta, Seattle, Boston, DC, Austin) have permanent BSM crew and ship 5 to 7 days from brief. Tier-2 cities require crew dispatch, which adds 2 to 4 days and 15 to 25 percent to the price. Naming the specific city is the difference between a 5-day quote and a 14-day quote.
If you want to run in multiple cities, list them. A 4-city tour and a 6-city tour are different price points. See the coverage map for every market where we have active crew.
2. Format
Pick one or more:
- Wheatpaste for large-format poster takeover. Walls, hoarding, scaffolding-adjacent. Highest visual real estate per placement.
- Pole stickers for high-volume sticker saturation on utility poles and street furniture. Smaller real estate, faster scale.
- Sidewalk stencils for street-level repeating mark at the pedestrian’s autopilot eye line.
- Interior installs for paste, poster, and signage placement inside venues (bars, coffee shops, fitness studios, retail).
- Mixed format if you want the full saturation effect. We package it.
If you do not know which format fits the goal, say “format-agnostic, recommend.” We will pick based on audience, neighborhood, and dwell pattern.
3. Install dates or install window
Two acceptable formats:
- Specific dates, e.g., “live by June 12, complete by June 19.”
- A window, e.g., “anywhere in early-to-mid June, 7-day install.”
What is not acceptable: “soon,” “ASAP,” or “TBD.” Those force a quote against an assumed timeline that may not match yours.
Rush availability: 48-hour true-emergency installs are available in tier-1 markets at a 15-to-20 percent premium. Same-week installs are standard. Two-to-three weeks out is the sweet spot for clean planning.
4. Creative status
Three states, all acceptable:
- Print-ready files in hand. Send the specs (dimensions, paper, ink). We confirm and quote.
- Files in production with a delivery date. Tell us when files will land. We quote against the spec and hold the crew slot.
- No creative yet, need production support. We work with a small set of print partners. Add 3 to 5 days to the timeline for production support and a $400 to $1,200 production line item depending on complexity.
Why creative status matters: print runs need lead time. A 14-day campaign with files arriving on day 12 is a different campaign than one with files arriving on day 2.
5. Budget ceiling
This is the one most briefs skip. It should not be skipped.
Telling us “we are working with $8,000” or “we have budget up to $30,000” lets us:
- Shape the scope to actually fit your budget instead of quoting a $25,000 program against an $8,000 wallet.
- Tell you immediately if the math does not work. (“Your $4,000 cannot do a 5-city tour. It can do a 2-neighborhood NYC run. Want that quote?”)
- Optimize within the ceiling. (“At $30,000 we can either do 3 cities saturated or 6 cities lightly. Which is your KPI?”)
We are not going to use the budget number against you. We are going to use it to deliver a campaign that runs.
The sample brief
Here is what a good brief looks like in 8 lines:
Subject: Brief for [brand] , [city/format/window]
City: Brooklyn (Williamsburg, Bushwick, Greenpoint)
Format: Wheatpaste, ~300 sheets
Window: Live by June 12, complete by June 19
Creative: Print-ready, 27 x 39 in, sending today
Budget ceiling: $10K
Goal: Drive awareness for product launch on June 15
Key dates: Launch event June 15 at Brooklyn Steel
Contact: [name], [email], [phone]That is the entire brief. Send that and you get a quote back the same day.
The three brief mistakes that slow every quote
1. “Tell us what’s possible”
A no-constraint brief is not a brief; it is a request to design your campaign for you. We can do that, but it is consulting work, not a quote. If you want a real number back in four hours, give us at least the city, the rough format, and the budget ceiling.
2. “We’ll figure out the budget once we see the options”
This burns days. We quote three options, you review with finance, finance pushes back on all three, we re-quote, you push back again. By the time the number lands at something you can actually fund, the install window has slipped two weeks.
Just tell us the ceiling. Better quote, faster.
3. “Send us your typical pricing”
We do publish pricing tiers, and you can read the full cost breakdown article. But a typical-pricing answer is generic. A brief-specific quote is what actually gets your campaign on the wall. The whole point of the five inputs is that we replace generic with specific.
Where to send the brief
Or use the contact form. Either way works. The form is faster for the first message; the email is faster for the follow-ups.
Standard response time: under 4 business hours. Complex multi-city briefs: same business day.
Bonus: the brief checklist
Copy-paste before you hit send. If you can answer yes to all five, the quote is coming back fast:
- Named at least one specific city
- Named a format, or said “format-agnostic, recommend”
- Gave install dates or a specific window
- Stated creative status (in-hand, in production, need support)
- Stated budget ceiling
That is the entire bar.
For more on what individual services cost, see the wheatpaste campaign pricing breakdown. For the legality framework on NYC campaigns specifically, see is wheatpasting legal in NYC.
Ready to send the brief? info@beyondstreetmedia.com. Five inputs. Four-hour reply.