Which brief templates work for Montreal bilingual campaigns under Bill 96?

What to take away

• A Montreal bilingual campaign brief template needs a French first workflow, not a translation step bolted on at the end.
• Bill 96 raises the bar on French commercial content, so the brief must name who reviews French and when.
• OQLF review points belong in the brief as sign-off gates, each tied to a document the reviewer can open.
• The Quebec Enterprise Number field turns a vague client name into a verifiable legal entity.
• A pre-delivery checklist catches the gaps that clients notice first: unapproved French, missing legal review, English-only assets.

What Bill 96 requires of a Montreal bilingual campaign brief

Bill 96 amended Quebec's Charter of the French Language. It strengthened French-language requirements for commercial content in the province, and it gave the Office québécois de la langue française more room to enforce them. For a Montreal marketer, that turns language from a creative preference into a compliance item on the brief.

The practical effect is that French cannot be a version of the campaign. It has to be the campaign, with English as the secondary rendering. A brief that treats French as a translation task will produce assets that read translated, and clients in Montreal notice that quickly.

Start the brief with the legal identity of the client. Use the Quebec Enterprise Number (NEQ) field so the team knows exactly which entity is advertising. The NEQ is the ten-digit identifier Quebec assigns to a registered business, and it is searchable in the enterprise register.

That matters for two reasons. It confirms the client is registered and trading under the name on the contract. It also gives the team a clean way to check whether the client operates in more than one province, which changes which language rules apply to which campaign.

Quebec's business portal is the starting point for the wider context, including Law 25 privacy duties that sit alongside the language rules on the same campaign. A brief that ignores privacy obligations will stall at legal review, no matter how good the French reads. See the Quebec businesses portal for the market context.

If the client hires staff in Quebec, the brief should also note who internally approves French copy. Hiring and managing staff in the province comes with its own language obligations, and the person who owns French internally is often the same person who signs off on campaign copy.

You can also find an enterprise in the register to confirm the client's legal name before the brief is circulated.

Fields to add to the standard brief

• Client legal name and NEQ.
• Primary market: Quebec only, or Quebec plus other provinces.
• French approval owner, by name and role.
• English approval owner, by name and role.
• Regulated industry flags, such as finance, health or alcohol.
• Required legal disclaimers in French and English.
• Target launch date and the date French copy is due.

A brief without those fields will drift. The team will guess at the approver, the client will guess at the deadline, and the French copy will land late.

A good campaign brief template must contain the NEQ field and the approver field, because both remove guesswork from the first week.

French first workflows inside the brief template

French first means the French copy is written, reviewed and approved before the English copy is finalized. English adapts from the approved French, not the other way around. That sequence is the single change that most improves Montreal campaign quality.

Build the sequence into the brief as numbered steps, so nobody has to remember the order under deadline pressure.

1. Confirm the client entity and NEQ, and record the market scope.
2. Write the French source copy for every asset in the campaign.
3. Send the French copy to the named French approver, with a deadline.
4. Adapt the English version from the approved French, keeping claims identical.
5. Route both versions through legal and OQLF review points.
6. Lock the asset list and freeze copy before production begins.

The order matters more than the tooling. A team can run this in a shared document or a project board, as long as the French gate is real and not a formality.

A good campaign brief template must contain the approval gate as a field, not a footnote. If the template has no place to record who approved the French, the approval will happen in a chat thread and vanish.

Treat the French source copy as the source of truth for claims, prices and offers. If the English version promises something the French does not, the campaign has two different offers in one market. That is a client problem and a compliance problem at once.

Good email marketing templates should also separate audience from language. A francophone audience in Montreal is not the same as a bilingual audience, and the copy will differ. Naming the audience in the brief stops the team from defaulting to one version for everyone.

Where English fits

English is still necessary. Montreal campaigns often run in both languages, and some audiences respond better to English creative. The point is sequence, not exclusion.

Write the English version as an adaptation, not a translation. Idioms, humour and calls to action rarely survive a literal rendering, and a literal rendering is exactly what a rushed brief produces.

OQLF review points and the documents they cover

The OQLF review points are the moments in the campaign where French content gets checked before it goes further. Put them in the brief as named gates with an owner and a date.

Review point	Documents covered	Owner
Copy gate	French copy, headlines, calls to action	French approver
Asset gate	Packaging, signage, print, out-of-home	Creative lead
Digital gate	Landing pages, ads, email, social posts	Digital lead
Legal gate	Disclaimers, offers, regulated claims	Legal or compliance
Final gate	Full asset set before delivery	Account lead

Each gate needs a document the reviewer can actually open. A gate that points at a folder with twelve versions of a headline is not a gate, it is a delay.

Keep the review points proportional to the campaign. A single social post does not need five gates. A multi-channel launch with packaging and out-of-home does.

When the client operates outside Quebec, note which assets run where. French requirements apply to commercial content in Quebec, and the brief should make the geographic scope explicit rather than assumed.

A set of free marketing plan templates saves time here. Once the gates are defined, they carry across campaigns, and the team stops rebuilding the review structure every quarter.

Case example: a Montreal brief rebuilt for French first delivery

A Montreal agency took on a retail client with stores across the island and a smaller presence in Ontario. The first brief arrived in English only, with a line that said French translation to follow.

The campaign was a seasonal promotion with in-store signage, paid social, email and a landing page. The French arrived late, the English had already been approved, and the two versions drifted on the discount terms. The client caught it, not the agency.

The rebuild started with the entity. The team recorded the client's legal name and NEQ, then checked the market scope. Quebec stores were the priority, Ontario was secondary, and the brief said so.

Next came the sequence. The French source copy was written first and approved by the client's Montreal marketing manager. English adapted from it. Discount terms, dates and the offer matched in both versions because the English had nothing to invent.

The review points went in as gates. The copy gate caught one headline that read as a literal translation. The legal gate caught a disclaimer that existed only in English. Both fixes happened before production, which is the cheapest place to fix them.

The final change was the deadline structure. French copy was due two weeks before English, and the English deadline moved to match. The team stopped treating French as the last task on the list.

For teams building this from scratch, learning how to create marketing plan templates shows how the gates look in practice. Adapting one is faster than inventing the structure.

What changed in the numbers

The agency tracked rework rather than campaign performance. Fewer assets came back for copy changes after the rebuild, and the client's French approver stopped receiving last-minute requests.

That is the realistic benefit. French first does not make campaigns creative. It stops the avoidable second pass.

Handling client feedback when French and English versions diverge

Divergence is normal. A client will change the English headline and leave the French alone, or the reverse. The brief needs a rule for what happens next.

The rule is simple: a change to either version triggers a check on the other. If the change affects a claim, price, date or offer, both versions update together. If it affects tone only, the French approver decides whether the French needs to move.

Record every change in the brief's version log, with who requested it and when. That log is the fastest way to answer a client who asks why the French says something different from the English.

When the two versions genuinely need to differ, write down why. A Quebec-specific promotion may not run in Ontario, and the copy should reflect that. An undocumented difference looks like an error, even when it is deliberate.

Watch for feedback that arrives in English about French copy. The person commenting may not read French well enough to judge the change. Route that feedback to the French approver rather than applying it directly.

Choosing the right marketing dashboard template helps here too. If the version log lives inside the template, nobody has to remember to keep a separate record.

Escalation

Set a threshold for escalation. If a change touches regulated claims or legal disclaimers, it goes to legal regardless of who requested it. Everything else can stay with the account team.

Checklist before a Montreal brief leaves the building

Run this before the brief goes to the client or into production. It takes minutes and prevents the most common failures.

• Client legal name and NEQ recorded and verified in the enterprise register.
• Market scope stated: Quebec only, or Quebec plus named provinces.
• French approval owner named, with a date for approval.
• English approval owner named, with a date for approval.
• French source copy written before English adaptation begins.
• OQLF review points listed with owners and dates.
• Legal disclaimers present in both languages.
• Asset list locked, with formats and channels.
• Version log started, with the first entry dated.

Two items on that list cause most of the trouble. The missing approver and the missing disclaimer. Both are cheap to fix on the brief and expensive to fix after launch.

Keep the checklist attached to the template. A checklist stored somewhere else gets skipped when the deadline moves.

If the client works across several provinces, add a line for each market and confirm which language rules apply. Quebec is the strictest case, but the brief should show the team has thought about the others.

Common questions

Does every Montreal campaign need a French version? Commercial content in Quebec falls under the Charter of the French Language, and Bill 96 strengthened those requirements. Most campaigns aimed at Quebec audiences should plan for French as the primary version.

What is a Quebec Enterprise Number and why does the brief need it? The Quebec Enterprise Number (NEQ) is the ten-digit identifier Quebec assigns to a registered business. Recording it in the brief confirms which legal entity is advertising and makes the client easy to verify in the enterprise register.

Who should own the French approval in a Montreal agency? Someone who reads and writes French fluently and has authority to sign off. Often that is a francophone strategist or the client's Montreal marketing lead, not a translator working at the end of the process.

How many OQLF review points does a campaign need? Enough to cover copy, assets, digital, legal and final delivery. Small campaigns can combine gates. Large multi-channel launches should keep them separate.

What happens when the client changes English copy after French approval? Check whether the change touches a claim, price, date or offer. If it does, both versions update together and the French approver signs off again.

Can one brief cover Quebec and Ontario at the same time? Yes, if the brief names each market and states which language rules apply. The French first sequence still governs the Quebec assets, and the Ontario assets adapt from the approved French or run separately.