The creative brief is the most important document an agency has
The need for creative briefs from clients has caused some debate lately, but Craig McLeod argues it is needed now more than ever.
A lot has been written about the creative brief lately. Last year Patricia McDonald wrote a great piece entitled Planning for Participation. Or there’s Martin Weigel’s recent post: On the necessity of briefs, client briefs and creative briefs.
Or perhaps the RGA/Beats presentation in Cannes, in which Omar Johnston boldly stated, “Fuck briefs.”
It’s all very contentious
The creative brief may be evolving, but as long as we’re in the business of translating business problems into creative solutions, it will be necessary. So before we talk about how the brief needs to evolve, it is useful to discuss the principles that must remain the same. These may sound basic, but they remain as true as ever.
A creative brief is not a marketing brief
With advertising timelines getting tighter and tighter, often the creative brief is used to ‘reverse brief’ the client. This rarely saves time, nor does it lead to good work. A good client brief outlines business goals and communication objectives. This is essential.
Force the creative brief to do the job of a marketing brief and it will do neither.
A brief needs to make a strategic leap
The creative brief is not the marketing brief written in flowery language. It needs to take a genuine step forward. E.g. Marketing brief: Apple computers are very different to the market leader IBM.
Creative brief: Apple – The end of bland computer tyranny. Suddenly you have 1984. See the difference?
A creative brief is only the start of the creative process
If you’re looking for a comprehensive marketing strategy, a creative brief will look too thin and sharp. If you’re looking for a finished creative execution, a creative brief will look like a half-formed fetus. The best briefs are sparse and raw. A proposition is neither an idea, nor a tagline. It is the start of the creative process, and sometimes that stage looks a bit ugly.
A creative brief must be single-minded
A brief needs to prioritize one thought or behavior change above all else. The words ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘also’ ‘yet’ should be cautiously used in a creative brief. Bullet points should be eliminated. Any extraneous detail should be omitted. A creative brief is about clarity and precision.
A brief is for a creative team.
When writing a brief, the only audience who matter is the creative team you’re briefing. The brief should be adjusted to their personal working style, or if possible – written with them, or their creative director. Either way, everyone who wants to check or approve the brief needs to remember this essential fact. It isn’t written for them.
A creative brief must be useful
If a brief fails to inspire or direct a creative team, then it has failed. In this respect, it is far more important to be interesting, than to be right. This is why we don’t use words like Eco-system, Salience, Awareness, and Engagement. These are marketing words, and the creative teams are not marketers. Every word should be carefully crafted to trigger or inspire.
“Words are like time bombs. The right ones can explode inside us, demanding an original and exciting solution instead of a mediocre, pedestrian one.” – J. Shelbourne, ECD, JWT.
A creative brief should be brief
The less said here the better.
A creative brief must be connected to each of its parts
Regardless of the brief structure, every section should build support and build the other. The Proposition should solve or enhance the Problem. The Insight should provide some new perspective into the Target.
A well-written brief is as tight as a drum, with every word adding a new dimension to the whole.
The creative brief is a means to an end
Once the work is finished, no one will remember the brief. The public will never see it. Off the top my head I can recall just three of the briefs I’ve ever written. Some of them have lead to good work. Some have lead to great work. But they’re forgotten nonetheless. This isn’t me feeling sorry for myself; this is the way it should be. In the business of making ideas, it is only the ideas that matter, not the piece of paper that inspired them.
A creative brief is a guess
There is no perfect brief. There are only better guesses. There are lots of guidelines to good brief writing, but it’s hardly a science. Often great ideas fall out of bad briefs, and great briefs go nowhere. That’s the way of it. The creative briefing is more important than the paper brief, and the conversations between meetings more important still.
However, the written creative brief is still the most important document any agency has, and in the age of uncertainty, we need to protect it more than ever.
- Craig McLeod is a planner at GPY&R Melbourne
“Apple – The end of bland computer tyranny.”
Out of interest WAS that the actual brief for 1984? Or were you just making that up as a mock-example?
If it has been sited somewhere as the brief, I’d be surprised if that wasn’t a bit of re-written history.
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You forgot one:
The briefing is far more important than the brief.
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Well done on your article Craig. Spot on, Briefs need to have ideas (or the inspiration or spark) in them. When they don’t have ideas in them, you waste everyone’s time and money, and end up with ordinary work and frustrated staff and unhappy clients.
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Great piece Craig. As an industry we sometimes forget the basics and our role to stay true to the creative process. I’ll be passing this on to my clients!
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What a searing insight into the creative process – who knew a brief was important? And what a surprise it’s some planner desperately clawing for relevance leading the charge.
Pissweak attempt at sarcasm by myself aside, can we please see less of this recycled, dumbed-down tripe Mumbrella? I’d take myself to ad school if I wanted to get myself across elementary material like this.
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Dear Jeff.
Phew, such vitriol! Such vinegar! Although it’s difficult to know where your sarcasm ends, I can assure I was not attempting ‘searing insight’ into the creative process (for that I would recommend the linked articles – stirling stuff), more a dull-reminder about basic principles. As Voltaire once remarked, “Common sense is not so common.”
Recycled? – absolutely. Nothing new here. (My personal belief is: why create, when you can steal?) But that’s the great things about principles – they’re supposed to be repeated.
If the above points struck you as unnecessary, then I commend your brief-writer (as should you). Personally I have always found well written creative briefs difficult, rare, and constantly under threat.
Good luck with your sarcasm, I’ve heard it improves with practice.
Happy Friday!
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Glenn wrote “Briefs need to have ideas (or the inspiration or spark) in them”.
Ummm, no. They need to have a clear position on what they want to say and reasons for the customer to believe it. That’s all. The ideas are what comes from that.
Far too often I see propositions that are trying to be ideas rather than statements. When that happens, the creatives are being asked to come up with an idea on top of an idea – you’re already 2 steps away.
If you’re writing briefs like that, you don’t need a creative department – you only need someone to mac up your idea.
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Apologies Brad, I probably should have said “valuable insights instead” instead of “ideas”. Well written briefs with valuable insights, make it a hell of a lot easier for creatives to develop valuable ideas. And yes l agree you do see heaps of briefs where propositions are trying to be “the idea”, and these briefs need to be filtered out in “briefs meetings”, before these briefs get to creatives. Correct catorgrization of briefs is important too,
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As some briefs are for additional creative executions of an existing idea, or additional executions of an existing idea, in new streams, and yes sometimes you may only need someone to Mac these up for you, with the creatives approval of course Brad.
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Being a planner myself, Brad hit the nail on the head.
Much simpler, straight-forward definition of a brief.
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Glenn’s unintentionally misplaced words prove Craig’s point nicely. See how we got steered off in the wrong direction? Same deal with briefs. No harm to have a pointed reminder of this. Plenty of juniors read this blog. And plenty of seniors still need to.
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Timely reminder to all, regarding the alarming lack of clarity and quality of many briefs I’ve come across recently – both here and overseas. Another couple of things I’d like to add to the above, are courtesy of the few inspiring planners, I’ve had the pleasure of working with over the last decade or so.
1: The best briefs are brief.
2: The very best briefs are vision, not instruction.
3: Creative departments are like computers – rubbish in, rubbish out.
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Thanks for this article Craig. I particularly liked the reminder about bearing in mind who the creative brief is actually for, and the advice that “In this respect, it is far more important to be interesting, than to be right”.
This rings true, and I think is often missed as we seek to convey facts accurately rather than to inspire creativity.
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Well said Craig and elegantly presented, I’m pinching it and using it in a presentation tomorrow. Haters gonna hate brother…
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this is a nice refresher. its been my personal experience during ogilvy days that as servicing if your brief has sparks of an idea or an idea in it, it pushes the creative envelope further. i always think the creative leap is better of a jumping board rather than from the ground. The suggested propositions or ideas in the brief are the bridge between the marketing problem and the potential creative solution. At times creatives built on it and at times bettered it with completely new creative. Never the less the output was far better than with a matter of fact problems listed down brief. i gained, my creative gained, my agency gained and so did brand.
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