Provoke- The Brief and Creative Brief Issue
The Past, Present and Future of The Brief
Briefs Need to Find a New Problem
“Most briefs are about a solution, defining the problem.If a problem has been solved, there is no creative opportunity. All there is, is a styling opportunity. This is where most briefs go wrong. They think the job of the brief is to provide a cast-in-stone solution to the problem. No, the job of the brief is to change, to reframe, the problem. Let me explain. Creativity is about solving a problem in a new way. So the job of the brief is not simply to define the existing problem. We don’t need strategists for that, the client can do that. The origin of planning (before it shrank to mere ‘brand-planning’) was to get upstream of the existing problem. To find an exciting new problem which, if solved, would render the existing problem irrelevant. So that when the brief came to the copywriters and art directors it was actually a genuinely creative brief, inasmuch as it presented a new and different problem be solved. It wasn’t just a request for a new style of work addressing the existing problem. It was creative, before it ever got anywhere near the ‘creative’ department’.”
Dave Trott-2019
How Creatives Can Break Down a Creative Brief
“This exercise will help you understand the creative brief. Now, it'd be silly to actually go by two words when there's a whole wealth of info sitting there in the full brief. But, all those other words will seem like a luxury now. As you start developing your ideas, remember to stay true to your two words. Keep referring back to them, are you getting those two things across?”
d&ad
“The creative brief. Its quality matters more than people realise. And there are two kinds. 1. Boxes 2. Platforms Boxes are inhibiting, limiting and seek to control the process.Platforms are liberating, expansive and allow you to think openly. Yes, your brief should be a platform. The best briefs kick-start the search for that simple, elusive idea that can capture the public’s imagination (and solve the client’s problem. The worst briefs contain set-piece thinking. Accepted truths used by the client to reject the transformational ideas you bring to them. When dealing with a box, you tend to hear this phrase when discussing ideas. “But… that wouldn’t answer the brief.” What have you seen more of lately: boxes, or platforms?”
Comments are The New Creative Brief
“There’s a phrase floating around the industry – ‘comments are the new creative brief’. It’s exciting because it acknowledges both a shift in influence from the brand to the audience and also an understanding of how the relationship between the two is changing. There’s an appetite, perhaps even an expectation, from young consumers that they can co-create their experiences with brands – this might be as simple as knowing their customer service comments will be actioned but also starts to come into play when thinking about things like developing products, having an active role in creative campaigns and, most critically, seeing themselves reflected in the marketing of the brands they care about.”
Charlie Cottrell- We Are Social- Contagious-2023
Bonnie Wan Connects the Creative Brief to the Life Brief
“As a strategist, my job is to make meaning out of messiness. Companies are working at breakneck speed in categories that are being disrupted all the time with new entrants. There are forces at play that can really sink a leader’s vision of where they go. These forces can disconnect leaders from the legacy, authenticity, and DNA of the company. My job as a brand strategist is to find that alignment: what the company has always been and connect that to where they want to go. You have all the messiness, and you’re working to distill it down to the sharpest, shortest path from here to there. That practice is very similar in the life brief. I invite people to allow their “messy” to come out onto the page, to be nakedly honest, as I did in my own life. Only when you do that can you see the ingredients, create distance from them, and then meet them with curiosity. And that’s what strategists do. Now we get curious. We want to dive deeper into this vein or that vein. As we collect the ingredients, they start to shape that single-minded, single-page creative brief.”
Bonnie Wan- Interview with McKinsey -2024
Words Matter
“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.
“Then timelines started to condense in really absurd ways. 2 weeks to 1 week to 3 days to 3 hours. At this speed, the only research possible is Google or ChatGPT. Which further detoritated the usefulness of the brief which created more need for vague territories which further demotivated the strategist/planner to find something interesting...and so the downward spiral continued. The response to 'not having a good brief' is we don't do briefs-- we talk, we iterate, we maximize guessing, we try multiple/contradictory things at once until we get to something is KPI-proven to work.”
Ed Tsue- May 2023
A Slide from Michael Lee’s - CSO- VCCP - APG UK Presentation- How to Get the Proposition Right
“At BBH, we didn't have a formal process to write briefs until we looked at it 2 years ago. We put a process in place: the 'Zag process'. First, we look at the audience, journey, product/brand, category. Then, we identify the ‘zigs’ (what is something everyone else is doing) and where the whitespace is for ‘zags’ (how can we do something differently). You can do that in a few hours or days/weeks, depending on how deep you want to get into it. It’s a top level approach, so it allows everyone to use it in the way that works best for them. I also try to constantly re-articulate the problem. I write it down, do research and at the end of the day, write down again what I think the problem is now.”
Ben Shaw- A While A Ago
“Part of it is understanding the real business problem – you’d be amazed how many times we are given problems that aren’t the real problem! – and then framing it in a way that opens up the creative opportunity from the cultural perspective. “
Rob Campbell
The Brief as Flyer in a Shopping Mall
“Useful tip a creative director recently shared with me: if i had 10 seconds toIsell this to you on a flyer in a shopping mall, what's the pitch? It's extremely useful to stress test our briefs.”
Rob Estreitinho- 2024
“Creative briefs work better when the problem, triggers, and strategic proposition are clearly stated, without being directed toward a specific creative direction or/and solution. Where springboard is “something between strategic-right and creative”. It’s usually packed with case studies, videos, and frameworks and designed to be very visually rich.”
Baiba Matisone- The results of research with strategists
“It's understanding that creatives write from a brief, they don't write to a brief. Those little words make a really big difference. When I realised that and loosened up a bit, the relationships with the creatives became a lot easier and a lot more fun. It really needs to be a springboard, not a straitjacket.”
Kit Altin-2024
The Importance and History of Tension in Creative Briefs
To be a young strategist today, you will build or be given a thick binder- inside it; there will be a gazillion frameworks you can use for any moment where you need to organize your thoughts. The strategist's job has now become as complex as flying an Apache helicopter-seriously! This means less time for intuition, conversations, reading, culture surfing, and your creativity- because you spend all your time looking for the right framework. The framework is irrelevant- it's what is inside it that matters.In most cases, we know the ingredients that go into most of them. They are simple- we need to know about the target, the brand- and the relationship between the two, the task- as in the problem we are trying to solve and it all needs to be tied together with a single-minded thought. I am now going to contradict myself- because perhaps the greatest single innovation in frameworks came from Crispin with the idea of framing the tension in the creative brief. It involved(s?) asking two questions. What is the psychological, social or cultural tension associated with, this idea? What makes our target tense about the idea? Cultural truths are always moving, so tensions are everywhere. The most interesting tension needs to make you squirm a bit. That’s where energy lies.”
Ed Cotton
Resources
Tom Bassett’s Film About Briefs- Interviews with creatives, architects and designers
Before You Brief Your Creative Team- Mark Pollard’s brief checklist
APG UK- Creative Brief Training Course
The Best Way for a Client to Brief an Agency- IPA UK- Mark Ritson and Better Briefs
Strategy in an Era of AI- A Field Guide- Zoe Scaman-March 2024