By: Larry Durst, SVP Executive Creative Director Marketsmith Inc.
With all apologies to that noted Mad Man, William Shakespeare, the question is not, “to brief or not to brief”–not briefing should never be an option. The question is: are the briefs you write really helping produce better creative? But, alas, poor Bernbach, the art of writing a good brief sometimes seems as lost as the composition of an Elizabethan sonnet (and, we promise, that is the last of the Shakespeare quotes).
At Marketsmith we view the creative brief as not only necessary, but as the single most important document of the entire creative process. That is why we have made Brief Writing one of the foundational seminars in Marketsmith University, our ongoing program to train and enrich all of our employees. After all, our continued success depends not only on the level of talent we attract, but also on our ability to continually train and enrich all our employees as technically skilled and well-informed marketers.
To that end we thought we would share a few of the key points we made in that seminar. We hope it inspires new thinking amongst you and your teams. Why share? Heck, we love good competition—it only makes our own work sharper.
Here are five takeaways from our in-agency session:
- “Why” is the most critical question to answer on any brief.
Most briefs answer the first four W’s of journalism: who, what, where, when. Who are we talking to? What is the key message? Where and when will the media run? But there is a more important question behind each of those facts: why? When you can adequately and confidently answer “why” to every single thing on a brief, you have defined your strategy. As our agency’s creative leaders, we can assure you, creatives are skeptical beings. We will ask “why” constantly when we are briefed. Be prepared.
- A client’s brief is not an agency brief.
With all due apologies to clients everywhere, we will rewrite your brief. Generally, a client brief defines the assignment. But it is the agency’s job to add value every step of the way, and that begins with the direction an ad, campaign, or marketing program should take. It should challenge the clients’ assumptions and take them in an unexpected new direction. Take chances. Be bold. Don’t wait for the creative team to surprise the client with new thinking; great new thinking starts with the ideas expressed in the brief.
- A brief is not a briefing.
A brief is a piece of paper. It informs. A briefing is your chance to inspire. Don’t call a meeting just to read to us—we could have done that through an email. Treat a briefing like a presentation. After all, you are presenting your ideas—and yes, good strategy is an idea. You want the creative teams to buy in and, better yet, be absolutely enthused to start the assignment, convinced that the direction you set for us will put us on the path to more award-winning work for our books. (Yes, we do think about that and so should you.) What product are you briefing on? Is it food? Serve it. A car? Let us drive it? (No, really, there is no substitute for first-hand experience.) Make us understand the problem, the brand, the audience, and the way forward. Don’t inform, inspire!
- They call it a “brief” for a reason.
OK, we promised no more Shakespeare, so here is some Einstein (always a go-to guy for a good presentation quote): “Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Or one from another author who could have been a great copywriter, Mark Twain, who supposedly ended a long missive to a friend with: “I would have written a shorter letter but I didn’t have the time.” Take the time, and really craft your briefs. If you haven’t labored over your prose you probably haven’t really gotten the thing down to its essence. Don’t go off on tangents. Stick to the point. (Isn’t it a contradiction when “primary message” contains multiple points?) The tighter and clearer and more original the input, the same will be true for the resulting creative. Great communication is about clarity, simplicity and originality. That is as true for a brief as it is for an ad. Or as Shakespeare wrote, “brevity is the soul of wit” (forgive us, but that quote was too good to waste.)
- Think before you paste.
Yes, we know that most of the briefs in this world are for yet another tactic for the same brand through the same media to the same audience you’ve been working on for years. And there is strong temptation simply to cut and paste the information from the previous brief that was cut from the previous brief and so on. But then you are only repeating old and outdated information. We admit that at Marketsmith we are more fanatical than most agencies about utilizing the very latest data to be as timely and relevant as possible. After all, analytics is in our DNA. But the point is, you must know something new that you didn’t know the last time out. And that new learning, if well applied, will make your marketing work better. Guaranteed. The world changes quickly. Your briefs must reflect that. Otherwise your ads won’t either.
The bottom line is that there are really only two types of briefs: those that inspire immediate ideas and those that leave people with just more questions. You will know which one you have written the moment you start briefing the creative teams on your next assignment. If they start doodling, that’s good. If they start asking, “why” you’re in for a rough meeting.