Rubbish in. Rubbish out.
A phrase that could apply to many things in life. But probably none so relevant as the writing of a creative brief.
This is never easy and should not be entered into lightly. A rushed brief is a rubbish brief, so make sure you dedicate enough time out of your schedule. A brief should inspire, intrigue and arouse imagination in the minds of the creative team who receive it. Of course it must contain facts, such as the competitive landscape and target audience, but the best briefs are those that are based on insight. Those fundamental truths that your research has presented.
There are two vitally important tasks to writing a brief: 1. Do your research; 2. Ensure your proposition is focused and single minded.
Do your research
After reading the clients’ brief, ask yourself these 5 questions:
What do we know about the client?
What do we know about the market?
What do we know about the customer?
What do we know about the competition?
What are we trying to achieve?
There are a number of tools available to help fill in the gaps. First and foremost, go back to the client with a list of questions and get a better understanding of what they are asking for. Secondly, do your own research. This could be from market reports, trade publications, competitor websites and if applicable, your own experience.
Research is vitally important, however thorough the client’s brief is and there is no better way to achieve valuable insights than your own experience and/or the experience of others. Immerse yourself into the target audience, speak to them if at all possible – who are they, what makes them tick, what do they want? If you are dealing with a consumer audience then discover where they live, how much disposable income do they have, what media do they read? For a B2B audience, find out what keeps them up at night, what pressures are they under, what is the decision making process within the organisation? You’ll be surprised at how much you’ll discover.
A single minded proposition
Surely the most important but also most difficult part of brief writing! A proposition is the crux of the brief, the one single most important thing that the campaign should communicate to its audience. It should be inspirational, cohesive, and importantly, one sentence.
It’s also a core point of reference for the creative teams and, ultimately, will be what the relevance and accuracy of the creative work will be judged upon.
Was the brief to Michelangelo regarding the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel ‘Please paint the ceiling’?
This was what he was asked to do, but this proposition could have led him to paint the ceiling with a coat of white emulsion.
Was he asked to ‘Paint the ceiling using red, green and yellow’?
A little more direction perhaps but this brief is worse as it’s too restrictive and does not allow for creative interpretation or imagination.
The brief he was more likely to have received is ‘Please paint our ceiling for the greater glory of God and as an inspiration and lesson to his people’.
This kind of proposition would have lead to the beautiful frescos Michelangelo created, devoting his attention to the objectives of the brief in the best way he knew how.
Avoid writing a ‘woolly’ proposition or your creative team will go off at a tangent and before you know it you’ll be over budget before the concept stage is complete! Similarly, stay away from being too prescriptive as this will only distract creative minds.
Spend time on your proposition, think about it. Write it down, contemplate and rewrite it if necessary. Repeat this exercise as many times as you need to until you are happy with your final decision. This is where an agency adds value to a client brief, so it’s important to make sure it’s right.
Keep it short
A good habit to get into when writing a brief is to keep it as succinct as possible. Think about what the creative team need to know – for example, is it important to them that the organisation has 200 employees? Will that make a difference to the creative output? Do they need to know that they have offices in 5 different countries?
Keeping to the relevant facts and insights leads to a clearer briefing session and focused creative concepts. Ideally, a written brief should be no more than 2 pages long. After all, we all know creatives have a short attention span!
by Davinia Hamilton-Maddox, Account Director, Clock Creative.
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