As far as I am concerned, the creative brief is evil.
That’s not just because they are partially responsible for some of the World’s truly horrendous advertising [with the majority of the blame going to the guys who wrote it, agreed to it and worked off it] but because they have this ability to continually undermine my confidence and get me questioning everything I’ve ever done and will ever do interms of communication.
You’d of thought that after all the years I’ve been doing this, I’d be quite a dab hand at knocking a brief out, however I’m not and there’s 3 reasons for this …
1/ You should never just ‘knock a brief out’ … infact, the writing of the brief should be the middle part of the whole brief writing process because thinking/conversation and deliberation should come way before any words hit the page.
2/ I always worry whether I’ve covered off all the important issues of the brief whilst still giving the guys an interesting way to look [and be inspired] by the challenge.
3/ The best creative I’ve ever been involved with has come from multiple and varied conversations, never a piece of paper.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the importance of a brief – not only does it give the client something to ‘sign off on’ [which means in theory they can’t object as long as it meets the previously detailed criteria] but it ensures creative consistency as time, creatives, agencies and client change … however I don’t mind telling you that I find them bloody torture.
Of course part of the pain is that you have to get a shitload of info down to single page – or a couple of sentences – and whilst there is always the temptation to write everything in a really small font, that isn’t really going to get you a good end result.
Saying that, I don’t agree that there should be a defined process to how a brief is done/written – it’s all about adapting to how the team operates, so you get the best out of them.
My view – which I accept might be founded on the fact I don’t like writing formal briefs much – is that as long as the fundamentals are covered, and there’s been breadth, depth and rigor in the development – you should be able to approach it in whatever way is the most effective and interesting.
It is because of this that I’ve adopted all sorts of methods of briefing …
From watching the Dam Busters and listening to Vera Lynn/Iron Maiden records for Tango to taking creatives to chat with single 30-something ladies for VB [This is a stealomatic for the ad/new positioning we wanted to make [with Angelina Jolie!!!] after ‘Stubby Symphony’ but couldn’t because of ‘corporate political issues’. It still needed work – the endline wasn’t quite right for a start – but hopefully you get the idea, especially if you’re an Aussie], my attitude is anything is possible as long as there’s a purpose behind what is being done… because planning shouldn’t stop when the creative development starts.
Of course Andy thinks I do this because I want to either [1] share the glory and/or [2] share any possible blame … but he’s a cynical ol’ bastard because the real reason is I know collaboration can make more of a difference than isolation.
[I mean collaboration in the real sense of the word, not the sort of brainstorming ‘love-in’ where all ideas get equal credit even when they’re total shit]
One of my favourites was when I worked on Guinness in Australia.
The brief was to basically try and help Guinness have a direct association with Australia Day – in other words, make an Irish brand, Australian without looking overly contrived.
Hmmmmn ….
Anyway, when we stated looking at the 2 places, we saw a lot of similarities …
Both are part of a family they’d rather not be part of.
Both are island.
Both are known for enjoying celebration – be it something happy or sad.
Both have a load of English in them.
You get the idea …
So what we wanted to say was basically ‘Every Aussie has a bit of Irish [ie: the spirit of the Irish] in them and Guinness helps let it out‘ – and to ensure this idea really got across to the creatives, we did this …
For those ignoramuses out there who don’t know what this is – it’s [a very bad version] the Aussie flag – however instead of the Union Jack in the corner, it’s the Irish flag.
Whilst I know the creatives would have got what we were talking about without this visual proposition, it helped get their brain ticking in different ways and it led to the creation of County Bondi, where Guinness basically took over Bondi Beach and gave away promotional that took Aussie Icons and Irishified them. [which we created for them]
I’m not really explaining it very well – and sadly I have no visuals of what we did – but what I can say is that Guinness sales were the highest they had ever achieved [and by the end of the year, they had achieved their highest ever sales in Australia], they sidelined a bunch of competition that had been getting closer and closer to them over the previous few years and they generated more publicity [every media channel covered the event] than the value of their annual communication budget.
I guess what I’m saying is that you should use a creative brief rather than a creative brief using you – because if you approach it just interms of ‘filling boxes’, you can’t blame the creatives when they say they have little to inspire them.
To be honest this is a major issue and I want to write more on it because over the years, I/we have identified a bunch of rather effective methods to answering a clients brief in an interesting way – from forcing a client to give their brief infront of a real customer [so they can see if it’s corporate shit or not] through to getting creatives to develop thought starters at the initial briefing – so if you don’t mind hearing an old bastard bang on about the ‘good ol’ times’, come back sometime otherwise go and do something less boring instead!