Brief or Grief?

How to create inspiring Creative Briefs.

In an era in which rebranding is fashionable, it's time we revitalised the creative brief. Its new definition should read, "The most insightful, inspiring and igniting tipping point in the creation of advertising."

Candidly speaking, the creative brief has become the most sterile, unimaginative and ignored piece of paper floating around in an agency. Pick up random copies of creative briefs across agencies and you'll see what I mean. Speak to a cross-section of creative people and they'll nod in agreement. Attend a typical briefing session and you'll see that the creative people - the recipients of the brief - are either yawing, dozing, YouTubing, doodling or drifting.

The creative brief is the most junked, trashed and, if you're the more expressive kind (like David Droga), the most torn and shredded piece of paper today. Briefs have become griefs!

Yet, there's hope! Every creative person worth his salt will be quick to acknowledge and applaud a great brief. So, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the brief - the problem is in the way it's being used, or abused.

Putting together a good brief is a dying art which needs to be revived. Briefs are not just important, they are critical. A creative brief is actually the inflection point in creating advertising. It's the point at which logic (the strategy) starts turning into magic (the idea). It's where planning ends and creativity begins.

We keep indulging in the over-optimism of giving a bland brief and hoping to get exciting creative work in return. 'Garbage in garbage out' is as true here as in computer programming.

Rebranding the brief
In an era in which rebranding is fashionable, it's time we revitalised the brief. Its new definition should read, "The most insightful, inspiring and igniting tipping point in the creation of advertising."

'Insightful' means packed with gems and nuggets that bring the strategy to life. 'Inspiring' because it should make the creative team go 'Wow!' and take ownership of the brief. 'Igniting' in that it triggers the creative team to buzz with ideas that it can't wait to get cracking on.

In fact, the brief is like "an ad for the creative people".

What makes a great brief
While most agencies have their own briefing formats, based on their conceptual frameworks and creative philosophies, the basics of a great brief are fundamentally the same.

If you were the Pope briefing Michael Angelo on painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, what would it be?

Grief: "Please paint the ceiling to cover the cracks."
Brief: "You are commissioned to paint our ceiling for the greater glory of God and as an inspiration and lesson to his people, so paint frescoes which depict the creation of the world, mankind's degradation by sin, the divine wrath of the deluge and the preservation of Noah and his family."

Here are five key moves that can help re-energise our creative briefs and make them smarter and sexier.

From complex jargon to simple expressions
Don't try to impress people with how much mumbo-jumbo you know, try to simplify the task at hand. Rather than saying, "Increase TOM and brand saliency", it's much better to say, "Make the brand famous". Instead of "Enhance width and depth of consumption", try "Get more and more people to use more".

From long and winding to short and crisp
A good brief should be no more than a page or two. Supporting information can be provided separately as documents or as links to the web. When George Bernard Shaw wrote a longish letter, he began by writing, "I am writing you a rather long letter as I did not have the time to make it shorter." Stay focused and consistent in your brief and avoid information overload.

From information to story telling
Don't dwell on information, instead dive for gems that bring your strategy to life and help tell a story. Encapsulate your brief evocatively. When Taj Mahal tea bags were being launched, the nugget in the brief was to position them as "the walkman of teas" in order to encapsulate the mobility, convenience, taste and modernity of the format.

Similarly, when Dabur Honey was being repositioned as a health food instead of a home remedy, the brief summed up the task as moving the brand from "the medicine chest to the dining table".

Recently, for Virgin Mobile, a brand targeted at the youth, the learning was that Indian youth are not out and out rebellious, but work around problems to get their way. Or, as one teenager put it, their mantra is "jugaad". This was expressed evocatively as "inventive thinking that bypasses the firewall of sanctions".

An ethnic personal care brand that needed to be made more chic summed up the transition as one "from Khadi Bhavan to Fab India". Such gems are not only insightful, but get the creative juices flowing.

From target group to target person
One of the biggest sacrileges in putting together a creative brief is a vague and rather generic definition of the target group. You really can't get a handle of who you are talking to in flesh and blood. Remember to distinguish your "marketing target group" from your "advertising target person" and to describe him/her in a manner that helps your brand make powerful connections (and not about the generalities of life).

From piece of paper to piece of theatre
A brief is more than just a written document, it is a one-on-one communication. The more dramatic and vivid you can make it, the more engaging it becomes. Impersonal and emailed briefs are a strict no-no. Think of the briefing as an "interactive event" that charges up the entire team!

Set the right mood and anticipation and "seduce" the creative guys. Don't barge in with your brief when they are not mentally prepared. Don't shove briefs at them. Great briefing is experiential marketing at its best.

Once, a bunch of creative people were packed like sardines into a small car and told they were being taken to the client's office for a briefing. Midway, they were met by the account supervisor, driving a Maruti van rather coincidentally - a move that was engineered. The creative guys were transferred to the more spacious van and, as they sprawled inside, someone exclaimed, "Guys, this is the brief. Travel in space." How's that for a powerful demonstration?

Here's what a leading creative hotshot told me: “I once had an account executive give me a brief with a hole burnt into it. That got me curious. Then I noticed it was for Pizza Hut’s fiery pizza. Right there, she got me. It’s not the brief in itself that inspires you, but how it’s presented. It must be filled with an opportunity to make you smile, to make you stop and think.”

 It's time we change the way we look at briefs because, more often than not, great advertising is born out of great briefs.Can we bring the glory back into briefs? Can we have more briefs than griefs? Yes, we can!