The Creative Brief Paradox

Is the Creative Brief the lifeblood of the marketing industry or a necessary evil?

Full disclosure: this is a trick question. At least for the purpose of this discussion, which assumes that most of us (marketers) hold at least a working view of the Creative Brief as a foundational document in the development of any advertising campaign.

And yet, good briefs, those with the best of intentions, can become delinquent as they slip from principle into the more muddy waters of practice. I call this the Creative Brief Paradox. The good news is that the Paradox is avoidable if you look out for it. Mind the gap, so to speak.  

The What and Why of a Creative Brief

To begin at the starting blocks, a Creative Brief is a document produced by the requesting party (here called the client), in order to define for the receiving party (the agency) the parameters of a desired piece of creative work. The actual briefing itself is considered integral to the process, to the extent that the term, ‘Creative Brief’, can stand for both (as used here).  

As such, the Creative Brief has a significant, important, and substantial role in the creative process. Significant, in that it frames and fuels the process, providing strategic direction and inspiration. Important, in that it is a business contract, liberating resource and energy on both client and agency side. Substantial, in that the creative produced off the brief, whether intended for 5 weeks or 5 years, represents another intentional act in a brand’s ongoing relationship with the consumer.

None of the above negates the possibility that the Creative Brief may evolve - should evolve – to accommodate the warp speed transformation of both the marketing industry and the consumer world it serves.  However, some version of the Creative Brief is likely to always exist, as a business contract and creative touchstone.  

The Point of Creative Tension

So why the opening question? It reflects the tension that inevitably comes into play as the Creative Brief ideal comes up against the spiky edges of business reality. This is not a new phenomenon. A rudimentary google search will reveal that the quality of ‘real life’ Creative Briefs has been a bug bear for as long as advertising agencies have needed clients. However, this tension is perhaps more pronounced in recent years. Significant structural changes, including cost streamlining and overheads pruning, has led to – at least in the short term – reduced  teams with less ‘in the role’ experience on both client and agency side. This in inverse proportion to workload and pace of media consumption.

These contradictory forces place considerable pressure on the symbiotic responsibility of agency and client, to demand and deliver consistently great Creative Briefs. The symbiosis point is important. No one wants to write or work with a weak creative brief. To use the famous breakfast analogy of commitment versus involvement, both client and agency are pigs. Yes, an unavoidably awkward comparison, but it still holds: delivering excellent communication bacon is our mutual raison d'être, our shared bread and butter.

And yet slippage occurs, between the intent of the Creative Brief and its reality: the Creative Brief Paradox. Actually, there are (at least) three. What makes these paradoxes interesting, worth reflecting upon, is that they largely involve what is left out or overlooked in the Creative Brief as it moves from ideal design to actual delivery:

1.       The Paradox of Creation.

This is a rather divine-sounding Paradox but, then again, so much is expected from the advertising produced! Words like ‘groundbreaking’, ‘disruptive’, and ‘spectacular’ make popular appearances in many a Creative Brief and the evaluation thereof. Rightly so. It takes an extra effort these days to reach the hyper-saturated and -segmented consumer.

 So the Creative Brief needs to do a lot of heavy lifting in a super-tight format. It must fit into the exacting conventions of a one page word document or power point slide and still get the collective team buzzing with excitement. The moment of briefing is also critical. Here, the agency gets their best chance of feeding off the client’s clarity and passion. On the client side, this is an equally opportune moment to check the barometer of the room and, by inference, the strength of the Creative Brief. In this session, the agency stands proxy for the consumer and, if they are not excited, there is little reason to expect that the consumer ultimately will be.

Sounds exciting right? Yet this excitement is not always palpable when it comes to business reality. In the crucible of deadlines and demands for agility, the Creative Brief risks becoming another action on a lengthy to-do list rather than the vital first step in the creative process. Inexperience can also lead to ‘tick boxing the template’. Conversely, experience can lead to over-confidence, a trust in the brand and agency’s collective ability to shortcut the process.

In the long run, however, such strategies prove self-defeating. The Creative Brief logic is unavoidably ‘effort in / effort out’. The carefully selected word, the sharply summarized insight, the precise summation of the business need – all of these can make the difference between ‘ok’ and outstanding advertising. In short, to invert the Paradox of Creation, as much time and focus is needed on curating the Creative Brief as we would wish our consumers to invest in its output.

2.      The Paradox of Devolution.

This arises when the output of the Creative Brief requires the sign-off of the most senior stakeholder on the client side (recommended practice),  yet the actual briefing is devolved to the junior members of the team.  It’s easy to imagine how this could happen in business reality, even if recognized as a departure from the ideal. Time pressures on today’s marketing leaders are immense, and they balance their efforts across an increasingly diverse range of skills and priorities. So a division of labor is tempting.  Until, that is, the deciding stakeholder has significantly differing expectations of the creative than what has been briefed and presented.

This is not an argument against empowerment and delegation, these are indisputably business critical capabilities. However, given the large degree of subjectivity inherent in the Creative Brief process, it is counter-productive to juggle resource across the different stages of advertising development. In the worst case scenario given above, the actual creative is the first to suffer. Other casualties could be agency / client trust, team morale, and mounting cost and time pressures.

First prize, of course, would be having everyone of relevance in the Creative Brief, this is the simplest and most ideal solution. However, this is not always practically possible. Fortunately, alignment can still be safeguarded by kicking off the Creative Brief process with an internal stakeholder meeting. Yes, this still means carving out time and energy, but this can be done on more flexible, condensed terms. This session creates an non-pressurized space for the multi-level team to get a common understanding of the more subjective and qualitative criteria against which creative success will be judged. The net result: an empowered team that can competently and confidently lead the process to its best chance of success.

3.      The Paradox of Numeration.

This paradox is intentionally put last as money is often similarly placed in Creative Brief discussions. This is contradictory, not least because the combined production and media budget often ends up being a significant slice of the total available marketing spend. And yet, despite budget setting being universally recommended as essential to the Creative Brief, this is a fairly common omission in reality.

The reasons are various. Perhaps the client doesn’t want to dilute the creative juices at this early juncture with talk of budget ceilings, in case this limits the caliber and variety of ideas generated. Maybe the agency, especially if elevated to partner or preferred status, is similarly reluctant to press the issue. More practically (and more likely I think), urgency can simply overtake rigor, with ‘tbc’ inserted as the hopefully reassuring placeholder.

Whatever the motivation, any decision to leave budget discussions for later is misguided.  A blank budget section is - not to sugar coat it - loose strategy masquerading as blue sky. Inevitably, the rain of business realism will pour down at some point. Clients do rightly fear being prescriptive, but this is the one area where an open and specific discussion goes a long way in releasing and channeling creative energy. By all means, leave a budget bandwidth for creative stretch and pro-activity, but explicitly call this out as additional to the existing budget rather than instead of one.

The Paradox of Paradoxes

The good news, as mentioned upfront, is that we can avoid the worst of the pitfalls of paradoxical practice, if we become more conscious of the tension points at play. It is also highly unlikely that any Creative Brief contains all three Paradoxes in reality. However, like the fatal flaw in a tragic hero, even the inclusion of one can have devastating consequences to the purpose at hand: producing the best creative work possible. And so it is better to consider the Creative Brief Paradox before things go wrong. These underlying tension points tend to only become exposed in the pressure cooker of missed deadlines, mismatched expectations, and weak creative output.

By then it is too late.