Extraordinary Vocabulary, Word #6: Archery

“[A great brief is] an arrow that points to an area where great ideas might happen.”

― Gerry Graf, Founder of Barton F. Graf and Slap Global

Gerry Graf was a guest in one of GUT’s “Founders’ Chats” a couple of years ago — a quarterly virtual event that our co-founders host for the entire network. The above was his answer to my question “What makes a great brief?”. It’s also the inspiration for the sixth word of the “Extraordinary Vocabulary” series.

It’s 2015, and I’m working on my first briefing at BBH. The brief was for a local British soft drink brand unknown to a Brazilian who had just moved in from S?o Paulo to London. They had a tough challenge. They had been projecting a more fruitful growth as an alternative to alcoholic drinks, but except for being sold in pubs, it had all the cues — including the sugary taste and increasingly the consumer base — of a fruit juice for kids. It was a long shot shifting it from parents buying it for their children to pub-goers buying it for themselves. There I was, studying a brand I’d just heard of in a context filled with local cultural repertoire I barely knew.

I can’t remember exactly my original articulation of the creative brief. All I can remember is that I had around 80 slides covered with data about the courageous attitude of defying social norms and choosing to drink a non-alcoholic beverage in a pub. My slides contained very little about the product. In the creative briefing session, I realized that rather than simplifying the brand’s tough challenge, I had potentially added a layer to it.

The best idea that came out of that first round was a line: “Drink it, don’t overthink it” which I remember loving — that was exactly the consumer ethos I had in mind while putting those slides together. The problem was that clients lacked their product in it, and asked for a second round. How surprising. I went to my boss and agency’s co-CSO at that time, and asked him for guidance. He flicked through my 80 slides and politely suggested that I go back to the drawing board. “This time,” he said, “start from the product”. When I asked him what was true about the product that could get pub-goers to fancy it and BBH creatives to want to work on it, he said “the fact that it looks colourful? Maybe you should print out a photo of their product portfolio and write potential strategies against it”.

His unpretentious provocation immediately turned my layered strategy of 80 slides into no more than one word: “Colour.” It unexpectedly simplified my way of thinking about the brief. It was such a precise direction, that it opened up an entire new world for me to explore as a strategist. From that moment on, my frame of reference wasn’t other non-alcoholic drinks sold in pubs or alcoholic drink brands with a courageous attitude attached to them. I was now thinking of Skittles, Dulux and Lego, colour-related brands from completely unrelated categories. I wasn’t asking creatives to do a Johnny Walker ad without the alcohol in it anymore. I was asking for the new SONY Bravia “Colour like no other” ad.

So I went on and printed the image of the product portfolio, a rainbow made of its colourful variants. I must have written 100 one-line briefings inspired by that image, and that in itself proved how much more fertile this new north star was. It was one of the first times in my career that I felt myself the liberating power of a pointed strategic direction. That “arrow” of a provocation cut through my cluttered thinking, helped me focus on what was true of the brand and opened up a door to a massive room of possibilities.

Even though I only became familiar with Gerry Graf’s point of view on what makes a great briefing years later, approaching briefings as “an arrow that points to an area where great ideas might happen” became a mantra of mine. From choosing one powerful product truth to start from, to defining the north star of the strategy with one key word, that first BBH briefing transformed me into an archer. Finding that arrow that could cut through over-rational B.S., and be so precise as a brief that it would open worlds of creative possibilities — I was obsessed by it.

The story doesn’t have a happy ending. After writing 100 potential briefings inspired by that colourful product portfolio, I picked the hardest one to pursue — around the idea of being the first ever brand to come out. The idea never happened. And shortly after presenting it to the client, I moved off the account. Weirdly, it made me even more obsessed with that way of approaching problems as I now had to prove myself even harder in what I considered to be the best agency on the planet. In retrospect, that was one of the most transformative experiences of my career, from which I learned that:

• Arrows can point to areas where great ideas might happen, as well as never come to life.
• Arrows can point in the right direction but you still need to find the bull’s eye.
• Arrows can completely miss the target no matter how much you believe in the direction they point to.
• Every archer should have several arrows in their archer case, as you rarely nail it in the first shot.

Fortunately I had about 99 other arrows which I could hand over to the strategy-archer replacing me on the account. And fortunately BBH stood for Difference and by their “black sheep” — it turned out my missed shot was enough to show them I fit the culture. I went on to shoot more precisely, always inspired by BBH’s timeless strategy arrows:

Audi’s “Vorsprung durch Technik”

Axe’s “Axe Effect”

Haagen Dasz’s “Dedicated to Pleasure”

The Guardian’s “The Whole Picture”

Boddingtons’ “Cream of Manchester”

Johnnie Walker’s “Keep Walking”

Tesco’s “Every Little Helps”

Today, nothing I do at work beats that feeling of when our collective guts tell us we found the arrow. The “Colour.” Like when we found Mercado Libre’s “The Best is Coming” or Spaten’s “The Soft Side of Strength”. When we knew that “Real Tone”, out of all the phone’s features, was the one to focus on for that SuperBowl brief (and won a Cannes Grand Prix for it) and that “Self-love” was the arrow to shoot on DoorDash’s Valentines Day brief (and won a Cannes and a WARC Effectiveness Grand Prix for it).

When you pick that arrow, close one eye, concentrate and hold your breath; when for a brief moment the entire world becomes the bull’s eye; that’s the feeling of a great brief.