How to tackle a brief

As we are now settled in for a new year of creative opportunities, I thought I’d put down some of the ways to tackle your up coming briefs. I get messages from creatives starting out asking for tips, hints and starting points on how to handle a brief. So, I thought it would be easier for me to get it down in one place. Hopefully, helpful for some who might need it and easier for people to reference.

In the creative process there are many meetings where we judge the merits of the creativity from the creative department but for me the best work begins with the best briefs. Briefs that open up possibility and inspire/new potential.

So let’s look at what you as a creative or planner can do to make sure you’re starting off on the best footing to push good work to great.

As always, this is just a framework and not exclusive way of tackling a brief but might help generate new ways of thinking.

Questioning the brief is a good thing.

Now there seems to be confusion over the motivation of when a designer or creative questions the brief. It is often seen as the creatives pushing back and not understanding the brief and being difficult. I’d argue the opposite, if you’ve got people in front of you who want to talk and engage with your brief it means they’re already on-board and eager to deliver great work.

You should feel proud that you’re working on a project that has sparked passion and conversation.

Great planners relish conversation and debate as they view it as a healthy way to make sure that everyone is on the same page and that the opportunity is ripe. They know that it is better for people to share their doubts and thoughts early rather than let those ideas fester and manifest itself in the work. By asking questions and stress testing the brief we are making sure whatever we create comes from a place that has been fully explored.

Bad planners will find themselves thinking the creatives are questioning their work and push back without trying to understand the motivation for the questions. So let’s make sure we value each other at this early stage and allow for input and development from a range of experiences.

Briefs shouldn’t feel like the answer has been discovered and now it’s there to be executed. It’s a shared moment of value for both departments to develop from.

Be selfish.

You’ve got the brief, you know what the brand wants to say and who they want to say it to. Hopefully you’ve got a good understanding of how success will be measured and where best to talk to your audience.

Now it is time to be selfish. Imagine yourself as a member of your target audience. Read the brief through their eyes. Think of them and what they want and care about. Let them be selfish and put down what they want. This is for them. This is what they want and expect. Put down what they desire from their lives, brands and experience. You are speaking for them so it’s okay to be selfish as our audience does think about us like we do them.

Speak for the audience. They're the most important part.

Look for shared values and blockers

Now you should have two takes on the brief. One from the brand with an insight to the audience from the agency perspective. The other from the audience, capturing their world in context

Now look for those points of convergence. What do they both want? They both champion simplicity or desire it? They both want to think about money security and so on. Then look for blockers that stop those shared values from happening.

They both might care about charity but the audience might be focused on local acts and the brief global. It shows you where you need to focus on to drive a human truth and conversation.

This gives a foundation of shared values and areas of conversation.

For instance if you're a global brand who wants to speak to an audience that wants local conversations it can help you create work that feels more niche and pick media that allows you to speak in different ways to get closer to their lives.

Remove the brand

Now, take the brand off. Replace it with a competitor. Does the brief still work?

If it does then we need to go back to the core of the brand and task at hand. What is it we are trying to say that is different and worth interrupting our audiences lives with. Let’s not generate more noise by just telling people that the brand has nothing to offer other than its existence. That doesn’t help anyone. Not the brand, not the audience and certainly not the world at large.

So keep pushing for the reason we deserve our audiences attention.

Strategy is creative too.

Every great strategic person I know is wonderfully creative. Expressed with different tools but coming from the same page as creatives. So never miss the opportunity to include the planner in the creative part of the process. Talk to them and explore with them. So much work goes into good briefs that it shouldn’t be just used as a spring board but as a mixing pot of two departments coming together.

So make sure you spend the time to share and engage throughout the process.

Go extreme and come back.

If you start safe, explore the tried and tested then you’ll not get far. You have to put down the weird, wonderful ideas that you know push the boundaries. Get then down on paper, notebook or laptop but you need to express it. If you go far out then you can always come back to safety but loaded with some really interesting and new ways to create work.

Finally

Experiment with each brief and challenge yourself to do something new with it. Each brief is a chance to learn about audiences and they move and evolve constantly so briefs are snapshots of potential. Try new formats, new ways of writing. If the brand always wants a hero video or TV spot. Try writing the idea without one at first and come back to that last. They never do experiences? Then imagine the campaign as a feeling in our audiences mind.

The mandatories of a brief about format or delivery are just the base level of what the client wants to see. It should never be the limit of what is possible.

Remember these are suggestions not rules.

Try some of what I suggest or all of it. Keep what works for you and scrap the rest. Evolve what I’ve written and make your own lists. Ignore it all and counter it with your own process.

What matters is that you’re thinking about the brief and pushing its possibility.

I don’t believe in quick fix formulas that promise if you follow my system it’ll revolutionise your work. I do believe that it can start something that’ll allow you to revolutionise how you want to work when you’re ready. Nor do I believe that a simple inspirational quote will flick a switch in your head, so what I’ve written is here for you to question, to consider and apply as you see fit.

How you tackle a brief should evolve and change as both you and the audiences you're speaking to change. It is a fluid, creative process and there should never be a state of permanence or slave to process.

“if all else fails, add cats”*

*For those that love a clickbait quote or two. I gotcha covered.