The Weekly Obsession #2 - One Minute Briefs

One Minute Briefs is a page I've followed on LinkedIn for a while but isn't something I've ever built up the confidence to engage in. However, last week I decided to change that and challenged myself to complete one brief every day for a week and share them with you... Here are the results!

A (Working) Week in One Minute Briefs:

Day One - Monday 4th July 2023

Brief: Create posters to advertise your favourite singers.

One Minute Briefs (colloquially known as OMB) drops their daily brief on Twitter at 9 am every day, so best believe I was refreshing like a madman that morning... The brief was killer and I was ready to jump headfirst into the world of OMB.

Entries close at 6 pm every day, so lunchtime was a frantic race to find an idea suitable for the queen of pop herself: Taylor Swift. I ended up theming the ad around the infamous Eras Tour Ticketmaster fiasco, and after a bit of Photoshop magic at 5:30, came up with the below:

Turns out OMB were a fan as I secured a cheeky retweet from the team along with some nice comments from members of the OMB community! No win here - but I did make it to the shortlist.

Bring on Day Two...

Day Two - Tuesday 5th July 2023

Brief: Create posters to advertise house removal companies.

This brief really brought out the creativity in the OMBLES (what I learned the cool kids call regular One Minute Brief submitters), and by the time I got around to pulling mine together I had some big shoes to fill! Day Two required an intensive scraping of royalty-free image websites to find two sofas photographed front on, but once I finally found these gems I had a lot of fun creating this one:

Once again, the OMBLES were being their supportive selves - liking, commenting, and giving me a welcome confidence boost to end the day.

Thoroughly excited for Day Three!

Day Three - Wednesday 5th July 2023

Brief: Create posters to advertise anti-snoring strips.

Einstein once said 'Failure is success in progress'. I think he did, at least. You can never trust quote websites these days. That being said, clearly, I must still be stuck within the success progress as Day Three's brief (and the long working day that came with it) managed to beat me. 6pm came and went and I was left still staring at a blank screen.

Annoyingly, wracking my brain for an anti-snoring strip idea had resulted in a pretty nice idea for a sleeping tablet campaign. My stubbornness pushed it away for a good few hours, but after the snoring-strip failure, I decided to just sit down and make it. Why not break the rules a bit?

With this idea, it wasn't necessarily the execution I was proud of but the nerdy theory work behind the scenes. If you've read The Weekly Obsession No.1, you'll be familiar with The Deck of Brilliance; as I was putting together the advert I realised I was pulling on the wisdom of No.5's prompt: Let the Solution Create a New Problem. It's one of my favourite tropes and shows real warmth and humour that I love from an ad.

Day Three may have started out a bit of a failure, but I was pleasantly surprised by what I achieved at the end.

Day Four - Thursday 6th July 2023

Prompt: Create posters to advertise strawberries and cream to celebrate Wimbledon.

As the perfect summer snack, strawberries and cream practically sell themselves - but when the brief demands, one must deliver! I decided to get a bit decorative with this one and ended up with what I think looks more like a yoghurt ad than anything else, but I'll have to admit I do like the copy...

Day Five - Friday 7th July 2023

Prompt: Create posters to promote Chapter 2 Dating (a real dating app for widows and widowers).

To my surprise, this was a brief from a real company, and to sweeten the deal it came with a cash prize! The brief was tricky, for with a topic as poignant as this I wanted to draw out a strong truth to build on. I quite like what I ended up with, but I'd love to have had more time to dig into the topic further.

The cash prize winners are yet to be revealed, but you can be certain I'll update you with any victories. (EDIT: Unfortunately no victory here, but a shortlist!)

Final thoughts

One Minute Briefs is objectively great. I couldn't recommend it more as an initiative, a community, and a daily practice. I'm sure it's been said somewhere that creativity is a muscle, and training it by committing to a daily OMB has proved that to be true. The 'One Minute' format is such that not only does it improve your lateral thinking, but it helps break past the perfectionism barrier that a lot of us harbour (myself very much included).

On a less serious note, it's also just fun. It's a chance to create things and be silly with a host of supportive OMBLEs.

If you challenge yourself to one thing this week, heck - this month, please try a One Minute Brief. I promise you won't be disappointed.