Briefs should be brief.
After all, it’s right there in the name.
So why, then, do we still share these enormous, multi-page briefs that take ages to read through?
I’ve long said that one of my hardest jobs as a strategist is to condense a 300-slide research deck into a single sentence. That sentence should be an insight, an “aha!” moment, a nugget of truth that will inspire great creative.
But — I can hear you protesting — but what about all the other stuff we need to tell them? The company background, the campaign deliverables, the tone and voice documents, the seventeen different audience segments? Where do they fit?
The answer is simple: Those don’t belong in a creative brief.
Some of them belong in evergreen reference documents. For instance, brand voice, tone, and guidelines, information on the company, products and services. The stuff that doesn’t really change much.
Some of them belong in a longer project brief, which doesn’t necessarily need to go to the creative team. For instance, production guidelines, detailed timelines and milestones, budget information, costing, and margins, technical specs, and legal standards.
And the rest? That doesn’t belong in the document at all. That’s part of what you pay us for — to filter through all the fluff and find those nuggets of inspiration on which we can build great creative.
It’s not easy. But
Here are the things that do belong in a creative brief:
- Client: What brand, product, or service is this for?
- Audience: One core insight about them. What makes them truly tick? This is hard to do; it has to be relevant, motivating, and unique.
- Goal: What specific action do we want them to do when they see our ad?
- Barrier: What’s stopping them from doing this thing already?
- Creative strategy: One sentence that sums up how we’re going to overcome the barrier and get our audience to respond the way we want them to. You might spend hours trying to come up with this. That’s okay. That’s normal. This is where the magic happens.
And then, a few mundane things like:
- Deliverables: What do they need to generate? Concepts and storyboards? A banner? A tagline? A jingle? Try to avoid lengthy specs here; just keep it topline.
- Deadline. When is this due? Give 1 or 2 milestones at most, and make them the big ones. Give creative directors the benefit of the doubt that they know how to break their team’s work down into subtasks.
- Mandatories: Things like, does this campaign need to be bilingual? Does it need to be submitted to a regulatory board for approval? Keep this section to a bare minimum and just add 2-3 bullet points.
- Project number and docket. Creatives need to know where to bill their time. If there’s a specific number of hours that they have budgeted for this, it might be helpful to tell them (but you should ask them for their input first to ensure this is realistic).
That’s it. If you’ve added more fluff than this, then it’s time to pare it down.