The 4 most common mistakes in creative briefs

I’m not the first person to write about creative briefs. Nor will I be the last.
But I still find it astounding how many bad creative briefs are written.
And briefs are important. They’re a linchpin for the work an agency does.
The brief largely dictates if the creative work that follows is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.

I’ve seen planning departments and suits fall in love with briefs and celebrate them, almost as if they themselves are the final product or output of the agency. They’re not. I’ve never seen a brief appear on a billboard or a TV screen or any other medium. The brief isn’t the thing that’s seen by the consumer; it’s simply a map to help get there. It’s best thought of as a quasi-contract stating what we need to achieve, and what we need to say in order to achieve it.

Many times, a bad brief is put into the creative department in the hope that it will be sorted out there. And that’s fine, if the timelines and assignment of resources reflect that (they rarely do). Putting a problematic or unresolved brief into the creative department can be a bit like jumping into a taxi without knowing where you’re going – you just drive around aimlessly, hoping you arrive at a suitable destination. It can be highly inefficient and expensive.
More often than not, the quality of the creative work reflects the quality of the brief (or what some people may crudely refer to as ‘shit in = shit out’).

Here are the 4 most common mistakes I see on creative briefs:

1. They’re not ‘brief’.
A creative brief should be short and to the point. It isn’t a process of adding stuff; it’s a process of elimination. If the brief is long, you haven’t done enough work to remove stuff and distill it into a single thought or message. Longer briefs indicate that you’re trying to do too much, and you lack focus. Do one job. Do it well.

As the great Twitter feed @leeclowsbeard says, “‘Well, we got it all in’ should always be said with a great deal of sadness.”

2. The Single-minded Proposition isn’t one.
I’ve written about propositions before. So has my friend, Simon Veksner.
The proposition is the most important part of the brief. It clarifies the message that you’re being asked to convey.
That communication is never going to be more clear and concise than when it sits within the ‘proposition’ section of a creative brief. It’s here that it’s most pure. It’s naked. It’s not dressed up with creativity. It’s plain. It’s simple. It’s as straight as it possibly can be.
The proposition isn’t a quasi-headline.
It’s not meant to be tricksy or clever (that’s the job of the creative work). It’s not meant to inspire; it’s meant to inform. Far too often, I see propositions that are trying to be headlines.
It needs to be single-minded.
Here’s a tip: if your proposition contains the word ‘and’ or a comma, it’s a good indication that it’s probably not single-minded.
Quite often you see people try and use weasel words to sneak extra stuff into a proposition.
For example, I once was given the following proposition for a tourism destination: “Adventure beyond your ordinary”.
I asked the planners and suits if they wrote ‘adventure’ as a verb or a noun. They replied, ‘That’s the beauty – you can interpret it both ways’.
Well done, you’ve just diluted your message by 50% and made it open to interpretation. Not the kind of foundation you want for great work.
A proposition is no place for double entendres.

3. The Support that doesn’t support anything.
The support points are the reasons to believe the proposition. You’re justifying the proposition by backing it up with facts.
However, I’ve often seen the ‘support’ section of a brief filled with stuff about the client that has nothing to do with the proposition – it’s irrelevant.
If you can’t back up your proposition with hard, believable facts, then the proposition is going to fall over.
Fix it now, rather than throw squillions of dollars and resource at it.

 4. Counter-claims.
When you write an ad, the legal department will be very quick to tell you if you’ve written something you can’t actually say. Sadly, it still happens in creative briefs.

For example, the proposition might say something like “we’re the fastest”, and somewhere else (support points, mandatories, considerations), the brief will say “we can’t actually say we’re the fastest”.
I’m not sure what the author of such a brief is expecting.
If you’re not allowed to say something, why is it in the brief as the very thing you should be saying?

Overall, briefs should be given a little more respect rather than seen as something that is churned out hastily in order to get the wheels turning.
They’re the foundation of ideas, and ideas are the foundation of our business.

One brief. Two approaches.

I recently attended a talk given by James Hutchin on the subject of funding new innovations and start-ups. He was assisted by a guest panel of Venture Investment and Private Equity specialists.
While it was a great talk, the subject of this article is in reference to a slide Jim put up during the lecture (see below).
It’s a simple chart illustrating the different approach of how academics usually digest information, compared to how investors absorb it .

So what’s this got to do with advertising? Well, I think it also clearly illustrates how different disciplines and departments within an ad agency approach a brief.

A creative briefing is an interesting thing to observe in an ad agency.
The account management people and/or planners will sit down with the creative team. They’ll have the intention of following a particular order: perhaps a little background of the business, the business challenge or opportunity, then the proposition (main point), followed by some support points, deliverables, mandatories, timings and budget. (This closely resembles the left side of Jim’s chart)
However, watch the creative team if they’re handed the brief to read (sometimes the account person or planner will withhold it until the end because they know how it usually plays out).
The creative team will go straight to the proposition, then the proof points, then the other stuff (i.e. the right side of Jim’s chart)

Why do they do this? Well, that’s because the creative team is digesting it in the same way a customer would (the customer can be thought of as an ‘investor’ because we’re going to be asking them to invest money or time, or both).
When a customer sees an ad,  they quickly assess:
What are you telling me ? (main point / proposition)
Why should I care? (details / support points)

It seems obvious, but when writing a brief or planning any sort of brand communications, sometimes we need to be reminded of this.
If our ads resemble the left-hand side of the chart, we end up talking to ourselves rather than our customers, or we have to spend so much time getting to the point, we’ve lost them before we get there.