The Creative Brief - Friend or Foe?

John Hegarty - one of the world’s most famous advertising creatives, founding partner of creative powerhouse BBH - wrote the following in his renowned book ‘Hegarty on Advertising’:

A brief is either a friend of a foe. It’s that little piece of paper that will be constantly referred to throughout the whole creative process. The question is: does it inspire or does it impair? Has it been crafted, if that’s the right word, by someone who wants to control the creative process, or liberate it? Is it a box or is it a platform? Too often it’s a box.

I recently read an article in the June edition of ‘Marketing’ titled Carving Your Own Creative Space which discussed the idea of creative being not a soft business skill, but instead a ‘hard skill that can transform business’. The article goes onto suggest that gone are the days when creativity was the sole responsibility of the creative department in an agency. This of course leads us to the logical conclusion that creative briefs should be worked on collaboratively between client and agency, marketing manager, account manager and creative department. If you are truly of the belief that creativity is indeed a hard skill that can have a transformative effect on your business then, of course, this make sense - in fact why limit it to just people in marketing?

Great creative and really effective marketing needs buy in from the very top (what I think is referred to these days as 'The C-Suite'). In fact when you consider the great brands and marketing campaigns of our generation - Apple, Google, Facebook and Nike to name a few - they have placed creativity and marketing at the very heart of their organisation. Creative has not just had approval from the top echelons of management in these organisations, their leaders have been setting the creative agenda. They then let creativity permeate the entire business, getting not just the marketing teams to buy into the idea, but every member of the team from receptionist to operations director on board.

When Steve Jobs famously returned Apple in 1997, the brand was on it’s knees. Sales were dangerously low, the company was losing money, and while Apple was still considered to be an innovative brand it would be fair to say it had lost much of it’s appeal - to both consumers and employees. So what was one of the first things Steve Jobs did on his return? He produced an ad campaign! He didn’t make the profit and loss his top priority – no, he made putting creativity and innovation, inspiring people and marketing his number one action point. The Think Different TV ad has become one of the most revered ads of all time.

According to the article in Marketing:

Nailing a good brief is an art form in itself. It takes huge skill to write one that is open enough to inspire and liberate, yet tight enough to keep to the objective and focus minds.

So how do you craft the perfect brief to inspire creative thinking, and more importantly how do you get buy in from CEO to office junior? The best brief that I’ve ever seen have had three things in common - a through understanding of the business situation, clear objectives and it was worked on collaboratively.

Here’s my top tips on how to make that happen:

1. Research, research, research; do as much research as you can to ensure you understand the entire market place you’re operating in. Think about your business, your competitors, external factors that might affect you and/or your competitors, what your customers want from you, and social trends that might affect how customers might engage with your brand. The more information you gather, the better.
2. Consolidate your research into a few key findings; from all the information you have gathered, pick out the golden threads that really matter and are going to make a difference to your business.
3. Define some very clear objectives; think about what you want to achieve, and articulate how you want to achieve them. Make your goals SMART (Specific, Measurable, Aspirational, Realistic and Timed).
4. Share your consolidated findings and objectives; with everybody that is going to be involved in bringing that brief to life.
5. Begin the creative process with a workshop; and get people from different departments involved. If possible, make sure senior management are involved in the workshop. This is their opportunity to have their say and help shape the creative output. Getting management buy in at this stage will save you hours of questions and justification of your decisions in the long term. Getting buy in from the wider team now will make your life easier when it comes to implementing your marketing campaign later on - plus you will gain a few advocates outside the marketing department along the way.

If this all seems like a lot of effort to go to just to write a brief, then try and remember that good input generally equals good output. I promise you plenty of time spent on drafting a good brief will result in time and hassle saved in the long run.

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