In brief

Why are briefs so bad? Perhaps because few people know what a brief is. Some people think a brief is a data collection exercise. Other people think a brief is an excuse to come up with bad headlines, in the hope that these will inspire creative people to come up with better headlines. And still others think a brief is an excuse to spew jargon. Most people in advertising think a brief is a tool of paper used to assign jobs to a creative team.

I've come across few people who spend time thinking enough about briefs. Most Client Servicing people I know spend most of their time thinking about billings. Good on them. Unfortunately, somebody needs to think about briefs. The creative team cannot be given the job of coming up with ideas and thinking about briefs.

A brief is an idea-starter. It can be one word. It can be one line. It can be one page. It can be an experience. It can be a song. It can be picture. It can be a joke. It cannot be a mountain of data. It has to be a distillation of that mountain of data. A brief is what Account Management must give a Planner the freedom to come up with. Not because Account Management cannot come up with a brief, but because Account Management has more important things to do - like focus on billings.