Nearly every agency I've ever been sentenced to has had a tussle or two about how crappy their briefs are. They blame mediocre work on mediocre briefs. The fulminate and put together committees on creating a better form. They then demand a certain scrupulousness on creating briefs and so on.
I believe in the brief. But there is something way more important. That is the absolute drive to do work that people haven't seen before. That informs, moves, entertains. It's really that simple. Do something good. Have the leaders of the agency sell daily to the client the need to breakthrough and be different. In short, the briefs we should be fighting over are not the individual ones for ads on the "$49.99 Call Your Fucking Estranged Mother Plan." The briefs we should be fighting over are simpler: Who are we as an agency and what do we do? That's the only brief that is really important.
6 comments:
so wisely said. plus in order to write a brief as proper creative guidance - beyond what you suggest - in more detail, takes a creative person to start with.The best suits are highly creative people and can often envision a possible great ad or campaign when putting the brief together. One of those rare suits I once convinced to become a copywriter. He turned out to score big in awards shows such as the one show and d&ad etc; Calvin Soh.
I'm more of a boxer man myself...
also i find that if you just think of what problem needs to be solved and let yourself go, most of the time that is when you get to the heart of it and good ideas start flowing. take away the rules and its uphill from there. the best ideas i've had are when i put the brief out of my mind...
80% of creative briefs are neither creative nor brief.
99%.
We actually have a long form brief and then a single page version called "the brief brief"
And agreed, they are seldom brief.
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