How To Write A Better Creative Brief
All creative briefs are good. But some are better than others at avoiding wasted effort, belated strategizing, and muddled work. In my experience, successful briefs do five things:
1. Focus relentlessly on audience. This goes deeper than a title. The good briefs also include demographics—age, gender, income, profession. The great ones provide insight into the buyer’s real motivations. They know what they value, how they think, and what keeps them up at night.
2. Make it a tool, not a task. Do not treat a creative brief as a box to be checked. It should reflect a serious discussion of your audience, your product’s strengths, the current and desired perceptions of your product, the relevant supporting facts, and the appropriate tone. Avoid jargon dumps and strategic dithering. Note budget and timing.
3. Separate direction and background. The goal is direction. Anything more than a page is suspect. That said, point the creative team to additional background materials. The goal of those is immersion—which is a very different thing.
A good brief should reflect a serious discussion of your audience, your product’s strengths, the current and desired perceptions of your product, the relevant supporting facts, and the appropriate tone.
4. Don’t try to be creative. The goal of the creative brief is not to generate the solution, but to guide it. Be clear about what should be said and why it should be said. Leave the creative team decide how that is said—or visualized. You will get better work while making creative teams love you
5. Gain buy-in. If key decision-makers don’t agree, you will be redoing it anyway, after you’ve burned more hours and depleted good will.
That’s it. After all. going on at length about briefs would miss the point.