This meeting should raise expectations.
This meeting should crackle with electricity.
This meeting should always be standing room only.
I speak of a regular gathering in both ad agencies and on the client side. A meeting that typically produces yawns and low attendance. Exactly the opposite of what a healthy, thriving brand should inspire.
Which meeting?
The creative briefing.
If your brand is healthy, thriving and robust, creative briefings should be 60 to 90 minutes of “Raiders of the Lost Arc” meets “Jumanji” meets the most unforgettable lecture of your college career.
The best of drama, action and laugh-out-loud adventure.
Inspired and provoked by a creative brief that emerged from a lively, free-wheeling, intense conversation among the key players: strategists, creatives and brand experts.
A collaborative conversation the produces a narrative that points creatives in the right direction. I call that the creative brief, but its composition could be a single page, a brilliant short paragraph, or even six words.
This briefing should be entertaining, riveting, memorable, educational.
It should create buzz. Word should spread that if you missed the briefing, you’ll suffer FOMO by order of magnitude.
The briefing sets the stage for the team. It’s inspirational. It’s informational. It’s grounded in facts. It’s under-girded in insights. It’s stand-up comedy, a graduate seminar in psychology, a peer-reviewed paper on the brand, wrapped in a tailored speech delivered by the brand’s valedictorian.
If your creative briefs and briefings don’t produce this kind of emotional response every time, something is wrong.
Very wrong.
Sadly, I think very few briefings achieve this level of best-seller-wannabe status.
Not even close.
Because for too many in our industry, the creative brief is merely a form, and the briefing is just one more meeting in a long itinerary of forgettable meetings.
The status of creative briefings in your world reflects your attitude toward your brand. It is the one meeting where all of us hear, first-person, the State of the Brand, one product at a time.
Elevate this meeting to The One Meeting I Will Not Miss. Raise the bar on its presenters. Expect great things.
Every creative briefing should be Standing Room Only.
Isn’t your brand worth it?
