The top five reasons why you don’t need a creative brief
5. The freelance creative team/ad agency is brilliant. They’ll figure it out. Maybe. If you’re lucky. Or you have really deep pockets and can afford top-tier talent. But if you’re neither lucky or rich, experience tells me that very few people understand how to write a tight brief that inspires the desired results. And even […]
UK briefs versus US briefs
We’re not talking boxers versus tighty-whities here. I was thinking about a critique I received after a workshop I delivered last summer. “You have too many creative brief samples from UK agencies,” I was told, “and not enough from US agencies.” The reason was, and is, quite simple: The best briefs are written by our […]
What is a good creative brief?
This is from a book published privately in 1998 entitled, What’s A Good Brief? The Leo Burnett Way. A good creative brief… …is brief and single minded …is logical and rooted in a compelling truth …incorporates a powerful human insight …is compatible with the overall brand strategy …is the result of hard work and team […]
Who should write a creative brief?
None of us is as smart as all of us. I came across this Japanese proverb just recently. It’s not meant as an endorsement of writing a creative brief “by committee.” (You’ve all no doubt heard the adage: A camel is a horse put together by a committee.) I share it with you because, as […]
Who, exactly, do you write the creative brief for?
I’m not being sarcastic or flip. This is a legitimate question, one that’s easy to lose track of when you write a brief. And it’s something I hear very often. Obviously, the holistic answer is: everyone on the team. But ultimately, the brief is written for the creative team, the creative director, writer, art director […]
Rocket science not required
Ah, the creative brief. The Rodney Dangerfield of business documents in the ad world. The document everyone loves to hate, that creatives love to ignore, that planners love to futz with, that account folks wish would just, you know, go away. It doesn’t have to be thus. So vent here. Share your successes, your horror […]
