A global survey shows that marketers write bad briefs. Are strategists’ briefs any better?
All of us in AdLand owe a debt to Matt Davies and Pieter-Paul von Weiler for facilitating a global survey (of English speakers) on the subject of client-generated creative briefs. The results of this survey are revealing but not surprising: Marketers have not been trained to write briefs and therefore the briefs they present to […]
The case for waiting to start your ad career.
It’s just a thought, but after my last speaking gig with Mark Jenson’s Advertising Strategy and Creative Development class at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the U of Minnesota, it may have some merit. Mark uses my book on the creative brief as required reading, so he invited me to speak […]
When we pretend we’re not influencers.
In our work as brand builders, there is always a line drawn somewhere between good taste and bad taste, and always this line is arbitrary. But is there also a line between right and wrong when it comes to our work for brands? Can a brand message be more than just in bad taste, but […]
Emotion, reason and the unique selling proposition
Originally published April 2011 How do people make decisions? I’m not asking about the sequence of steps someone takes to arrive at a choice between, say, two options when she goes shopping for new jeans. I’m asking, rhetorically, what part of the brain fires on all cylinders when mulling that range of options? We know […]
What I want in a creative brief.
I’m speaking now as a creative, a former copywriter and creative director. I’m speaking as one of the people to whom the creative brief is directed, for whom the brief is written, of whom much is expected once I have this document in my hands. In my hands and my art director partner’s hands. It’s […]
Who decides when a creative brief is “inspiring”?
Allow me to share with you a recurring sentiment I hear during my creative brief workshops when I show marketers and account people examples of well-written creative briefs. I hear this comment often enough to have made note of it even if I don’t hear it at every training. When I present one of these […]
The State of the Creative Brief.
Rather than make predictions for 2023, I choose to draw some conclusions about the status of the creative brief in our industry. I was a practicing copywriter and creative director in legacy ad agencies for 26 years. I started writing about and teaching creative briefs in 2004, so I’m about to enter my 19th year […]
Remember your audience.
When you do as much creative-brief training for brands big and small as I have in the past 17 years, you see trends. I could provide a hefty list of the trends I’ve observed, but today I’ll focus on one. Audience. Not the audience for the product, but the audience for the creative brief. The […]
Are you trustworthy? It’s a must for a creative brief writer.
(Originally published February 9, 2015) I used to say that before you can write a single word on a creative brief, you need a strategy. It’s time to amend that. There’s an important precept that straddles the two: trust. Strategy must be in place before the brief can be written. But before you can begin […]
How deconstructing any ad can help you polish your brief-writing skills.
December 9, 2022 (Published originally in June 2012) When was the last time you even saw the word, “deconstruct”? Unless you were an English major in college you likely never came across it at all. There’s nothing mysterious or complicated about the process. Deconstruct simply means to take something apart and analyze the pieces. In […]
