Complaints about the creative brief that have nothing to do with the creative brief.
Complaints are often disguises. Each one is meant to hide a central truth, a truth that emerges only after you listen carefully to the rant. When the blame for some marketing shortfall lands on the creative brief, an easy target, the real culprit lies elsewhere. Here are three of my favorites: 1. The creative brief is no […]
How to break the first rule of advertising
On July 19, the folks at Faktory, an ad agency in Utah, published a thought-piece on Medium.com. I liked it so much, I posted a link to my LinkedIn page. I still like it. A lot. The premise is elegant and simple: If you want people to not only remember your communication, but to break what […]
Five truths every creative brief writer must face.
I offer these five truths about the creative brief that will help you take a successful first step of the creative process. 1. Collaborate, especially with creatives. Never write this document by yourself. How many of you remember Steve Jobs’s Parable of Rocks? It bears repeating. This is Jobs speaking: “When I was a young kid […]
Why do you tolerate four or five rounds of creative revisions?
If you claim that you use a creative brief, yet you ask your creative partners to return four or five times—or more—with revised creative work, do you need me to tell you something is wrong with your creative brief? Can’t you see the obvious? This is the classic definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and […]
To tell an authentic brand story, write an inspired creative brief.
In 1989, I was a copywriter for a small business-to-business advertising agency in Milwaukee. Two facts stand out about this job. The first is that the shop did not use a creative brief. The document was not part of its day-to-day operations. I fixed that. The second relates to one of its bigger clients, an […]
Would you like students to quote you in classroom discussions?
I need your help. My new book is tentatively titled How To Write A Killer Single-Minded Proposition. It’s a companion to my critically acclaimed text, How To Write An Inspired Creative Brief 2nd edition. Like my current book, this new graphic text will be a nuts and bolts examination of the single-minded proposition (SMP). It will include […]
Can you explain your brand to a six-year-old?
Albert Einstein famously said, “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” The “it” is, well, whatever. Fill in the blank with anything: love, time, President Donald Trump. Now I want you to substitute your brand for “it” and tell me if you can clearly and simply explain “it” to a […]
To master the art of reviewing creative work, be like Spock.
As a new member of the faculty of the School of Marketing for the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), I will be traveling around the country leading workshops on how to write the creative brief. It is an opportunity I relish. I’ve recently been asked to develop a new workshop on best-practices around reviewing advertising […]
Why brainstorming doesn’t work and what creative brief writers can learn from it.
Brainstorming does not work. This is old news. Dating back to the late 1950s, research shows that “all ideas are good ideas” brainstorming produces fewer ideas than if individuals are left to their own private ideations and then share and compare them in groups. Further, evidence is solid that if you do exactly the opposite […]
When your creative brief process is broken and how to fix it.
Beginning writers tend to learn a lesson about plagiarism the hard way. They commit it unintentionally. They didn’t mean to quote an author without giving him or her due credit, but… Unintentional plagiarism, I can attest from years of classroom experience, is the most likely kind of plagiarism a college freshman blunders into. The problem is, […]
