E80: A conversation with Charlotte Mair, founder/managing director, The Fitting Room
Airs August 24, 2022 Henry Gomez and I welcome Charlotte Mair, named by Ad Age as one of the Leading Women Europe 2021. She is the founder and managing director of her own cultural marketing agency, The Fitting Room. Charlotte’s story will resonate with American viewers. She started with virtually nothing in her bank account, […]
Dave Trott says a creative brief is about thinking, not writing. Well, not quite.
With due respect to the legendary creative director and author, from whom I’m still eagerly awaiting his acceptance of my request to connect on LinkedIn, I think Mr. Trott is half right. A creative brief is absolutely about thinking. But writing is not unimportant. In fact, I’d say a great creative brief is equal parts […]
E79: A conversation with Giles Edwards, co-founder of Gasp!
Airs August 17, 2022 Henry Gomez and I welcome Giles Edwards from the UK, creative director and co-founder of Gasp! Giles is also the host of a podcast called Call To Action. Giles interviews creative talent on his podcast, but today, he’s our guest. He discusses his beginnings, the challenges of starting his own agency, […]
Myths about creative briefs (they’re not what you think).
Creative briefs were “invented” if that’s the word a long time ago. Some credit the arrival of account planning in the mid-1960s, but I think the brief, in one form or another, probably existed long before then. And with any history comes mythology, or in 21st century parlance, misinformation. At the risk of giving them […]
E78: Classics Creative Review
Airs August 10, 2022 Our ongoing series of Classics Creative Reviews continues this week with some, well, classics. Henry and I begin our Classics review with a 1983 spot for the Yellow Pages by Abbot Mead Vicar in the UK. Next up is a Dancer Fitzgerald Sample classic for Wendy’s called Where’s the beef? Remember […]
What Dr. Seuss can teach brief writers.
How many words and phrases can you think of to express “simplicity”? Here are a few that come immediately to mind: KISS Occam’s Razor I love this one from Albert Einstein, and I’ve written about it before: “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” Less is more. “Simplicity is […]
E77: Why do marketers hate marketing?
Airs August 3, 2022 Two thought pieces caught our attention this week. The first is by John Long titled “What’s with all the advertising leaders hating on advertising?” The other is by our friend George Tannenbaum called “Ding-Dongs of Doom” on his blog. Each essay has its own argument, but Henry Gomez and I found […]
The lazy way to write a target-audience description.
Bullets should be banned. Sorry, gun fans, I don’t mean ammo. I mean those pesky black dots that show up on creative briefs everywhere. Like this: The bullets are usually followed by useless acronyms and marketing-speak such as HHI, 24-49, and other lingo. This is not thinking, it’s rote nonsense. Remember what Dave Trott said: […]
E76: One team or multiple teams—who gets briefed in?
Airs July 27, 2022 A recent guest on TBB, Mark Jenson, lecturer at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the U of Minnesota, recommended a book called Rethink the Business of Creativity. Henry Gomez and I discuss a chapter from a book about how many creative teams at an advertising agency should […]
E75: Why do brief writers struggle writing a target audience description?
Airs July 20, 2022 This week, Henry Gomez (http://henrylouisgomez.com) and I return to Creative Brief Basics, a “nuts and bolts” topic. It’s old news that never gets old: Target Audience. Some brief writers forget how to dig to understand who their communication is meant to speak to. The lazy answer sometimes is, “Well, everyone.” Everyone […]
