Brief should be brief.

A good brief is the key factor to get a good creative. Everybody agree with that, right? However a few really gives that importance in brands and agencies. What I often see is, briefs are written just for being written. Some people see it a boring procedure, or just a paperwork to fill in the blanks. Sorry for that.

Normally, a brief is a thought exercise. A reflection of the business problem, insights and understanding of the necessity. It requires a strong strategic approach and inputs for right communication path. Brief should be inspiring! Strong brands know this process and puts huge amount of energy to create the right brief together with their agencies. And they get the great creative accordingly, not a surprise.

Each brand and agency has its own brief formats, more or less the same. But approach is more important than the formats. Because formats don’t inspire great communication. Formats don’t inspire great briefs too. At the end of the day you need more or less these basics with insightful inputs;

• Key fact
• Business/Marketing Problem
• Objective
• Key Benefit
• Support
• Audience/Tone
• Competition
• Mandatories

However, this shouldn’t be an information overload. Brief should contain insight rather than lots of unnecessary information. Information should be filtered carefully. So distinguish the difference between orientation and brief! Most of time a paperwork comes as a brief, which is actually a detailed orientation to the brand with lack of simplicity, insights and direction.

A brief should really be brief. It is all about the famous saying; “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.”

This is the golden rule of creative process.

For conclusion I also listed some of basic questions from different brief approach of agencies, just to give an idea;

• What key business challenge dose the brand face?
• Describe the audience
• Why aren’t they doing what we want them to do?
• Why should they?
• Describe the brand character that we want?
• What must the solutions include?
• What is the question we need to answer to complete this assignment?
• What is the most relevant & differentiating idea that will surprise consumers or challenge their current thinking of the brand?