David Ogilvy famously said, “Give me the freedom of tight briefs.” It is generally agreed that the best creative results are achieved when the brief is focused and specific, leaving little room for interpretation. Born out of advertising agencies in the 1960s, the creative his brief was a means for his planners, the account closest to the client, to initiate creative strategy.
While a well-crafted creative brief still serves as a solid foundational tool for today's marketers, it unfortunately requires one thing that marketers lack. It's time. There is an increasing need to complement this approach with a more dynamic and conversational approach. The fast pace of organizations, coupled with new ways of working, requires a shift to a more fluid approach.
Over-reliance on creative briefs
A creative brief, typically written by someone who hires a creative team, ensures that the purpose, target audience, key messages, tone, and deliverables are properly considered before launching an advertising campaign. It has traditionally been used in content marketing.
However, some content and creative marketers take the concept of a creative brief to the extreme. Instead of providing comprehensive guidance for a campaign, marketers use creative briefs to start even small tasks.
For these organizations, marketers promoting webinars may need to create separate summaries for emails, landing pages, and social media posts. At that point, it can't be called “short”. This over-reliance on the creative brief results in the brief becoming an administrative bottleneck, with minimal stakeholder interaction and little coordination between teams.
Learn more: 5 secrets of cross-functional collaboration in marketing
Creative brief limitations
Additionally, creative briefs can be misleading. Information degrades as it is passed from person to person. The original intent of the work may be lost, leading to rework or incorrect work. Two people can look at the same text and have completely different interpretations.
Strict guidelines on creative briefs can also limit creativity and innovation. Imagine you work for a consumer electronics company responsible for advertising a new smartphone. The creative brief states that the key message should focus on the phone's advanced battery life and state a specific phrase or statistic that should be used. The creative team has an idea to showcase battery life using real-life scenarios, such as battery life performance during a video shoot. However, their idea doesn't use the specific phrase or statistic. It gets rejected by the creative director.
Shortly after the campaign starts, a competitor releases a smartphone with slightly better battery life. Emphasize video recording capabilities and make the original campaign irrelevant in line with market interest.
Create space (and time!) for conversation
In the example above, the conversation may have conveyed the nuance of saving the campaign. Rather than rejecting an idea outright, the team was able to interact to better understand constraints, perspectives, and opportunities. Did the author of this brief consider any real-world applications of battery life? Was there a compelling reason to focus on battery life that wasn't covered in the brief? A few simple questions: , could become even more clear.
The question remains: how do marketers make space for these important conversations when everyone is pressed for time?
Get predictability and alignment
Cadence and sync are two underutilized tools that help marketers reclaim their time. Cadence simply means that things happen regularly. For example, you can review requests several times a week to maintain flow across your content team. This creates predictability because both the team submitting the work and the team doing the work know when and where the request can be discussed.
Cadence reverses the trend that every piece needs its own meeting. Rather than holding meetings to discuss individual tasks, she brings work to pre-arranged meetings and lets people know what will be discussed.
Synchronization is the act of coordinating. Some requests may require limited synchronization, while others may require a detailed conversation. An earmark inviting you to a meeting. Facilitation techniques such as timeboxing, brainstorming, and parking can help keep these discussions on track.
Are you afraid of unstructured conversations eating up all your time? Use the Agile value of experimentation to cut through disputes. In the previous example about batteries, the person submitting the request can creatively approve her team's input and structure her A/B test around battery life and real-world use cases.
The end goal is shared coordination that prevents misunderstandings and rework while optimizing results.
Learn more: Aligning martech with your business strategy: A blueprint for success
Advocating lightweight briefs with conversation
Try implementing a lightweight summary with pre-configured conversations instead of a full summary. A lightweight summary provides “just enough” information about the request. Think along Agile user stories and add supporting information, dependencies, scope, and timing information.
- “as [persona] I want to [get this outcome] so I [accomplish this goal]. “
Returning to our battery example, we can write:
“As an avid video user on my smartphone, I want to know if the battery will last long enough to allow me to shoot a full day's worth of video without having to charge my phone.”
Support information: According to our research, 68% of our target users are avid video users between the ages of 22 and 32. They are trendsetters and use SnapChat, YouTube, and TikTok. Email and other channels may be tested.
Range and timing: Post three (3) 0:06 length video ad concepts and one (1) completed video to your social channels by August 30th.
Dependencies: Overall branding kit for the campaign scheduled for August 15th.
Really, that lightness.
Using lightweight processes provides clarity and direction while keeping administrative overhead low. This approach fosters innovation, flexibility, and speed, and any outstanding questions should be clarified at an integrated review meeting.
final thoughts
The creative brief can be an unexplored area with plenty of room for improvement for your content marketing team. Teams can overuse briefs and turn them into administrative hurdles, or use briefs in place of conversation, leading to misunderstandings and rework.
Introducing conversation into the process, especially closely facilitated and regularly scheduled meetings, supports better flow, predictability, and coordination.
These conversations are delivered with lightweight creative briefs, reducing overhead and helping marketers regain one of the things they need most: time.
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.
