In our business, we often meet clients whose great and simple wish is to have an agency develop great advertising that will sell their products.
Anyone who has been responsible for developing advertising knows that it’s a nerve-wracking business. And the truth is that if the first round of creative your agency delivers is a disappointment, it’s probably your own darn fault.
Sure, it’s possible the agency folks weren’t on their game that week, but there’s a good chance that your first round would have been a greater success if the agency were briefed well.
A good brief is not a meeting – it’s a written document that you deliver in a meeting. You only get one chance to properly brief your agency; don’t let your intentions for your brand be subject to misinterpretation or miscommunication.
We always use a written brief when asking for creative work – even for small projects. Here are the main reasons you should, too:
- YOUR AGENCY PARTNERS WILL APPRECIATE IT. Having written documented objectives and marketing inputs will ensure that everyone from the account exec to the copywriter has the same information about your advertising objectives.
- WRITING THE BRIEF WILL FORCE YOU TO BE SINGLE-MINDED. If you are trying to communicate too many ideas in your advertising, it will show in your brief, and require the agency to force you to be choiceful about what you want to communicate.
- YOU CAN USE IT AS A CHECKLIST – so you won’t forget about any important considerations (like the use of visual territory, imagery, tone, how it must fit with other advertising, etc.)
- IT WILL MAKE GIVING GOOD FEEDBACK MUCH EASIER. It will be a few weeks before you get the first round creative – and it’s so much more productive to have an objective conversation about how the creative fits the brief, than to say “Gee, I’m just not sure this is what we talked about”, which is an awful situation to be in. Don’t let it happen to you!
- IT MAY KEEP YOU OUT OF THE DEEP YOGURT. It’s no legal contract, but if your brief is rock-solid and your agency simply can’t deliver on it, no matter how hard they try, you may be able to rely on it to help you negotiate a fee reduction or waiver. Or, at worst, you can use it to prove to your boss that the failure was not yours, and maybe you won’t lose your job. Maybe.
We’re happy to supply a template for you to use the next time you need to brief a creative agency. Please see the link below.
The next time you embark on a new advertising or promotion project, contact us, and find out how we can help you design a brief that helps your agency deliver the results you are hoping for.
