The most important part of the brief that creative agencies are missing
In this guest post, Ogilvy Sydney’s Ryan O’Connell asks if creatives have been looking at briefs all wrong.
Early in my career, I was taught that every single component of a brief was equally important. That the writing of every single word – no matter where it found a home on the brief – mattered, and should be well thought-out.
Background information, objectives, insight, strategy, proposition, brand personality, mandatories, channels, timings, budget, job number, success criteria, etc, all needed to be completed with care and consideration.
As I began working with countless creative teams, the only part of the brief that mattered to them became patently clear, and considering the creative team is the audience for the brief, it was worthwhile finding out what they deemed to be important.
Great read – your mortgage is safe. Lots of value in thinking about the actual problem to solve.
The best client/creative team relationship I ever saw came because the Snr Client knew that the creatives valued the business problem. That trust allowed them to create some amazing, bold work for the category.
Too long, didn’t read.
Thanks Ryan, some great info which would apply to many consulting based industries I think (including mine – recruitment). Cheers.
This is correct. I find it strange that something that I believe to be self-evident, is not with many, many other Agencies.
I mean, we are there to solve problems, not just stroke our own egos… right? 🙂
Yes. I’m all for rigor at strategy stage. The brief should be ripped to pieces just as much as creative work is.
In my experience it isn’t, perhaps because it’s not as sexy or as easy to debate. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t get the love it should. If it did, briefs would be a lot tighter, a lot more focussed on the business problem and lot more interesting.
However, this discipline should not come at the expense of creative development. You can’t sit on strategy for 2 months and expect creatives to solve it in 2 weeks. Which also happens too much.
Great read Ryan.
I think you’ve only scratched the surface of a bigger issue which is that the advertising industry is no longer just about making ads.
Unfortunately most creatives are being taught at the start of their career how to write and art direct and ad, not solve a business problem. (Of course writing an ad may well solve the clients problem, but in isolation unlikey these days).
As long as creatives are being taught this way and measured by their ability to win ‘creative awards’ they will keep delivering ads. Many creatives have a mortgage/rent and a family to support too, so they need to be seen to be delivering on any level they can and the easiest way to do that is to make ads. I don’t know of any creative that has been employed by an agency or creative director by showing how they solved a business problem. In fact, in my experience the first question most headhunters ask a creative is ‘what and how many awards have you won?’ The second is ‘what agencies have you worked at?’ The latter in the hope that it is a large well known award winning agency that they can leverage the equity of and help sell the creative candidate to another agency with bigger staff remuneration packages which in turn leads to a larger percentage for them.
As long as this antiquated system remains in place creatives will never feel confident offering up business problem solutions that don’t look or feel like ads. Notwithstanding the fact that they haven’t been trained to think like a business problem solver. Everyone would like to be able to offer up an Edward De Bono-like business solution and go down to the pub to celebrate, but that kind of thinking is not only hard, but a hard sell.
Of course there are always exceptions to the rule. M&C Saatchi’s and Optus’ Cleverbuoy was not an ad per se, but that was an agency initiative, not a solution for a clients business problem.
Historically in the larger agencies the culture has always been quite combative internally. Account Service vs Creatives, Planners vs Account Service, Creatives vs Planners and so on. Sure, they all pretend to collaborate well with ‘ideation’ meetings and ‘no black hat’ meetings, but I’ve never seen an idea come out of these meetings that has 1) been made and 2) come from anyone but the creative dept or Creative Director, not because they’re better at their jobs, but because they, as does everyone, needs to be seen to be offering value and protecting their turf.
I wholeheartedly agree with your article, but I’m not sure telling creatives that they need to focus on a different part of the brief is going to achieve much until someone comes up with a way to bring down the walls of insecurity and fear that exists in most large multinational agencies and creates an environment of true collaboration.
P.S. I was going to apologize for the length of this post to ‘Anon’, but he/she wouldn’t have made it this far.
Ah, it’s so nice to be back in the 80’s. Back then, the Business problem was always part of the brief, in the better agencies, at least. The only problem was, and remains, that agencies aren’t that well equipped to solve business problems. We may understand consumers and communication strategies, but that’s a far cry from understanding the complexities of finance, supply, EBA’s, NPD, distribution, pricing, etc, etc. Clients don’t turn to agencies to solve business problems, they turn to the consultants.
Well said @The Cynic.
It’s true that creatives zero in on the proposition.
The reason is that it allows them to focus on one, simple, single-minded message.
This doesn’t restrict their creativity.
On the contrary. It helps them unleash it.
It gives them the freedom to explore as many creative and media ideas that they possibly can, with the comfort of knowing that if they communicate the said proposition in a powerful, memorable way, they WILL solve the business problem.
The business problem is the starting point of the brief.
And yes, of course, it’s critical.
We are here to solve business problems and build brands.
But the way to solve it is to write a brilliant strategy: to identify a business objective, consumer insight, single-minded proposition, carefully culled support points, possible media channels, budget, and mandatories so the creatives aren’t shooting wildly in the dark.
They need the freedom of a tight brief.
One of my early Creatives Directors once told me that creatives are here to solve solutions, not problems.
Those words still ring true.
100% agree. Overcoming the business problem is simply an end goal of a successful execution of the business strategy. If the creatives view this from the customer painpoint then they’re close to home. KPIs and measurable outcomes should be in their sights but are NOT their responsibility. That fate lies with the client side strategist.
A lot of this makes sense, but the bit that bothers me is that its an entire discussion based on ‘departments and compartmentalisation and hard walls’ — which takes for granted that strategy is a strategists job, and ‘interpreting’ is just the ‘creative’s’ job, etc. I have nothing against strategists (and their need to pay mortgages) but back in the day, (‘modern’ advertising is, when you come down to it, just over a century old) the best ads came from a collaboration which INCLUDED the creatives in identifying the problem in the first place. Or maybe just., sometimes, ONE ‘creative’. Most of those creative (while busy ‘problem identifying and solving’ themselves, eventually ended up opening (now iconic) agencies, many of which are around today. Open enough of these ‘departments’ and you could bureaucratically bifurcate and strangle the ad business.
Don’t knock the Eighties! 🙂
But Even the Eighties you speak of, we come from a biz which was BORN from defining the problem AND problem solving. Hell, our genesis as an industry goes back to the time ad thinkers would sometimes come up with ideas that even led the client reformulating the product! At the very least, be part of that ‘interrogate the product till it confesses its benefit” process. And no, its not about stuff like “the complexities of finance, supply, EBA’s, NPD, distribution, pricing, etc, etc.” The ad ‘thinkers’ of the day would thrash out in a much more ‘holistic’ manner, a 360 of problems and opps, and then come up with the one communication strat it need. Sure, open all the departments you want, with all these consultants and strategists, but figure out how to make creatives a part of fashioning the actual brief.