No other business document offers as much potential as the creative brief.

It is the litmus, the crux, the doorway from murky, chaotic prospect into actionable effort. Done well, a creative brief enables game changing marketing, communications, advertising, design, content, or for that matter, policy, architecture or entertainment.

I wrote about the Modern Creative Brief in 2012. Then updated some ideas in 2015.

The core attributes remain consistent in 2021. We must clarify:

WHY? …are we making this effort?

WHAT? …are we selling?

WHO? …are we trying to persuade?

WHEN/WHERE? …will our effort to influence occur?

HOW MUCH? …resource(s) are at our command?

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Given the volumes of data and leaps in attribution measurement, however, I’d update WHY to ask:

How is this effort a net positive opportunity (in revenue, reputation, etc.)?

In other words, not all efforts offer the same rewards. In a world of unlimited opportunities, perhaps the most important question a brief can ask today is, “should we even do this?” One can argue the best brief is one that cancels itself—in favor of more potent briefs.

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Then, given the advances in behavioral economics, I’d tune WHO/WHEN/WHERE to:

Describe the most salient behavior related to this opportunity.

All marketing is effort to change behavior. And behavior is as much framing/mindset as context/environment. As Rory Sutherland puts it in his excellent book Alchemy, “just because there is a rational answer to something… doesn’t mean there isn’t a more interesting, irrational answer to be found in the unconscious.”

The best brief helps us leverage behavior.

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And given the Internet, I still believe effective briefing has to answer:

THEN WHAT?

In other words, how does this brief/effort connect to other efforts and the broader marketing ecosystem? What does the audience do next? Does the effort related to this request exist before, or after other marketing components?

* * *

Time spent honing a brief is better than time spent reworking creativity.

If you want to improve your team’s approach to creative briefs, check out:

Julian Cole who has been writing and presenting brilliant thinking around creative briefs (including this online course), and offers a wealth of useful tools through his Academy to improve the way you approach briefing.

Rosie Siman and Faris Yakob—their Strands of Genius newsletter and “Beyond Boring Briefs” curriculum are invaluable tools to help refresh and rethink creative briefs.

Tom Bassett’s wonderful short film, Briefly, (summarized here on Slate) which provides perspective on the creative briefing process from designers Yves Béhar, and John C. Jay, illustrator Maira Kalman, and architects David Rockwell and Frank Gehry.