How To Write An Inspired Creative Brief by Howard Ibach

Back to basics: Features versus benefits

February 13th, 2012

This is a classic mistake.

It’s also an easy mistake to make.

Why do perfectly normal, talented and astute advertising professionals confuse features and benefits?

Wow, there’s a $64,000 question. I have a theory.

We’re moving too quickly. We’re moving so quickly that we don’t stop, think and reflect. We assume we know what a benefit is. It ends up being a product feature instead.

What does this have to do with writing a creative brief? And how do you avoid this mistake?

I thought you’d never ask.

If you confuse features and benefits, you’ll never find, or write, a great Single-Minded Proposition (SMP). And if you don’t write a great SMP, you’ll never write a great brief.

So, that changes things a bit doesn’t it? No pressure. We’ve got it covered.

Remember this:

Every SMP ever written began as a product benefit.

Okay. What’s the difference?

This is how I explain it:

A product feature describes an attribute of the product. A product benefit describes what that attribute does for you.

I’ll use a car as an example. Every car is loaded with product features. Turbo-charged V-6. 35 MPG. Aerodynamic body. Back-lit instrument panel. Power steering. Power door locks. Power everything. Leather interior. Real (or fake) wood trim. Electric sunroof. Rain-sensing wipers. This list of so-called “standard features” is a mile long.

And the big hint is that little phrase, “standard features.” Every car manufacturer uses the term. It’s the reason why I chose cars as an example. These things all add up to a car full of great features. They are attributes of the car itself.

But they don’t tell you one tiny thing about why this car is any better than another car.

Every feature has a benefit. If you don’t know what that benefit is, you have to figure it out. That’s one reason why you have a job.

You can’t count of your client, the product manager, to know what a product’s benefits are. Chances are she does. But maybe she doesn’t. Or maybe her description is lacking, weak, uninspired.

Let’s take one example: A premium sound system, say 12 Bose speakers with a CD-changer and a port for your iPod. Pretty cool, huh?

This is the trap. The feature itself sounds so cool you write it down as the benefit. You think the thing in itself is all the creative team needs to know.

We creatives know better. Or we should know better. Sometimes we don’t know better and then one mistake leads to another.

Remember this:

The benefit is how the feature makes you feel.

The benefit of having 12 Bose speakers with a CD-changer and a port for your iPod is…

Well, you have to figure it out. As the brief writer, you have to come up with a superb sentence that describes how the target audience, the soon-to-be-owner of this car with the Bose premium sound system, feels when he’s driving it to work.

The feature talks to your head. The benefit talks to your heart.

List three or four spot-on, right-between-the-eyes benefits of your car, described with vivid heart-wrenching detail, and one of them will be your SMP.

That bears repeating: One of those benefits will be the springboard to a killer Single-Minded Proposition.

So, next time you’re multi-tasking and scanning back and forth between your smart phone, your tablet and your desktop with its three monitors, while you juggle the phone, take a deep breath, relax and think.

Do you know the difference between a product feature and a product benefit?

You do now.

Posted in Beginners, Creative Brief, Features vs benefits, Fundamentals, Inspired, Practice, Single-minded proposition, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Storytelling and the creative brief

January 17th, 2012

Telling brand stories is what we do. Our clients turn to advertising professionals like us to translate the details of a brand, its attributes and advantages, into a compelling narrative that ultimately commands the loyalty of the consuming public.

We, the builders of brands, tell stories. If we do it well, everyone wins.

The creative brief is part of the infrastructure that no one but us sees. It’s what comes before the award-winning and, we hope, sales-increasing communications we create get created.

I came across something that I think can help brief writers do their job. It’s a Native American proverb that crystalizes not just what we do, but what a well-written brief is meant to inspire in us. Perhaps you’ve heard it:

Tell me a fact and I will learn. Tell me a truth and I will believe. But tell me a story and it will live forever in my heart.

Funny but I think we have a lot to learn from the original inhabitants of America. I’m pretty sure they weren’t talking about the next great ad campaign for Kia when one of their wise men uttered that phrase, but lucky us that we’re the beneficiaries.

When you’re preparing to write your next creative brief, it might help you to think about how the details you fill in can assist the creative team to tell a compelling story.

And what comprises a great story? It helps to have a hero. It helps when the hero is real and relevant and believable.  It helps when the circumstances in which the hero functions are…

Well, you get the idea. You’ve watched plenty of sit coms, cop shows, horror movies…you know what holds you riveted to the unfolding drama.

That’s what you need to include in your creative brief.

Not just bullet points and facts.

Real stuff. With flesh and blood and sinew.

You think that’s asking too much of a single document? When the results could mean the difference between an also-ran idea and something big?

Yeah, well ask your client what she thinks.

Posted in Bad brief, Creativity, Emotion, Fundamentals, Inspired, Storytelling | No Comments »

Twas the night before briefing

December 20th, 2011

Twas the night before briefing and all through the shop

Every briefer obsessed o’er the single-minded prop.

 

Objectives and targets should be clear as a bell

In hopes that creatives can conjur the sell.

 

The A.D.s and their scribes were ensconced in their cubes

Awaiting the brief. Sarcastic? No enthused!

 

When out in the hallway there arose such a clatter

The creatives, as one, wondered what was the matter.

 

It was merely the briefers tap taping away

Their brand voice of good cheer surely paving the way.

 

With each bold keystroke they unlocked an insight

That creatives, unleashed, would nail oh so tight.

 

For practice, they knew, was a brief writer’s friend

And off to the creatives the brief they did send.

 

To work they embarked as if elves on caffeine

The inspirer of concepts, inducing envy pure green.

 

O’er the rooftops they soared with ads so compelling

They launched more click-throughs, more phone calls, more selling!

 

A tall tale to bewitch you as the holidays near?

Oh no, not at all, for one truth is quite clear.

 

A figment of youth jolly Santa may be,

But a well-written brief for great thinking is key.

 

So speak not a word as you set upon your fine work,

Let clarity play guide, shun small thinking and murk.

 

Rewards they will come, happy clients galore—

All await the brief writer, and maybe much more.

 

Twas the night before briefing and all through the shop

Every briefer o’er joyed with her single-minded prop—

 

And we heard her exclaim as she headed out of sight,

Merry brief writing to all, and to all a good night!

 

 

To my friends and readers:

 

May warmth, peace and love fill you wherever you may be on Planet Earth this holiday season.

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How to write a brief that connects what we want people to think, feel and do

November 15th, 2011

By Nick Southgate,  Ph.D, Behavioral Economics consultant, account planner, faculty member at The School of Life in London.

I first learnt how to write briefs at Ogilvy & Mather when I was a graduate trainee.

The briefing form in those days began with three admirable simple questions – What do we want people to do? What do we want people to think? What do we want people to feel?

Reading Howard’s book reminded me of my first experiences of brief writing. Writing a brief isn’t just filling in a form – even if it’s made to feel that way. It’s about making sure all the information on that page earns its place and makes good work more likely. That’s what I’ve leant over the years writing countless briefs.

It is true that creative always skip ahead to the proposition. It’s also true that many planners pride themselves on being able to turn a good proposition. It is the planner’s most creative moment of expression: a perfect headline that no-one ever sees (and if they do, you won’t get the credit for!)

However, the response to the proposition is even more important. When briefing teams I’ve always tried to emphasize the experience of responding to the message. That’s where those three questions come in and it’s why they are so important.

This experience of responding to a message is made up of what people think, feel and do. However, what I’ve come to understand is that the most successful work brings these three things together. Bringing these together will start with a good brief and a good briefing. I think the challenge is to create a moment of intuitive realisation. That’s when you think and feel something at the same time. It’s a moment when something just makes sense. That’s when you end up doing something. Let me explain what I mean.

I recently wrote the Institute of Practitioners of Advertising’s submission of evidence to a House of Lords enquiry being held in the UK into how to bring about Behaviour Change to improve society. We were very keen to show how advertising and marketing could be part of this. In preparing it I reviewed many case studies. One of the earliest IPA Papers concerns crime prevention. It’s a great example of how feeling and thinking need to be bought together to make people do something. (The paper is ‘Home Protection: How Advertising Helps Fight Crime’ by Chris Cowpe of BMP from 1982).

The campaign wanted to reduce burglaries. It’s very easy to make people feel fearful of crime. This is what the TV ads did very well. They showed how easily burglars can exploit unlocked and open windows. However, just making people feel scared merely made them think burglary was inevitable and to feel ultimately helpless. An emotional message alone was not enough.

To prevent this the campaign also used press and posters to show people how easy it was to fit window locks, how local police will give advice and where they could buy locks in their area. These made people think it was a good idea to get window locks without making them feel very much. The rational message alone was also not enough.

The success of the campaign was having both parts working together. What people felt motivated them to do something about securing their homes, what they thought made it easy for them to do so. Thinking and feeling worked together so people knew what to do.

This combination is an intuitive realisation. When you receive the complete message you know what to do. It’s both felt and thought. These changes in thought are the strongest in changing behaviour.

Good briefs are written with strong connections between what we want people to think, feel and do. When writing the brief, consider how the emotional response and rational response will add up to something greater and how that will lead to action. It is not enough to create a rational response (i.e. something you can measure in a comprehension test where people play-back the message) and wrap it up in an emotional response (i.e. create a story people say makes them happy or sad). These must work together. When briefing a team talk about how the two will work together. Their intuitions will help make it work and the creative will be a lot more powerful.

The intuitive realisation is what a good proposition aims at. A great brief has both parts. Creatives know this. Get those three questions about feeling, thinking and doing right and you’ll succeed in getting teams to look past the proposition and write better, more deeply grounded work.

Posted in Beginners, Consumer insights, Fundamentals, Planners, Single-minded proposition, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Why it’s so important to collaborate when you write a creative brief.

October 18th, 2011

Account planners have their own thoughts on this subject, and from what I’ve read many are acknowledging the need to deemphasize the silo-ed nature of job responsibilities and are moving toward a team-oriented, collaborative process when it comes to writing a creative brief.

By “silo” I mean that the account planner writes the brief, delivers it to the account management team who when, in tandem with the planner, briefs the creative team. Three separate job responsibilities with nary a word spoken between them before the dramatic creative briefing, which often takes place in some special conference room reserved for big meetings.

It’s still done this way at many agencies. Thankfully, this practice is beginning to go the way of the…fill in the blank with your favorite antiquated practice. The point is, it’s going away.

This change reflects the rapidly evolving state of things in the ad world, and the nature of how advertisers talk to consumers. So whether you work at an ad agency, a company that hires ad agencies or you’re a creative who works in one or the other environment, I’m talking to you.

Anything you can do to build trust between the parties involved, directly and indirectly, with the creative process, on the agency side and the client side, reaps tons of benefits for everyone. And in today’s economy, this isn’t just a good idea, it’s a necessity.

Typically an advertiser will deliver to its ad agency what’s called a Client Brief. This is the document created by the client outlining the problem it’s asking the ad agency to solve.

The ad agency, in turn, writes its Creative Brief. Think of it as a kind of “call and response” technique. The Client Brief states the problem (call) and the Creative Brief addresses the solution (response). Clearly the content of the Creative Brief will be different from the Client Brief.

And it’s at this intersection where collaboration presents the most ripe opportunity. Collaboration not merely between all the players on the ad agency side (planners, account management and creative, which is a good thing all by itself) but between the ad agency and the advertiser.

Contrary to those who might think this kind of partnership diminishes the unique creative “problem solver” position the ad agency believes it must own to sustain its raison d’etre, I believe the collaborative partnering strengthens this position.

According to a paper published in June 2009 by the World Advertising Research Center (WARC) in London by Nick Southgate entitled “Three key steps to creative briefing,” part of its WARC Best Practice series, all parties acknowledge this development.

Writes Mr. Southgate:

More and more, both clients and agencies are looking to harness these alternative sources of creativity and put them to work in a creative briefing that is collaborative and collective, rather than linear and sequential.

So what does this mean for you? If you’re involved in writing the creative brief, begin by inviting others to the task and make it a team effort. Creative briefs are difficult documents to write, and doing it solo is cruel and unusual punishment.

Instead, develop a unique process around your creative brief where the writing of it in a collaborative setting produces not just a good brief, but an inspired brief. A brief that leads to better creative, more effective creative, creative that produces better results, better sales, and more profits.

My personal guru, David Ogilvy, used to say this about good creative work: “It it doesn’t sell, it’s not creative.”

Well, if the creative brief isn’t creative (or inspired, or inspiring), it won’t produce creative that sells.

And that’s why collaborating on writing a creative brief is so important.

 

Posted in Collaboration, Creative Brief, Creativity, Fundamentals, Planners, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Two more thoughts on becoming a better brief writer

September 20th, 2011

When in doubt about your skills, think fundamentals.

It’s like any new skill you learn—you need to practice the basics before you can advance.

In basketball, it’s doing lay ups. In ballet, it’s barre work. In writing creative briefs, it’s, well, writing creative briefs.

But you needn’t actually write briefs over and over like a school boy or girl.

Tip #1: Do them in your head.

Instead of brands, use everyday items you likely take for granted. You can write a brief in three simple steps. It’ll take you less then five minutes. Do this once a day, say during your commute to or from work, and you’ll discover your brain will add creative-brief-writing muscle before you know it.

For example: the object on which you’re sitting right now. A chair.

Step one: identify the features of your chair. As I type this, I’m sitting on a counter stool in my kitchen. My stainless steel and leather stool is comfortable. It’s attractive. It was inexpensive. That’s three features.

Next, identify what the benefit is for each feature.

Comfort: I gravitate toward this chair because it’s comfortable, so I like it. A lot.

Attractive: I feel proud of my excellent taste in design.

Inexpensive: my aren’t I the clever chap for finding something so wonderful and at such a bargain.

Three features, three benefits.

Oh, and guess what. We’ve already found the hardest thing to write on a creative brief: the single-minded proposition. It’s always one of the benefits. Always. The question is, which one?

For your practice exercise, it doesn’t matter. Write (in your head) an SMP for each benefit. It’s good practice. (If you read my post last month, you know I sometimes provide my creative teams with multiple SMPs. When you do as much creative testing as I do, you often need different creative approaches.)

For comfort, try this:

You’d give this chair a standing ovation except you’re too comfortable to get up.

For design, try this:

You keep a photograph of this chair in your wallet and show it off any chance you can.

For inexpensive, try this:

If they gave out Nobel Prizes for finding a great chair for a ridiculous price, you’d get one.

Notice that each SMP could be a headline. They don’t have to be good headlines, however. You’re the pioneer headline writer on the assignment. Your job is to write the first one to inspire something better from your creative team.

Now, you try it. Pick everyday objects—a pencil, your bedroom slippers,  your cereal bowl, a coffee mug, your reading lamp. Keep them simple and unremarkable. It takes the pressure off.

Remember: three features, three benefits, three SMPs.

When that gets easy, do your pet. Your best friend. Your mother. Your mother in law…well, that’s for real die hards.

The point is, practice.

Tip #2: Never write a creative brief all by yourself.

Never. Never. Never.

Always collaborate: With another brief writer. With someone on the creative team who’ll be working from your brief. With your boss. It doesn’t matter.

Two heads are always better than one.

Remember: creatives always work in teams. They produce better work that way.

Why would it be any different in writing a creative brief?

Posted in Beginners, Collaboration, Creative Brief, Fundamentals, Inspired, Practice, Simple, Single-minded proposition, Uncategorized | No Comments »

More tips for beginning creative-brief writers

August 16th, 2011

As it turns out, Ramona Liberoff’s post last month, Creative briefs for beginners, was the most popular and most read post on my blog in months.

So, in honor of my esteemed planner colleague from Movirtu Limited in London, who clearly struck an important nerve, I’m continuing on the theme she started with a few more tips for those of you new to the creative brief. It’s a subject I’ll return to again in the future.

Tip #1: Before you ever write a single word, talk to your client.

This is so obvious is may seem silly. But it’s all part of the collaborative process I’ve been preaching. This time, you collaborate with the most important person in your world: the client for whom the creative project is being produced.

Now, I have no idea who your client might be. “Client” is a generic term for, say, that big software account you work on called Microsoft. It could be the product manager at your company. It could be your next door neighbor who asked you to write content for her new petsitting Website.

Whomever your client is, you have to understand exactly what he or she is expecting. Chances are you’ll get some kind of document, whether it’s a brand statement, a Marketing Communications brief (MarCom brief) or something else.

You might not be so lucky. You may get nothing more than a 10-minute conversation. And if you don’t take notes, you’re in trouble.

Your creative brief is meant to be your interpretation of the MarCom brief. Or the 10 minute conversation.

This is when it will pay to have a blank copy of your creative brief template in front of you. Ask your client the questions as they’re listed. Ask them verbatim.

Get your client to put into her words what she thinks should be in the communication.

Ask her to propose a Single-Minded Proposition (SMP).

Write down her response. It’s from your client. It may be dead wrong, but it’ll likely have a gem of truth to it. No one knows her product or service better than she does.

Now you have first-hand information from the source. You’ll be in a great position to write your brief. Even better, you’ll have built rapport with this person.

Tip #2: Write more than one Single-Minded Proposition.

There will never be only one way to solve a creative problem. Therefore there will never be only one single-minded proposition. There is likely to be only one truly outstanding SMP, but it pays to explore many approaches.

If you can identify three or four unique benefits of your product or service, each of those benefits could be your SMP.

As a creative director who often has to write my own creative brief, I make it a habit to give my creative teams more than one SMP. I’ve given them as many as four SMPs for a single product. I often suspect that one or more might inspire truly outstanding ideas, just as one or more might go nowhere.

Believe me, creatives will appreciate the breadth of thinking you offer. You’ll earn a reputation for clear direction. Clear being the operative word.

More tips in the months to come. Happy brief writing!

Posted in Beginners, Collaboration, Creative Brief | No Comments »

Creative briefs for beginners

July 19th, 2011

by Ramona Liberoff, EVP Marketing, Strategy and Planning, Movirtu Limited, London

Howard’s book is a great tool for all of those with the weighty responsibility of writing a creative brief to fulfill their duties responsibly.

But in some environments, like tech companies, or start-ups, or for those not used to working with creatives or agencies, the need for a creative brief isn’t established in the first place. (In case you’re wondering, my environment is all three.)

In fact, there’s very little experience or judgment available to help people understand what good communication looks like at all.

So you have to go through a pre-brief enlightenment process with your stakeholders. Below I share some best practices with readers in case you are in the same situation, or in case you just need to remind people why they go through the hard work of writing a creative brief.

Q: Why do I have to brief? Why can’t I just “tell” someone what to write and have them do better words?

A: Two main reasons. If you don’t give some background to the brief, particularly around the audience, you won’t help the writer get into the audience’s shoes and write something that will be useful to them. Second, there are many different ways to tell a story. Dictating your message and having it tidied up is the equivalent of trimming your astroturf rather than planting a lawn. The latter is harder, but it’s clearly real.

Q: Why do I have to writing anything down? I don’t have time for this!

A: The act of writing something down forces you to think through what you want to accomplish. Otherwise you are tempted to think that a creative communication can solve too many different issues, some of which may not be connected to the communication at all. Or you risk spending much more time later down the line in endless revision cycles when the work just isn’t “right.” How can it be, without a clear road map?

Q: OK, I accept that I have to do some kind of brief. What will my creatives find most useful?

A: Apart from read Howard’s book, the things that stand out for me as most useful are brevity and verbs. Too often the brief is full of adjectives such as “Get to the point,” and “Speak in a tone which is authoritative and innovative” and “Not fuzzy.”

What may be fuzzy to me may not be fuzzy to you. Trying to follow instructions like those above is like chasing an endless piece of string, and pointless iteration is not a good thing for creative work. It can end up exhausting your creative energy to no good purpose.

Garbage in, garbage out is always a good rule of thumb!

Posted in Beginners, Creative Brief, Simple | No Comments »

Why should creatives care about strategy?

June 14th, 2011

by Jerry D’Ascoli, creative consultant, art director, search and rescue. See his work at jerrydascoli.com

Strategy

We’ve grown to hate the word, creativity’s kiss of death. “Let’s keep on strategy.” “We’ll need some real strategic thinking here.” “Strategically, I don’t think we’re in a good place.”

So why is this exhausted term even important? After all, we just toss the strategy and do what we want anyway. Since we, as creatives, know what the client really needs.

Here’s the thing. We do know what is engaging, convincing, and different. But for all our ego and grandstanding, without a solid strategy, our efforts are for naught and the agency, client and product are done a huge disservice. Strategy is what will elevate good creative to the hallowed halls of greatness.

Huh?

I’m talking about an Umbrella Strategy. This goes way beyond a specific ad, execution or campaign. This gets to the root of the Brand. Its voice, personality and direction. And everything that represents the Brand needs to resonate from it. If it’s optimized—clearly defining the Brand and distinguishing its character—it becomes the most powerful creative tool you have. Truly.

The Client’s Brief

A creative brief: it at the least, points you in a direction and at the best, arms you with tons of background and support points so you can just “create” (ahhh, dare to dream). But what we tend to forget is that ultimately it’s the Client’s brief. If the agency team—Creative and Account—takes the time to generate an umbrella strategy with the Client, the Client becomes vested in not only the process but the positioning. Every brief that ensues—from the door hanger to the integrated social-viral-mobile-digital effort—becomes one traceable to the core brand attribute. Nice.

Checklist

Let’s see, we’ve got a great umbrella strategy? Check. A client vested in it? Check. A brief based on it? Check. A marketing challenge to solve? Check. Now let’s go off, think big and broad, stretch our imaginations and the client’s limits. Killer ideas. Even better executions. The walls are papered with them. Pizzas have been consumed. Brains have been stormed. Creatives exhausted.

Offense or offensive?

“The best offense is a great defense.” Trite but true. And especially relevant to us. We scan the culls. A great range of inspired work. Most push the “comfortable” edge. But wait a second, these actually support the brand. They come straight from its voice but they’re not merely the “brief” at all.They’ve transcended it. And yet they fall right into it. Guess what? Now we’re not presenting ideas with callous bravado,we’re tenable.

Epiphany

The client’s a bit nervous, these ideas are more than they expected Different from what they usually do. Exxcelleeeent… Remember that umbrella strategy we worked out? The brief bred from it? Look, these all speak to it. You’re uncomfortable, that’s good. It’s different, precisely. But listen to the voice—the positioning’s dead on. Exactly what we need to say but in a way that no one else is, or can. Rifle shot! The perfect offense: everything shown was defensible. And the client provided the defense.

Epilogue

Brilliant insight. Killer execution. Epic result. It couldn’t have gone any other way. We laid the foundation and build the specs with the client, which ensured we’d exceed their expectations. Creative, on strategy, impregnable, and quantifiable. Congratulations!

Posted in Collaboration, Consumer insights, Creative Brief, Creativity, Strategy | No Comments »

Keeping things simple

May 17th, 2011

by Jean-Francois Fournon, Creative Director, Shem’s Publicite, Casablanca, Morocco

I like American people.

They don’t intellectualize things. They keep it simple. And advertising has to be simple if we want consumers to remember our messages. So that may be one of the reasons why Americans are very good at advertising.

Another reason I like Americans is their habit of explaining how to succeed, how to speak in public, earn more money, be successful in life and write a good brief.

Here we are. Very simple rules, full of examples, step-by-step explanations. Nobody gets lost.

I spent most of my creative career criticizing briefs, making planners feel uncomfortable until they said they would go back to the drawing board.

In fact I was a lazy writer and like really lazy people I tried to gain time. Nowadays I know that it’s not because you refuse a brief that the date of presentation will change so you end up getting stuck with less time to work on a brief. So it’s better to fix things during the briefing session if possible.

Anyway this rebellious attitude needed some convincing arguments to oppose the planners. And that’s how I started digging into the inner logic of briefs. And I discovered that even if there are nine or 10 sections in a brief, only three really mattered to me.

First one: what do we want to achieve with this brief?

This can really be inspiring and you may find unusual solutions when the rest of the brief guides you toward more classical ways, a nice :30 TV spot or a print campaign. At the early stage and this one is the earliest, everything is possible and I like this feeling!

Second area that I find inspiring: the consumer.

Most of the time our target is summarized by abstract figures. Here in Morocco, people are defined by their CSP (socio-professional categories according to their income). So you are allowed to do smart campaigns when targeting CSP+ and down to earth ones when targeting CSP-.

Which implies that the more money one makes, the smarter the person is.

Come on, this doesn’t reflect life. People with less money need to be smarter and ingenious to cope with life. They need to be imaginative.

So reading a brief I cannot really understand who I’m talking to unless I get an in-depth description of these people. And the best way I’ve found is to personalize the target, to give him/her a first name and describe his/her life as precisely as possible. Even if it doesn’t have any obvious connection with the product we are advertising. At least it enables me to put my feet in someone else’s shoes. And that’s a lot.

Last key point: the single-minded proposition.

I know that I can sometimes find a good idea including two benefits but I keep these exceptions for myself and prefer to officially shout that without a unique proposition the idea cannot be simple, pure and great. This short sentence (because the SMP needs to be concise) can be inspiring to the point that on several occasions I used the line without modifying it.

On an RSF (Reporters without Borders) campaign I did in 2002 with Saatchi Paris, I used “Don’t wait to be deprived of news to stand up and fight for it” as a baseline (tagline). It was written by a great young planner and was so powerful that I didn’t find anything better. The line was actually so good that when my art director and I got stuck for ideas, we came back to the meaning of it to develop new ones. And it remained the tagline of RSF for the next six years.

This is my learning after some 20 years spent reading briefs, trying to crack them and occasionally succeeding. While getting older, I’ve noticed that a perfect command of the brief gives you an advantage as a creative (less time spent complaining which is highly unproductive) and forces the planners to push the boundaries and be creative  themselves. And when everybody is creative in what he/she does, the whole agency wins.

“One team, one dream” as the Saatchi brothers used to say.

Posted in Consumer insights, Creative Brief, Inspired, Planners, Rules, Simple, Single-minded proposition | No Comments »

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