I was lucky to have joined
advertising in the days when people in agencies actually discussed briefs (no,
think again). I have spent hours discussing the nuances of the lines that will
describe the problem the brand was facing. The exact line that will form
“what’s the one thing we want to communicate”. That was the most important part of my job. Everyone in the agency
believed this and all of servicing was judged on one’s ability to distill the
client’s problems to the magical document called the brief.
Then once we had rigorously
finished each of the questions in the briefing document (after having survived
the boss’ sarcasm and multiple corrections), we had to get it approved by the
client. We then briefed creative and more often than not good, sometimes
brilliant, but never mediocre work happened.
I have been a client for close
to five years. The agency has created great work for us. That has moved markets
and won awards (amazing but true).
Have I seen a single briefing document? Nope. All the campaign briefings have
been done practically directly to the creative team and then work directly
presented by the creative team.
So, what’s the problem?
The problem is that most CEOs
haven’t been agency servicing people. They come from various backgrounds:
sales, finance, HR, marketing and today, a large portion of them are
entrepreneurs. Making sense of what their business is, what are the key
stumbling blocks, what is the role of communications in the business, and
figuring out the communication mix before starting on creating an ad is critical.
My guess is this is not happening very
well.
I sense that more and more
CEOs will be directly talking to creative. More and more creative people will
feel (rightly) that they can do this on their own. More and more boutique
agencies run by creative duos will spring up and walk away with big business.
And in most cases, bar a few exceptional creative people (who are great
instinctive planners), start producing great looking totally off strategy
work which will not move products. After the honeymoon period, the business of
pitches will start and the downward spiral will continue.
All for the agency stalwarts
lack of focus on what is truly the heart of the business: creating the perfect
brief. And their failing to back that person whose job it was to.
So true.
ReplyDeleteSoon servicing and planning will become redundant functions.
I have had days, where in the clients walks-in to the agency, sits with a studio operator and walks out with an one pager ad.
Reason: no time for gyaan.
Sad but true!
A clear thought thru' brief works! But a bad brief with just a deliverables list and a deadly deadline is so retrogressive and an utter waste of everyones time including the person who has attempted it in the first place. You are right MDji Economist :-) Very insightful :-) A clear brief should be like the one you are wearing in your photo and with that look. 'Chilled Beer with the right head!' :-)
ReplyDeleteSpot on, Sir. Forget CEOs, even those managing a business on a day-to-day basis do not spend enough time on the Creative Brief. Often, none at all. It's all a verbal brief followed by a terse email. Many a time Account Planning teams don't write briefs. Two possible reasons:
ReplyDelete(1) to borrow a quote - we've stopped wanting it great and started wanting it Tuesday. In certain categories/cases a quick turnaround is critical. But that's become the norm in the industry. Who has time to mull over briefs and get into iterations on the brief? Little do we realize that its better than iterating on the creatives:)
(2) clients & agencies keep Account Planning teams busy on things other than the creative brief. A client may come from the perspective of 'extracting maximum mileage' for the fee paid and involve planning teams in number crunching, market entry strategies, competitive analysis, positioning exercises, insight 'mining' (never understood that) and other such. All these are important but not at the cost of giving a sharp brief to the communication task at hand. So very often we have a situation of retrofitting the brief after the creative.
Dear sir, great article. Bang on. I've had a good interesting six years in advertising and still counting and what I see lacking more and more from all ends is to push the envelope.Creative team is too self satisfied, planning is busy comparing competition and reinventing wheels and account management is losing the passion to make the difference. Beyong a point, we all just talk a lot of shit in the boardrooms and brainstorming sessions and end up doing what is required with equal conviction because nobody is truly willing to believe in what they say. The brief was a paper that held everybody (planning, servicing, creative and client) together. With that piece of paper out of the equation, everything seems to have gone haywire. Briefs are for juniors, to make them aware of what truly is the role of account management, just a piece of vital information that needs to be shared with ceative to not make one feel like glorified peons!!! Sad is the state of advertising now and hoping it doesn't get worse.
ReplyDelete