00:00 Hello and welcome to The Better Content Club, the place for happier marketers. And this is our free module on how to write better creative briefs. In this session, we’re going to focus on transforming how you approach creative briefing. We’re going to cover the shocking statistics and give you a bit of a brief reality check. We’re going to look at strategic foundations, how you build your positioning and get that internal alignment, then we’re going to look at how to build the ultimate briefing template that you can use time and time again, save you having to repeat yourself.
The Shocking Reality Check
00:39 So let’s get to it. 90% of marketers fail to brief agencies effectively, and their failures begin with a total lack of strategy. The numbers don’t lie. The Better Brief project surveyed over 1,700 marketers and agency staff from over 70 countries. And these were the results.
01:03 80% of in-house marketers believe they write good briefs. Only 10% of creative agencies they work with agree. 78% of in-house marketers believe that their briefs provide a strategic direction. Only 5% of agencies agreed. 83% of in-house marketeers believe their briefs are clear and concise. Only 7% of agencies actually see it that way.
01:33 A reflection task for you. Go and look back at your last couple of briefs and really scrutinise them. Did they provide clear strategic direction? Was there a reason? Was there a why? Were they clear and concise in what you were expecting, did you give enough detail, and then score yourself out of 10 and write some notes on what you can do better.
The Cost of Poor Briefing
02:00 What is the actual cost of poor briefing? It’s 33%. 33% of marketing budgets gets wasted due to poor briefs and misdirected work. This 33% could be used so much better if we can just get that part right. We’ve all experienced it. The waste of time with those endless revision cycles. The lost momentum with delayed launches and missed opportunities. Relationship breakdowns because the miscommunication was there from the start and our sanity sometimes we feel like we’re going insane and that we’re speaking in a different language.
02:44 This is usually down to a poor brief right at the start. Why is it so important? We’re all about protecting your sanity here at the Better Content Club. We don’t want you to be frustrated in your role and we want you to love everything that we create.
Why Great Briefs Matter
03:06 Why does a great brief really matter? Well, for in-house marketers, answering briefing questions in detail can really help clarify the required output that’s in your mind. Getting it down on paper, okay, but what is it we’re really asking for? For agencies, receiving a good brief is like a breath of fresh air. It means we’re starting on the same page as you. It means that the discovery process, we can have exciting and collaborative brainstorming and there’s less time scrabbling about for information, more time creating great work.
03:55 Remember, if you don’t know what you want the agency won’t either. So let’s get your strategic foundations done first. This is where great briefs start and live.
Strategic Foundations First
04:09 Why strategy matters more than tactics? Many businesses jump straight into briefing or activity and tactical activity without thinking about their strategic foundations. If you look at your last few marketing projects, do they feel like they’re from the same brand? The problem is you know you need a website, possibly a brochure, a marketing campaign to launch something, some social media activity, email campaigns and the rest. But you haven’t defined your core proposition. You don’t know what your key messages are and you have zero strategic objectives.
04:45 Each project then becomes isolated rather than part of a cohesive whole. The result? Your website says one thing, your brochure says another, your social media sounds like someone completely different and people internally all explain what you do differently. There is no hive mind. This is why we stress doing the marketing strategy first, then sort out your messaging before you move into tactical delivery. We understand that often you need to be doing stuff whilst you’re getting your ducks in a row. But if you never get those ducks in a row, the stuff is just not going to work.
Internal Buy-In First
05:27 Internal buy-in first is imperative. Before you think about briefing an external agency, you need to make sure everyone in house agrees. We’re not mediators. We’re here to do a creative job for you and to make you look awesome as marketers. So what you can do is have a pre-brief process where you create the brief internally first and get buy-in.
05:54 This is how it could go. Get stakeholders around the table, literally or virtually, and work through the key elements together. This is not a design by committee. But directional alignment to make sure everyone understands what the outcome is supposed to be. Create a pre-brief document capturing those initial thoughts and then share with the stakeholders before you go externally.
06:22 Critical questions to align on is what is the problem we’re trying to solve? Who has final sign-off authority? What does success look like and what are our non-negotiables versus our nice to haves. This can sometimes look like what is our phase one, our minimal viable product, before we move into phase two.
The Ultimate Briefing Template
06:45 Here we go. This is what you’re really here for. The ultimate briefing template, which is also available to download. This will be your framework for briefing success and for happier marketeers and agency relationships.
Step One: Keep It Clear
06:59 Step one, keep it clear. We need you to describe in plain English what your company does. Explain who you are first, then what you do. At this point, you need to avoid buzzwords, business speak, marketing talk, any words that really don’t mean anything. Explain to us, as if you were talking to your grandmother, what it is that you do. At this point, only include meaningful information if it’s genuinely part of operations. For example, you’re a B Corp. So that’s the first thing to do. Write down your background section in one clear paragraph using this approach.
Step Two: Core Proposition and Competition
07:47 Step two, core proposition and know your competition. In plain English, there’s a theme here. What do you do? What makes you better than the competition? And can you detail your unique selling points? More importantly, can you prove it? A common mistake here is confusing what you think makes you special with what actually matters to your customers. If your unique selling point is excellent customer service, you need to dig deeper because surely that’s just an expectation of what you should deliver.
08:24 Your competition analysis. Try and limit the amount of competitors you use at this point because you can go mad. I often suggest two that your current competitors that you might meet all the time in pitch environments and then two businesses that you aspire to be. What do they do that you like? What do they do that you don’t like? And any examples of their communications or creative work that you really do champion. But remember, sometimes showing what you don’t want is just as valuable as showing you what you do want.
The Person Test
08:54 Your brand. The person test. Just a little warning here, you’re about to feel icky. If your business was a person, who would it be? This is something that you want to do with your stakeholders. Ask around the table and then find that common person. Write down what it is that you like about them. For example, David Attenborough, authoritative but approachable. Gordon Ramsay, passionate but demanding and a little bit sweary. Yes, this question will make you squirm, but it’s incredibly revealing for tone and visual style. And also if you’re doing your messaging to hear around the table who people think your business is.
Be Specific About Deliverables
09:48 Be brutally honest. When it comes to deliverables, you cannot give too much information. What we don’t need is we need some marketing materials. What we do need is we need an A5 double-sided flyer. We need a printed sales brochure with X amount of pages. Keep it really clear what it is that you’re looking for. If you’re not sure and you want to have a pre-chat discussion, have that because we can help. We can work out what that might look like or what your key criteria is.
SMART Objectives
10:26 Objectives. Make them SMART. Not the vague. We want to increase brand awareness, doesn’t everyone? What is your objective? We want to increase website traffic by 25% within three months. And if you can get even more specific here, that would be better. In terms of acquisitions using social media, email and SEO. Try and make it so clear what it is you’re trying to achieve.
The Practical Stuff
11:03 Risk assessment, timings and budget. Now this stuff doesn’t sound fun at all, but it’s incredibly important. Risk assessment. Consider the potential pitfalls. Any regulatory requirements, seasonal considerations, internal politics, competitive responses. Timings. When do you need the delivery? Are any key contacts away during the project? Be realistic, because creative work takes time. And if you’ve got print involved, you need to know when you need to have your designs at the printers to allow that time in as well.
11:48 Budget. Yep, the elephant in the room that rarely anyone has an answer to that then has a very clear idea when a proposal comes in. If you can be clear about your budget up front we can give you really good realistic expectations on what you might get. Most agencies will give you the best value option to your budget. Be open about this. It will save a lot of time, effort and heartache from the outset. There is no shame in budget constraints. There is a shame in wasting everyone’s time by not being upfront and then being surprised.
How AI Can Help
12:19 How AI can enhance your briefing process. Now, AI tools can be valuable allies in creating better briefs but they are not magic solutions and they are not brief creators themselves. But AI can help you with analysing competitive communications, identifying industry trends, auditing existing brand voice for consistency and reviewing draft briefs for clarity and completeness. They can also help develop detailed audience personas, analyse customer data and social engagement and suggest audience motivation questions.
13:07 What AI cannot do is replace human insight and strategic thinking. It also can’t understand company politics or customer relationships. Or capture subtle brand nuances. Try this prompt, review this creative brief and identify any ambiguous language or missing information that might confuse an external agency.
Making Your Brief Stick
13:32 Making your brief stick. Once your brief is signed off by all parties, it becomes the measuring stick for the entire project. Every subsequent decision, creative review and project milestone should be referred back to this document. Best practice implementations. It should be used as a living document. Once you’ve completed one project, you then enhance this with your learnings to move on to the next. It definitely should capture your why. Not just what to say, but why you want to say it. It should be referenced consistently in all project communications and reviews, updated strategically when your strategy evolves, you need to update your briefing template.
14:19 Success measurements you might want to put on to see how your briefing is going is to check how many revision cycles are going on. Look to see if you’ve got stronger creative outputs that align with strategy and are consistent across the board. Do you have a better relationship with your agency? And are there better project outcomes and ROI? So the last thing to do here is to commit to using this framework for your next brief and then measure the difference.
Conclusion
14:50 And that’s the end of this training. Strategic briefing is the foundation of all great creative work. And with clear positioning, internal alignment, and comprehensive brief template, you are now equipped to transform your creative partnerships. The road from brief to brilliant creative may be long and winding, but as long as you have a strategic anchor in place with clear destination and view, you will get there.
15:17 So are you ready to transform your next project? All you need to do is download our ultimate brief template and the pre-brief checklist. Start implementing this immediately and why not take a look at your last two briefs and see where you could have improved those. Thank you for taking part in our free module. If you enjoyed this, please share this with everyone. And why not look to join the Better Content Club where you will receive more training, insights and peer community over on our Discord to support you on your marketing journey.