Most briefs are about a solution, defining the problem.
If a problem has been solved, there is no creative opportunity.
All there is, is a styling opportunity.
This is where most briefs go wrong.
They think the job of the brief is to provide a cast-in-stone solution to the problem.
No, the job of the brief is to change, to reframe, the problem.
Let me explain.
Creativity is about solving a problem in a new way.
So the job of the brief is not simply to define the existing problem.
We don’t need strategists for that, the client can do that.
The origin of planning (before it shrank to mere ‘brand-planning’) was to get upstream of the existing problem.
To find an exciting new problem which, if solved, would render the existing problem irrelevant.
So that when the brief came to the copywriters and art directors it was actually a genuinely creative brief, inasmuch as it presented a new and different problem be solved.
It wasn’t just a request for a new style of work addressing the existing problem.
It was creative, before it ever got anywhere near the ‘creative’ department’.
The brief for Volkswagen wasn’t ‘sell our cars’, it was ‘for intelligent people’.
The brief for Avis wasn’t ‘rent our cars’, it was ‘we’re younger and hungrier’.
The brief for Levy’s wasn’t ‘sell more Levy’s’, it was ‘make rye the alternative to white’.
The brief for Macintosh wasn’t ‘sell our computers’, it was ‘screw the establishment’.
The brief for Nike wasn’t ‘sell our shoes’, it was ‘are you serious?’.
The brief for Audi wasn’t ‘sell our cars’, it was ‘Audi is German’.
They illustrate the point that creativity solves a problem.
Because, if we don’t have a problem we can’t be creative.
So creativity begins with finding a problem.
The more creative we are at finding (redefining, creating) a problem the more creative the ‘creative’ dept must automatically look in solving it.
So creativity starts with the problem, not the solution.
If people don’t get this, it’s because they don’t study advertising history.
How can we expect to learn anything, unless we study and discuss the history of it?
Maths, engineering, philosophy, politics, art, design, fashion, sport, war, business.
Don’t we need to learn from previous mistakes and successes before we start?
Not just what we like, we’ll learn as much from arguing about what’s wrong as what’s right.
But the important thing is to study it and debate it, that’s how we learn.
If we don’t do that we can’t learn, all we can do is restyle the brief we’re given, because we haven’t learned to think.
But if we study the greats, we learn that their thinking started long before the brief.
Their thinking started with redefining the problem.
Bill Bernbach, Ed McCabe, George Lois, David Abbott, Charles Saatchi, John Webster.
As Einstein said “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about the solution.”
Because if he got the problem right the solution would be easy, but if he got the problem wrong there would be no solution.
In other words, the real problem is to know what the real problem is.
It’s the same in software design Dave.
Too often the client describes the solution and not what problem they are trying to solve. We then have to go upstream as you put it to figure out what the problem is, and then bring new ways of solving it to the client.
However, all too often they are so invested in their own idea that they wont listen to new approaches.
A great article that should be required reading for every agency and every client.
A further example would be how to sell an unknown premium continental lager in an already saturated market.
They could have tried using a celebrity, or talking about how cool it would make you look, or any number of arbitrary creative treatments to differentiate it.
Instead they thought about how to actually make it different.
They could have put it in a distinctive bottle. But that costs more money to make and doesn’t actually say anything positive.
They could have talked about its heritage. But it wasn’t that interesting.
What if they made a virtue of it being more expensive?
But if you made it just a tiny bit more expensive, then that gives you something to talk about.
Why is it more expensive? It must be because it’s made with better ingredients, by more fanatical brewers.
And that created a story that could be exaggerated to make it funny and memorable.
A joke that the people who were buying it were in on. But one that built up over the years. 25 of them.
In fact, what they – most likely Frank Lowe – did was so effective that I don’t even have to tell you the name of the lager, ten years after the campaign was ended.
That’s the power of a creative brief.
Having just watched the ineffable waste of money that is the latest British Airways ad, thanks be that we have the good sense of Mr Trott still fighting
set the advertising world a-right on its axis.
Perhaps the Awards should have a new category, or even a new set of awards: The Best Brief. To push good account directors and planners into the limelight. If AI had taken Ian Fleming’s James Bond and researched it, no doubt it would have bombed and Dr. No would never have been made and a whole multi-billion pound industry would never have seen the light of day. This is what is happening online as every similar idea (soon to be multiplied, replicated and redistributed by AI) slides into a bottomless swamp of ‘Like’s unless it has a genuine idea behind it.
Wonderful read. As is your current book. Thanks for the inspiration.
Cheers,
Frank
Over three decades in the business, I built up a sizeable collection of books and latterly .mp4 of great ads, and would preach to everyone who listened (not just creatives) about the value of learning their craft by studying the great work and how it worked. I encouraged people to borrow the books but very few people did. Because they knew it all and were going to burst upon an unsuspecting ad scene like a flaming meteor. Maybe that’s the problem today: not enough knowledge and not enough humility.
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