In AOL Programming we have a document that should be used at kickoff meetings to align multi-disciplinary teams to the mission at hand. It is our take on the classic agency document called a creative brief. Briefs serve the purpose of aligning team members around core strategic principles without inhibiting their creativity in finding a solution.

Click "read more" for my take on the Creative Brief.


What you want to accomplish with a brief is to establish the problem the team is committed to solve and to INSPIRE them to solve it. If you feel you already know the solution before you begin, you're most likely not tapping into the potential of your team and inspiring them to ownership. Focus on stating the problem; then see what happens in the solutions.

Our brief asks several questions that elicit thinking and information gathering on the part of the author/leader. Leaving areas blank says a couple of things: as the leader writing the brief you have no idea what the answer is (dangerous) and/or you have no unique insights into the problem (even worse). Cutting and pasting from prior briefs is fair in some cases, but if there is no unique insight in the brief, don't expect it from the work. This all starts upstream with the author.

At the end of this post is a list of the questions in our brief template, updated this past January to reflect our new process. There are logical questions to help mitigate risk--hard lessons learned when someone doesn't ask "what is driving the date?", or "what assets may we use?", or "what partners are involved?". But I want to focus on what actually makes a brief great and differentiates it from a requirements document. Here is the first:

1. consumer insight.

A product or creative initiative should be driven by solving unmet consumer needs. If the brief does not paint a picture of the end user and what will motivate someone to habituate to the website then the work will be poor or mediocre almost every time. A consumer insight is not simply demographic data, though that is important in itself. Age groups, or income brackets are fine to have in a brief. However, that is not a motivation to problem solving. What makes a GREAT brief is an insight that is apparent from the data. What do you truly know about your audience; capture it here.

How are users finding you in their daily routine?, where do they go afterward?, what keeps them up at night?, what trends in other areas of their life are bearing down on them? What do they consider important in life? A good brief does not try to answer all questions, and every solution is different, but do your best to find an angle that gets your team inside the mind of the consumer's motivations, not your own.

For a website for Michelin the insight came from first hand observation at the point of sale. Some team members went to a tire store to watch transactions with customers (an exciting day I imagine). Even if the customer asked for a Michelin tire, they observed, the salesperson talked them out of it and actively sell them a cheaper brand! This observation led to a solution that allowed the consumer to print a one-sheet off the website to counter a salesperson's claims against the purchase of the Michelin tires.

This idea can only come from putting yourself in the customer's shoes and truly having insight into the problem.

2. a single driving idea.

In advertising this is the "single-minded message" that permeates all decision-making (hopefully). It manifests itself as great, focused creative and a central brand proposition (site or function in our case). The user is not overwhelmed by the solution, but understands instantly what it is the that team is trying to convey throughout the total experience.

Creative that is muddled or barely functional is usually based on a lack of focus and decision-making around what is the single most important aspect of the solution. Generally, this comes about when team members want to hedge their bets and throw it all in: "double-down". Or "triple-down". This is not only costly to produce but simply not effective. Simplicity sells.

3. it is a brief, keep it short

No extra points in my view for forcing a creative or technical team to read seven pages of unedited cut and paste from Forrester reports. If you have reports, share them as separate supportive info. Kitchen sink briefs are, sadly, not read. It shows in the work in the end. Team confusion. Excessive, aimless reviews. Sound familiar? Go for haiku.

That's it for now (keeping it brief!). So much more can be said about writing a great brief. As we create more and more customer-centric and yet advertiser-friendly solutions in AOL Programming, it will become especially critical to speak in the language of a killer brief.

And remember, if you are in a position to write a brief: inspire, as opposed to educate.


APPENDIX: OUR CREATIVE BRIEF 2.0

Overview

Elevator pitch: State the basic idea and the project objectives.

Consumer insights: Provide helpful user research or traffic/feedback data that will guide the team through the assignment, but more importantly, what does it mean?

Success: How will the success of the overall program be judged? How will management measure the team's success in delivering?

Deadlines: When is the project expected to go live and what is the reason driving the date? (examples: live event, peak season for commerce, holiday promo or marketing blitz tie-in, etc)


Direction

Tone and Voice: What feelings or impressions should the visual design and copy evoke?

Assets: Are there any unique assets we can or should leverage?

Partners: Are there any partners on this project? Have any deals been signed that could influence the content or experience?

Branding: Is designing the program's identity part of the objective? Are there specific MMX factors for rolling up page views? Are there partner companies to represent?

Marketing & Syndication: How do you plan to promote the experience?

High-level Requirements: Keeping it simple, list expected features and functionality. Brainstorm with peers in other groups.


Immediate next steps...
o Alert the sales integration team to the brief.
o Work with the design team to sketch out some low-resolution ideas for approval.
o Work with Project Management to lock resources.
o Get to a final or interim schedule in place (depends on scope of engagement).
o "Greenlight" in weekly executive reviews.

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