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How We Brief

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Sir John Hegarty, founder of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, famously said:

“Writing bad briefs is the most expensive way to write advertising.”

The sentiment applies to any form of creative communication and any type of brief. How we brief creative partners is as important as the talent of those creative partners. Writing a truly great brief is a force multiplier of creativity.

And yet the briefing process is very often treated as an afterthought or a tick box exercise.

A couple years ago, I had a chance to collaborate with Pieter-Paul von Weiler and Matt Davies, ex-agency strategists on a mission to improve briefs. They started a company called BetterBriefs that conducted the first global study in how briefs work in practice. This stat blew my mind (yet also rings true):

“78% of marketers believe their briefs provide clear strategic direction. Only 5% of agencies agree.”

With so many aspects of marketing out of a marketer’s direct control (budgets, cross-functional teams, competitive landscape, etc.), the brief is one of the few levers fully in the marketer’s hands.

There’s a common misconception that creativity is stronger without limits. But constraints actually make creativity stronger. It gives direction to aim and raw material to work with. An unfocused or missing brief hamstrings creativity. A clear, inspiring brief helps our marketing work harder.

It’s incumbent on marketers to invest the time to write better briefs. And it’s incumbent on creative partners to push back on briefs that don’t make the grade.

Coming to an elevator near you

One of my favorite experiments last year was a syndication deal with Captivate. They run a network of displays in 11,000 elevators across North America (including the Empire State Building). As their first foray into humor, they now publish one of my cartoons every week. This week, I heard from a few people in Boston and San Francisco that they spotted one of my cartoons on their way to work.

(If you’ve seen my cartoons in an elevator in the last few months, please let me know. I’d love to hear where.)

With the traditional markets for cartoons (newspapers and magazines) in decline, I’m fascinated by potential new media channels for cartoons.

One inspiration is Matt Groening. Long before The Simpsons, he drew a weekly comic strip called “Life in Hell.” It was too subversive for mainstream newspapers and magazines, so he focused on alternative papers. There wasn’t any syndication network for alternative papers at the time, so he built one (Acme Features Syndication) that ultimately included other cartoonists like Lynda Barry and John Callahan.

(I still have a “Life in Hell” book I bought as a teenager and it was a treat to ask him to sign it when I had a chance to meet him at the Reuben Awards a few years ago).

Cartoon from the archives

Back to the perennial challenge of the brief, here’s a cartoon from 2011 (not much has changed in 14 years):

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Thank you for all of your support (and cartoon material)!

-Tom

P.S. If you like these marketoons, here are a few ways to help:

1. Bring me into your company to speak

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4. Buy my latest book

5. Collaborate with me on cartoons for marketing, culture change, or thought leadership

6. Just hit reply and say hello

About Marketoonist

Marketoonist is the thought bubble of me, Tom Fishburne. I first started drawing cartoons as a student in the Harvard Business School newspaper (not quite as well-known for humor as the Lampoon) and later started this newsletter from a General Mills cubicle in 2002. The cartoons have followed my career ever since. I poke fun at the ever-changing world of marketing and business because I believe that laughing at ourselves can help us do our best work.