A brief has long been considered a fundamental element in creative work. It is a document compiling the client’s information, guidelines, and expectations toward the agency’s activities. The brief is treated as a tool to organize knowledge and facilitate the execution of marketing efforts. But is it always necessary?

• As a starting point for working with a client — yes

• As a formulation of the idea — yes

• As an outline of the first elements of the order — yes

• As the only point of reference for the agency’s further actions — no

• As a document defining brand image — no, or budget — no

• As a client-filled questionnaire — definitely no

Currently, everyone uses briefs. Is this justified? Creating a brief alone is not enough to produce effective marketing, event marketing, or branding activities. Regardless of its purpose, a brief often does not capture all the necessary information.

The brief is created by the client — a client who often does not have time for a longer phone conversation with us due to many responsibilities. So, will they find time to prepare a good brief? One that actually includes all guidelines, expectations, and suggestions? One that will be a complete source of knowledge for the agency about the client’s needs and business goals?

A brief works very well as a specification of conditions and a reference point in further cooperation between the client and the agency. However, for many reasons, this cooperation cannot be based solely on the brief. Why? There are at least a few reasons:

• If it’s a brief in the form of a questionnaire sent by the agency to the client, it is often prepared quickly and without considering actual marketing goals.

• Even if that’s not the case, at the start of cooperation, the client usually has only a general idea of what they want to achieve and may not realize that the agency’s proposed actions could bring much more.

• Client guidelines and expectations often change during the cooperation 🙂

So, is it indispensable? No. What is indispensable is a discussion between the client and the agency. The ideal solution is to create the brief during this discussion. During an inspiring conversation, we can not only set the goals to be achieved, guidelines, and expectations, but also define the brand’s differentiator. This is especially useful if the client struggles to find something that truly sets them apart from competitors — then we need to look for something emotional, something that moves people. Collective brainstorming can achieve much more in such a situation 🙂

What can we achieve through this? Specification of order conditions, identification of client needs and motivations, understanding the target group, outline of the initial elements of action, a preliminary realistic (!) budget, and defining the scope of the order. The same as with a brief — only much more effectively — because during discussion, we can creatively respond to every need! A partnership-based collaboration seems a more effective solution here than marketing verbosity.

In summary — a brief is one of the elements in creative work, but not essential. A brief should be inspiring. And joint discussion inspires far more effectively than a mandatory written document.