More Effective Creative Briefs for Mass Media Audiences

Here are some guidelines for experimenting with a new, improved creative brief to be more effective for mass media audiences:

1. Think simple. The more sophisticated the brief, the simpler it should be. The more glissandi and grace notes the piece has, the harder it is to play.

2. More spaces to fill present a greater opportunity for bad poetry. Avoid theoretical definitions; keep the language at the 8th-grade level.

3. Write in clear, declarative sentences.

4. Test out the chosen version with products or services you know well. If you can get all the key ideas in, you're good to go.

5. Every fact or observation you add to the brief must be useful and actionable. If not, leave it out.

6. Does the final brief say what you want it to mean?

7. Write a couple of bad ads directly from your brief. What would the headline say? What would be the key visual? Is that the beating heart of your story?

This article on how to improve creative briefs was quite informative and quite the fun read. Howard Margulies said, "When you write a creative brief, you're not filling out a form. You're crafting the story of your product and its reason to exist and thrive in the world. This is the first, and arguably the most important creative act of the entire process. And yet it's often approached with all the delight of passing a kidney stone." But actually the more tight and formatted your creative brief is the more creative and free your creatives can be because you give them more options and ideas to go off of. Filling out a creative brief should not be a dreaded thing. If you just get everything out of your mind and onto the paper...to you it may just be a brain dump but to others it may be their biggest inspiration. I am not saying creative briefs should be outrageously spantaneos, we still must keep clear objectives and and meet the goals we are setting to make to inspire and give the most correct brief to our audiences. Creative briefs are important to get a set standard for the approach a company or campaign will take. To be effective in reaching mass audiences, a creative brief need not be lengthy and drawn out but catchy and have that "boom effect" to capture your intended audience and pull them into the product, service that you are selling/provide them.