A brief post on briefs: 5 takeaways from our latest IMCFORUM in Miami

The meeting provided a great platform for the LATAM marketers present (Marketing VPs or Directors) to discuss their common challenges, successes and learning.

The morning’s discussions were centred around Brown-Forman, Hershey and SAP sharing their company’s approaches when it comes to delivering more relevant content to their audiences. See attendees vox pops here:

The afternoon session looked more closely at agency briefing. To provide stimulus to the group, star guest Isaac Mizrahi (COO of Cannes Lions award-winning, multicultural agency Alma) told a few home truths about briefing, common mistakes made by clients and useful tips to marketers looking to get better at this exercise. Here are five key takeaways from the session:

Truth #1: Briefs often reveal a lack of internal alignment on the client’s side

Before sending the brief to your agency, get the C-level to review it. It may not be the easy route but getting approval from your C-level also demonstrates they care about your work and will enable you to progress with more confidence.

Additionally, the brief will later serve as a filter to judge the quality of the creative work, so getting everyone on board from the start is crucial.

Truth #2: Briefs should create a lasting impression in your agency’s mind

Clients must make a distinction between a creative brief and a business brief. The main goal of a brief should be to inspire your agency and data-loaded documents are likely to do just the opposite. Nowadays, attention spans are shortening and people working at your agency are no different. “Make sure the brief stays in their mind and do not hesitate to remind them of what you are trying to do”. One way of doing it is by communicating your challenge/goal in terms of desired behavioural change. Our guest speaker also suggested a useful exercise that consists in summarising the essence of the brief in a tweet.

Also, clients are risk-averse and tend not to show vulnerability but, according to our speaker, clients who do admit they don’t know and trust their agency to help resolve challenges as a team is a source of motivation from an agency’s perspective.

Truth #3: The briefing document is not the end result

Our guest speaker highlighted the importance of the briefing process vs. the briefing document. The key here is to make sure the same understanding is shared on both sides of the table, at every step of the way.

Some obvious best practices involve face-to-face briefing sessions, leaving space for debate and having the right team members attend those meetings, i.e. at least one creative person and one account person from the agency. One client in the room also shared that the ‘core briefing team’ in their company involves the following team of three: a brand manager, a planner and a lead creative person.

Truth #4: If briefing is king, feedback is queen

Put yourself in the shoes of your creative people; they operate in a “frustration” business where most of their work (“their babies”) is bound to be demolished and criticised by the client. Learning how to give feedback to your agency is an aspect often overlooked by clients. Hint: “I don’t know what I am looking for, but I will know when I see it” is not the sort of comment that helps!

Truth #5: … Briefs are not always needed

Isaac shared that what truly motivates an agency is the ability to push back and create. Too often, clients tend to block creativity and be restrictive in their briefs.

An innovative idea (successfully experimented by Alma) is to schedule quarterly meetings with your agency where you let them present any idea they might have. The outcome may be off brief but on strategy, therefore could be beneficial for progressive clients.

Note: Integrated briefing is a topic we tackled with our IMCFORUMs in London and Singapore. See our previous post on the topic here. For more information, contact Any at a.ung@wfanet.org.

Interested to know more about Alma? Visit their website or contact Isaac at Isaac.Mizrahi@almaad.com.