✍️ 6 practical tips to help you write better briefs so you don’t waste time and money
Table of Contents
- ✍️ 6 practical tips to help you write better briefs so you don’t waste time and money
Read time: 4 minutes
Gareth Turner has had an illustrious marketing career to date. With stints at Weetabix, Arla Foods, Heineken and more, he most recently founded Big Black Door – a strategic marketing consultancy which believes that when it comes to growing brands, simpler is better.
In this session, Gareth shared his six step guide to writing a killer brief and explained why good briefing documents are essential. All of the content Gareth shared in this webinar is available to download on the Big Black Door website here – so you almost don’t need to read this summary…*
Watch the full webinar back above, or read on for the key takeaways.
*you definitely should 🙂
📖 Turner’s Six Step Guide To Writing A Killer Brief
When surveyed, 80% of marketers reported that they consider themselves great at writing briefs, but according to the 2021 BetterBriefs.com global report, only 10% of creative agencies believe that to be true.
The BetterBriefs.com project also found that each year, one third of marketing budgets are wasted on poor briefs and misdirected work. So, we know that briefing documents are an important thing to get right that currently lots of marketers are not.
✅ A killer briefs is more than just a brief. It’s a strategy on a page.
Briefs are the most important document we have as marketers. They summarise what we want from each other, the problem/s we need to solve and the measures of success.
Gareth has put in 25 years of work to learn his marketing onions. And as he says himself, he’s learned his lessons the hard way when it comes to writing briefs. Luckily for you, it won’t take 25 years to read his top tips.
👖 The brief is a summary of six steps
For Gareth, writing a brief is just a process. Or a recipe. And as with all good recipes, there is always room for some creative flair, so it’s important to add in a sprinkling of your own personality along the way.
You can’t create a great brief on a short commute or in a rush between meetings. So buckle up and embrace the six step process:
- Objectives – what are the business, project and consumer objectives?
- Target audience and insight – define the target audience for this project. What are the changes that need to happen for the project to succeed? What’s the insight?
- Moments and messages – what message do you need to share, and in what moment, to overcome the consumer barrier?
- Write the brief – take the results from the previous stages and add them to your summary document.
- Approvals – align all the stakeholders and getting feedback.
- Share the brief – how can you best share this with your agency partners?
Objectives – what are you setting out to achieve?
The brief should connect your overall brand and business strategies to the specifics of the project you’re working on. What is the red thread that connects your project to what the business is trying to achieve? A good brief must be precise about the challenge faced.
An made-up example of a business and consumer objective for Old Spice:
Target audience and insight
Your customers should always be at the forefront of your mind as marketers. It’s your job to be their voice and champion their needs. You must be mindful to not make broad, sweeping generalisations about your target customer, and instead have a deep understanding of who they are and what they want. These insights should become central to your brief.
Gareth explains how there are three different target audiences that you could consider:
- Total market – all current or potential category users
- Media target – as large as possible audience whilst still being affordable
- Creative target – those “creative muse” consumers to whom the key brand characteristics have the highest overall appeal
Use the ACE test to work out whether an insight is useful:
Applies broadly to the target audience
Connects the benefit to the target audience
Excites the team
Moments and messaging
So you’ve considered what the brand needs to achieve and who you’re talking to – the next step is to work out when is the optimum moment to talk to them.
In order to understand what the key drivers are in your category, you need to understand what people are thinking about when they consider the category. This will allow you to create the right messaging at the right moment.
Write the brief
When it comes to balancing agency/client relationships, collaboration is key. Gareth spoke to a variety of agency and client leaders to talk about their best relationships. He found that 40% of leaders believed that the key to great relationships was when both parties had a mutual understanding and respect for each other as humans, and not just job titles.
You’ve got to get the right people in the room to write the brief out together. Importantly, you also need to make sure that all parties are excited by the brief, that it’s been stress tested, and that every word has its place.
“It’s called a brief, not a long.”
Approve the brief
How do you work with multiple stakeholders in a way that keeps everyone happy?
🧙 The joy of RACI charts
Ask yourself:
- Who is responsible ( R ) for the doing? You can have numerous people who are responsible for certain aspects.
- You can only ever have one person who is accountable ( A ) and can make the final decision.
- Then there are the people who need to be consulted ( C ) and who’s feedback you need to take on board.
- Finally, there are the people who need to be kept informed ( I ) but you don’t need to listen to what they say,
Gareth explains how establishing these positions before the project starts, before the emotion kicks in, is game-changing to the overall outcome. RACI charts can help you to define who your decision makers are. Once you know that, ensure that people stay in their swim lanes by asking them specific questions regarding their area of expertise, and not just for generic ‘feedback’.
Share the brief
When it comes to sharing the brief, it’s all about the theatre and creating the right environment for creativity and ideas to come to life. That should take a bit of effort but it doesn’t have to be expensive. Focus on bringing to life the challenge that is sitting within the brief.
Bonus tips
- Just make a decision. Create clarity by having a great strategy based on saying no to things.
- The most effective messaging strategy you can have is to have one message per execution, not two.