If you’ve ever commissioned a writer, designer, web developer or marketing agency then you’ll have heard the word brief being batted about. They aren’t referring to your choice of underwear (we believe it’s not the best way to start a client relationship). What they are talking about is a creative brief – this is where you tell the creative person who will be working with you exactly what you want and need.

A good creative will be able to guide you through this process and they should be asking lots of intelligent questions so you get the results you want. We’ve got standard briefing documents that we use, and we also try to ask a few of those clever questions. You’ll often hear us saying ‘we want to get inside your head’. We have no intention of psychoanalysing you – we just want to understand what you want, what you company needs and how best we can help you get there.

So how can you make sure your brief is a good one?

• The first thing you need to understand is that the better your brief, the better the results will be. The work produced will be better, you’ll save time and money and it will give you a clearer idea of what you need to spend to achieve the results you want.

• It helps to have a written brief that both parties then discuss – a good writer should be able to identify gaps in information and then ask the right questions. If more than one agency is working on the project it is worth calling them all in together for a group briefing so everyone gets the same information.

• A brief doesn’t have to be 27 pages long (the clue is in the word brief). What you should be aiming for is clarity; clear objectives are the most important part of a brief. Rather than saying ‘we want the whole world to know about our business’ say ‘we want to get 5000 new customers in North Manchester’ or ‘we want to increase turnover by £x’. If you can, provide a focussed view of where your company is and where it wants to be – this helps to give the project context.

It’s rare to find a one size fits all briefing document (we have to change ours depending on the project and client) but it might contain information such as – who is responsible for the project (and their contact details), where your company is now and where you want it to be, what you want to do to get there, and practical aspects such as deadlines and budgets.

Need to know more on briefing creatives?

If you’d like to brief us on a project, contact us for one of our natty briefing documents.