Larry Asher

I’d like to recommend keeping it simple. Everybody has a calendar right? Well block off time on your calendar for attending a kids school event or sports event. Block out time to go for a walk. Book date night with your significant other. Put it on the calendar and stick to it. If you just set these simple boundaries and don’t let a client come and snatch them away you will automatically have a more balanced life between work and the important stuff.

Yes, getting feedback and approval on the brief is essential. Here's a rule of thumb that will help you determine who needs to sign off on the brief (or at least the one key message): Anyone who can kill the work needs to approve the brief.

Or don't. Sometimes the creative team will come up for ideas for specific deliverables when they dig in to solve the brief. It's always better to leave these options wide open.

Here's the most valuable advice I can offer. Write a "one key message" using this format: (Audience) should (think/feel/do) about (our product or service) because (SINGLE most compelling reason.) If you can write this sentence you're giving the creative team a brief of the brief they can use as a touchstone while exploring different possible concepts. The one key message is also something you can send to leadership (who don't have time to read your entire brief) to let them know what direction the work is taking. Get them to agree to that one key message, before anyone does any work to avoid wasted time and disappointment.

The best advice I can give you for defining the audience is to help us get inside the head of the person this communications effort is aimed at. Are we talking about stressed working moms trying to juggle job and family? Or is this aimed at the customers of a large cell phone carrier who are basically happy with the service they're getting? The point is, we want to know how they're feeling. Sharing demographic information is also fine, but often not very helpful. When you say, for instance, we want to reach men 18-34, do you mean guys in college who spend their free time playing World of Warcraft or recently married guys taking on the role of new dad. Same demo, but two very different mindsets.

At this stage in a creative brief, we don't need more than a broad overview of what it is we're being asked to do. Is this an introductory multi-media campaign for a new product or service offering? Is this a video to introduce our new CEO to the investor community? Is this a social media campaign to remind consumers of the high priority we give customer service? Just paint the big picture, and avoid being prescriptive. For example, don't say, "we need three :60 radio spots and exterior transit ads." Tell us what we need to accomplish, not how to accomplish it.