B2Bridge

A briefing (or a brief, as some abbreviate it to make it sound were it stands for), is one of these chameleon words. Changing the context is changing the meaning. But it all boils down to the same essence:

• A briefing is an act or instance of giving precise instructions or essential information (Merriam Webster).

Of course, this blog doesn’t address to lawyers, army officers or presidential informants. So let’s restrict ourselves to a briefing in the world of marketing and communications, and refer to it as the creative brief(ing) – the “briefing to the creatives”.

I admit: thinking about briefings and how they should look like sometimes makes me schizophrenic. First of all, I’m a communication architect, passionately defending the necessity of a solid building plan for my client’s messages. In B2B communications, content keeps the upper hand over concept. So, when being briefed by my client, I’m happy having a guiding template to get to the bottom of his message. But hey, I’m a copywriter too! One of the ‘creatives’, remember? So please don’t straitjacket my writing with a fixed briefing telling me what to say and in what manner! Checklists extinguish the fire of creative thinking.

Here’s how I restore the peace between my egos. For each new assignment, I analyze my client’s input by rigorously filling in all the boxes of the brief template. It makes me get my thoughts straight, and satisfies the engineer in me. And then I — the other one — throw it away. Leaving my creative self in complete freedom of writing.

During my hiking through Carpathian mountains last week I had a nice chat with a Romanian family. And although I haven’t got a clue of their language, I found out a lot about their daily lives – and particularly of how they’re feeling about it. Their gestures, expression, intonation... it colored their story, it flavored their anecdotes. Man kann nicht nicht kommunizieren. One Cannot Not Communicate.

“A briefing document? Oh well, we don’t have time for that anymore. Deadline is approaching, you know. You got all the background information you need for a first draft. You can start right away.”

Recognize this answer of the communication manager when the agency was asking for a proper briefing? Time pressure is often the main reason for hasty and unsatisfactory briefings. A false economy, as you can bet your boots that it will lead to re-working over and over again. The more time and effort that is put in at the start, the greater the time savings throughout the process. That’s better for the client and for the agency.