The creative brief: How a piece of paper can save your life.

At Seattle’s School of Visual Concepts, one workshop held for design and ad professionals that’s attracting a lot of attention is about how to write the perfect design brief. This simple document, it turns out, isn’t quite so simple to create and use effectively. Devin Liddell, formerly chief strategist for the Seattle office of Fitch, shared his approach at an SVC workshop. Here were some of Devin’s key points.

A piece of paper can save your life? OK, so that’s a bit of an overstatement. But not much. Write a well-crafted creative brief for every project, and you’ll wind up with better work, a happier client, and save some time and money along the way. How? By getting everybody on the same succinct page.

If you’ve never written briefs before, or yours have been turning out a bit muddled, here’s a list of questions every good brief should answer:

What’s the project?
List all the basic data for the job: The title, job number, and a one-line description of what this project is all about.

Who are we talking to?
Here’s where you get to share what you know about the intended audience. Demographics and product usage stats are fine, but even better are insights into how your prospects think. Do they like to try new things? Are they people who love facts before making a decision? Are they sheep, lead dogs, or wild hyenas?

Where are we now?
Tell about the background and current position of the brand, product, or service. What are the key issues that will need to be overcome on the way to communications success.

Where do we want to be?
This is where you’ll state the goal of your project. Are you looking for a specific number of inquiries? Do you want change what people think about your brand? Is your aim to drive store traffic? Whatever you’re after, a good goal will be measurable and time-based. That way, you can tell if your project was a success or failure.

How will we get there?
The marketing strategy is what we’re after here. A lot of people get confused when writing strategy statements, thinking they have to write a novel. Instead, just fill in the blanks in this sentence and you’ll have a strategy the creative team can more easily translate into design and copy: “You should (the action desired) (the product or service) because (the single most compelling reason).”

How much?
This is where you can give the budget in time or dollars.

When?
List the key delivery dates and other project milestones.

Who?
You should not only list who’s on the development team, but also the people who will be approving this work. And here’s your secret weapon: Put a signature line next to each person’s name. People tend to read and give a little thought to something they have to sign, so your briefs will automatically get more attention if you make people initial them.

There’s more to tell, and you can download an excellent guide to creative briefs developed by ISBA, the voice of British advertisers, that goes into more detail, and there’s also a nifty interactive creative brief writing web tool you can use, but in the spirit of the discussion, we’ll keep this brief.