23d (edited) • Water Cooler
THE CREATIVE BRIEF: THE TRUTH
The sh*t that you see below is from a search for ad agency "creative briefs"... basically, the one page message from the agency's Creative Director to the creative team on what we are about to work on for a new client campaign.
Why 💩? OK, it's not 💩, it's just not that helpful — tries too hard to make the writer sound knowledgable. Takes too long. In practice, "booed off stage" by a real team of creatives. 😝
Yes, let the research guys do the research. Learn everything you can about the brand, it's audience and what seems to make it tick.... but there's a reason why you got the assignment — something's NOT working — and you need to fix it... FAST!
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HERE'S HOW:
CONVINCE-THAT-BECAUSE
Three sentences that boil everything down to a single, albeit (sometimes) run-on sentence.
That's your brief's POWERLINE. You find that, by doing this:
CONVINCE (someone)
THAT (something)
BECAUSE (something special).
Sounds easy enough, yes?
Start by just writing down the first thing that comes to mind. Don't worry, it's usually 💩, too. That's OK. You have to start somewhere. Then continue to refine your thinking until it's a sentence worth repeating.
Let's take a classic: GOT MILK (1993)
Milk had always been sold as being "good for you". By the early 90's, for the first time, milk sales started to fall with new "soy milks", "lactose intolerance" and "soft drinks" for breakfast. Bring in Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to the rescue.
Concise and Clever...
CONVINCE grocery shoppers
THAT they have to put milk in their cart
BECAUSE without milk, you can't eat certain foods.
Really, the absence of milk is the POWERLINE.
Think about it. The California Milk Processor Board (the actual client - renamed Real California Milk today) just wants to see the sales trend return to a positive rend.
This POWERLINE isn't for an age demographic and psychological profile — it's anyone who is in the grocery story (that's everyone) with a basket or a cart ready to BUY some 💩!
A sale of a milk product, ANY milk product, is good for the Milk Board. Not just 2%, but cheese, ice cream, butter and yogurt. I dare you to drink orange juice with Oreo cookies. If you put peanut butter or jelly in your basket, what will you drink with it, a Coke Milk? Milk products are synonymous with MANY food pairings. If any of those foods are in your shopping cart, you HAVE to have milk in there, too.
It worked.
- The curious thing was, once it went "viral" (pre-Internet), the milk mustache campaign went to print through another ad agency, Bozell & Jacobs, along with famed fashion photographer Annie Liebowitz that added to the GOT MILK mystique, except the point of most of these print ads was "milk is good for you". Ironically, Bozell shuttered its doors 104 years after opening them in Nebraska (of all places) in 2025. 🙃
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THE CREATIVE BRIEF: THE TRUTH
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