Planners need to write BRIEFS not A creative brief

I was reading BBH Lab's list of 100 things planners should know, brilliantly captures by Chaz Wigley, Chairman of BBH Asia.

(https://www.bbh-labs.com/chazs-100-things-a-planner-should-know/ )

The 10th point in that list is an interesting one.

He says - "If you expect creative people to present you with multiple options then you should be ready to write multiple strategies to tackle the problem."

I completely subscribe to this point of view. In fact, I think it should be the way we tackle creative briefs. But any look at a creative brief format of most agencies, you'll notice that it strips one of the ability to write multiple ones. The process is tedious, a lot of the columns are unnecessary that makes one question why it was called BRIEF in the first place.

I feel a lot of them have too many unnecessary information points for the creative. They, in any case, rarely read it. They don't like briefs, they prefer the BRIEFING. To delve into the difference between the two is a post for another day. Point is, creatives are problem solvers. They want to know the problem that need to be solved. The most important part of the brief, therefore, the most precise, undebatable part of the brief is the problem statement, the clear identification of the problem.

Planners can't be content with just the business problem - that's a marketing brief. A creative brief needs to have a consumer problem.

Which is the second part of the brief. Find the consumer problem that communication, advertising can solve.

And this is where is starts getting tricky. The business problem can be very sharp and singular - not necessarily the consumer problem we wish to address. Each consumer problem that one identifies, the strategy, or the solution for that again isn't singular. Network effect at work :)

I digress.

To write multiple strategies, we need to find multiple consumer problems. Or, find multiple strategies to A consumer problem. Either way, it's no more a singular brief being presented to the creative team, but a series of briefs.

Agencies, I feel, do not have the time for this exercise. The faster a brief is written and shared with the creative, the faster the clock can start ticking at the creative's end.

If we invest more time to write pithier, more inspiring briefs, I feel the work may get better and the time from brief to creative presentation could also reduce.

Muscle memory isn't only for sports - if planners trained themselves to write more briefs everyday, there are couple of things that get better. For starters, one starts seeing many paths as opposed to one. Second, the writing gets better - which I believe, is very important and helpful. Writing better should be something agencies need to invest in - after all, we are in the communication business. Whether one is an account manager, a planner, an art director or a copywriter - the ability to gather one's thoughts and put them down succinctly, logically and pithily should be encouraged.

I love to go to creative teams with different routes. Sometimes they are different strategies to a consumer problem, sometimes they are different strategies for different consumer problems. Either way, I feel that my role is to give creative some sort of a direction. A direction they could refuse to take too.

When creatives present multiple routes to a strategy one writes - I think it's an unwritten rule to do the same in one's next brief. But I'll go a little further.

Whether creative presents multiple routes or a single one, whether a planner expects many or one route - it should never stop a planner to explore multiple strategies and bounce them off with creative.