Agencies should be taking control of client briefs, and getting better ones according to speakers at The Future Factory Breakfast Briefing
Industry expert and speaker, Tish Mousell, encouraged everyone to take control of their briefs at The Future Factory’s breakfast event last week. The event focused on how agencies must be completely in the know regarding the brief set for them by clients and in doing so, will be in control of their subsequent success.
With 25 years of experience in training and in her previous roles including stints at DDB, Publicis and McCann-Ericsson, Tish shared her wealth of knowledge on how taking control of the brand brief and truly knowing it inside out, is the key to industry success.
Tish's key tips when approaching brand briefs were:
Know your stuff – best to do some homework first, understanding the competition, the kind of client they are, how do they judge work? Do they buy good work?
Try and get some objectivity from your client – sometimes sitting down and doing a S.W.O.T. analysis allows the clients to think more clearly and less subjectively about their business issues.
Make sure the right clients are involved – you really need the stakeholder in the briefing, at the very least their signature on your brief. Without it, there is room for manoeuvre and that does not mean a positive one.
Immerse yourself in the product – some of the greatest insights have come from people just using, experiencing and researching the product.
Remember it’s a brief, not a long, hard slog– sometimes you have so much great information about this brief, but to help inspire the creatives and to get to really great work, you need to simplify and sacrifice some of this information to keep the brief on track and on focus.
Tish will be delivering a training workshop May 23rd on ‘Presenting with Confidence’. The Future Factory are a new business generation agency based in London.