What a good brief should predict

Every project at Loudwell starts with a single page. It is short on purpose. A long brief lets everyone agree without anyone deciding, and the decisions come back later, usually in the edit, usually expensively.

A brief is a prediction

We think of the brief as a forecast. If the work does what this page says, here is what will happen, to whom, and how we will know. If you cannot write that down, you do not have a brief yet. You have a wish list.

So the page has five lines, and we do not start making anything until both sides have signed it.

The five lines

1. The result. One number, with a date. Brand search up by a third in eight weeks. A number-one album. Not three numbers: one.
2. The people. Who has to change their mind, described as people rather than segments. Runners who train after work. Fans who buy on release day.
3. What they believe now. The honest version, including the part that hurts. Skin ads are edited. Route launches all look the same.
4. The sentence. What we want those people to say to someone else after they have seen the work. If nobody would repeat it, it is the wrong sentence.
5. What we will not do. The budget, the channels and the ideas that are off the table, written down so nobody has to guess.

Why week two

Week one is for listening: data, interviews, a day in your stores or on your support lines. By week two we know enough to be specific and not so much that we have fallen in love with an answer. The workshop where we write the page takes half a day.

What it changes

The page settles arguments before they start. When a route is presented in week three, the first question is not whether anyone likes it, but whether it will make the sentence happen. When the media plan arrives, it is judged against the number. And when the campaign ends, everyone already agrees on what success was.

It is the least glamorous thing we make. It is also the thing our clients most often take with them when they move jobs.