Dan Beresh: [00:00:00] The brief should be written by the agency and not by you. That is my hot take today. Welcome back to the Fide Podcast. I'm Dan Beresh, founder of Fide. I've got Joe Simone here, and today we wanna talk to you about creative briefs. It's such an important part of the project, and I think not enough people talk about it.

It's not a sexy part of the project. It's not a deliverable, um, per se in terms of something you're gonna publish to your audience. But, uh, you know, without a great brief, every creative I've ever talked to has said, "Without a great brief, you're never gonna have a great project." So welcome back to the Fide Podcast.

We're Fide. We are the agency that takes complex B2B organizations and helps them to develop simple and effective marketing that, uh, makes the sales happen. So Joe, thanks for joining me again, and I'm- I'm stoked to talk to you today about these, uh, about these briefs. I think it's gonna be a really interesting chat.

Joe Simone: Yeah, I think I agree with you completely. The- the brief is one of the most important parts of it, and something you said there, it is, it is rarely the sexy part. It is rarely the fun part of the [00:01:00] relationship, right? Like, a marketer comes to an agency to say, "Hey, I've got these really good ideas, and I, and I just wanna make them," and they wanna dive right in.

But I think if you skip the discipline of writing the brief, you're just gonna get some kind of fancy decoration that doesn't really resonate or have the impact that you actually want it to have.  

Dan Beresh: It's almost like you're working throughout your day, and you kinda, you know, you get tired, and you start to, you know, maybe skip steps.

You're, you got some writing to do, and instead of writing an outline, you go directly into creating the first draft. Mm-hmm. What happens when you do that? You just inevitably write kind of in circles and circles, and it takes six- six times as long to get to a good result. Or you never get to a good result.

Joe Simone: And I, I think when you do it that way, the further along in the process you get, and you keep kind of relying on that shortcutted output, y- you're just gonna run into, like, so many tangles and so many snags, and you're just gonna, like, be ripping your hair out. It might not [00:02:00] be that same day. It could be a week later.

It could be two weeks later. But it will come for you, and you will regret not spending the time to kind of iron everything out, get your details in order, set up your guardrails, and really establish what it is that you're trying to do. If you just kind of go off running, you can be a little bit aimless that way.

Dan Beresh: 100% you can. We have a project right now where we have a client asking us for the first deliverable, "When can you get this to me?" We haven't even signed off on any kind of brief. And, um, I think this is the first thing I think we should talk about, and- and- and it's who, who is responsible for the brief? We are often- Mm-hmm a creative brief by our clients.

And by the way, I think that's great. I love that.  

Joe Simone: I do, too.  

Dan Beresh: I think they should. Oh, you... I mean, it's really helpful.  

Joe Simone: Mm-hmm.  

Dan Beresh: But I think what you're hiring us for, what you hire an agency for, is the creative strategic thinking, the kind of thinking that has to be done to create the brief [00:03:00] itself. So in a way, if you are creating the brief in a silo and then saying, "Hey agency, deliver on this," you're actually missing out on, like, a huge amount of value that you're gonna be charged for anyway.

Joe Simone: Yeah. That's the, that's the, the huge part. You're gonna be charged for it anyway, so use us. Use our creative ability to think strategically for you. Yes, come to the table with ideas, and yes, have a direction that you wanna move towards, but then work with us to see just exactly what's possible. Because we can come in and say, "Well, hold on.

Yeah, that's a great idea, but we could elevate it that much further if we go this way instead of that way."  

Dan Beresh: It's really a matter of thinking about the position of the agency you hire. And I think as we get into a world where you can do more and more of the things, the production things that an agency typically would've done, like version, you know, your web banners or, uh, you know, w- whatever the heck, I, I think that that increasingly is gonna be the domain of the freelancer or frankly hire [00:04:00] an internal de- designer to do that.

Mm-hmm. The agency is there to help you be that external thinking partner, and the brief is the very, very beginning of that. So I think make your brief, send it to the agency, and get them to, to, to redo it in their own, uh, format. And by the way, the other thing you might not be thinking about here is the brief for us is also about the creative team.

Joe Simone: Mm-hmm.  

Dan Beresh: So there's a whole... Right? You're gonna go through a whole bunch of layers. You're gonna go through the sales layer, uh, the kind of, you know, project management, let's start this up layer, the creative direction layer, and then on the very bottom layer, you've got those art directors, those designers, those video editors, those copywriters.

Those are the folks who also need to deeply understand what this project is about, and I think that- What we do at least is we have a bunch of stuff in there that actually, I don't know d- if you agree, Joe, I'd say isn't for the client at all.  

Joe Simone: No.  

Dan Beresh: It's for the-  

Joe Simone: Um ...  

Dan Beresh: the, the creative team.  

Joe Simone: Yeah. That's why I, I really [00:05:00] value when, uh, you know, a client does come with, we'll call it the client brief, um, because that kind of gives me something to distill, something to interpret.

But that's all it really is, right? Like, I, I'm just interpreting what you've put down on the page, and then I have to translate that to my copywriter, to my art director, to whoever I'm working with on this project, right? And I need to make sure that they fundamentally understand what the client needs.

And that doesn't come from the client brief. That comes from the creative brief that we create. However, we don't just, you know, hide away in a cave with your brief and come back with a new one and say, "No, this is what we're doing." This is a relationship. This is a partnership. We work on this with you, and it's our alignment tool to make sure that what we're doing makes 100% sense to absolutely everybody on the team.

Dan Beresh: That's right. It's ... I love that. It's everybody on the team. It's not even ... And some of those people you may never interact with. Right. They may come [00:06:00] into the project as a quality control person. Uh, you know, there are lots of roles that go on behind the scenes, um, that are very important to, to, to, you know, have aligned.

So all right.  

Joe Simone: They're, they're fundamental. Like, you need them.  

Dan Beresh: Well, ab- absolutely they are. Yeah. And, and I think a lot of this is, uh, kind of taken for granted in some ways, you know? Mm-hmm. Lots of work goes on behind the scenes. I think in any business really, lots of work goes on behind the scenes. But in a- Yeah

creative business, it's fundamentally the, the, the ... It's very blue sky, you know, what we do.  

Joe Simone: Mm-hmm.  

Dan Beresh: We're not a cybersecurity firm. We're not, we're not tightening your, you know, security perimeter. We are literally opening up to whatever could be possibly, uh, to be created. And I, I'd also like to think that, uh, you know, you have goals as a marketer, and use your agency to help you achieve those goals, because they're- Mm-hmm

gonna make you sound smart. They can think of things that you maybe didn't consider or come up with a different angle that you can then bring to your boss and your boss's boss and say, "Hey, by the way, [00:07:00] check out this cool thinking I did." You can take credit for that, I think. I mean- Mm-hmm I don't know, I don't know your thought there, Joe, but I, I'd say, look, if you're hiring us, take credit for it.

Joe Simone: Yeah, for sure. I mean, like I said, this is a partnership. So I, I'm not here to be just a simple yes man. I'm here to take your ideas, elevate them, figure out what we wanna prioritize. We're here to, like, pass it through our creative strategic filter, which is what an agency is, so that you end up with something that is truly effective and not, like I said before, just, you know, a piece of decoration that is

It looks nice But- Yeah ... does it ultimately serve its purpose?  

Dan Beresh: 100%. 100%. So, okay, we've harped enough on the agency creating the brief, but if the agency makes a brief, like, what is, what is important to ensure is in that brief? Because the, one of the major things, uh, that I've seen over the years, and frankly, I read this, [00:08:00] um, that, that this marketing agency's book from the, uh, the '60s, and they were saying clients do not like reading briefs, and that is, I think, still absolutely true.

So we, we get it. Everyone wants to move fast. What are the key parts of a brief that as a client you should absolutely make sure you're paying close attention to?  

Joe Simone: I think you need the problem that you're trying to solve first and foremost, and then underneath that, what is the actual objective of this project?

So you, you have your problem statement, and then you have your objective for, for how you plan on tackling it. I think those two are fundamental at the very least.  

Dan Beresh: And there's different levels of problem, and I would say your problem is not, "I don't have a video and I want a video."  

Joe Simone: Right.  

Dan Beresh: That's your, that's your tactic, right?

Mm-hmm. And, and the question becomes how high up in the business do you want this problem to, to be, right? Mm. Is it, "We don't have enough leads, um, to grow the business to the size we wanna grow it, and [00:09:00] therefore we need to go out and get more leads"? Or is it, "We aren't visible enough on this specific platform, and therefore we need to, you know, increase our presence and visibility, et cetera"?

Joe, what, what do you think? How do people decide how high up in the business that problem should be? What, what kind of level of problem should we be listing when we're doing a brief like this?  

Joe Simone: I think it's important just to kind of treat it as an exercise to see how high you can go, and then kind of pull it back because, you know, ultimately it's a

Marketing is about driving revenue for the company, right? So I think it's about pushing as far until you get to that point to then tie it back to your needs. So you said, you know, "We don't have enough leads. Uh, we need more, so let's make a video." Well, I would even go one step further of we don't have enough leads.

Well, why don't you have enough leads? Let's [00:10:00] explore that layer. Like, is it because there's not enough awareness, or is it because there's not enough understanding about the value that we provide? 'Cause there's two ways to tackle that problem. Uh, it just ... Y- you kinda gotta go up to that layer. Uh, but I think the true north is, you know, ultimately we're trying to drive revenue.

Dan Beresh: I think what's really interesting there is there's sometimes that logical leap. So okay, we don't feel like we're gonna be able to hit revenue. We ... And we don't feel like we have enough leads to do that. And then there's a huge leap of, well, therefore we need a video.  

Joe Simone: Yeah. What?  

Dan Beresh: T- yeah, yeah, right. How ... Okay.

One video? Like, tease that out, right? Take that stepwise down the chain all the way until you reach tactics, and you may not reach tactics, right? Y- the creative brief, maybe it's about actually figuring out what tactics are gonna be best for you in [00:11:00] this scenario, and that's kind of that beginning, that discovery project, which I think is so valuable and so often ignored because coming back to what we were saying before, it's so easy to just go write that first draft of that- Mm-hmm

thing you need to write instead of sitting yourself down and writing an outline.  

Joe Simone: Yeah. It's what I, I mentioned at the beginning. It's about putting in and being disciplined, like put in the work because, uh, even at previous jobs when I was in video production and, you know, it was all day, every day people coming to me saying like, "I have this great idea for a video."

But wh- what is the purpose of this video? And a lot of the times it's as simple as, "Well, I had this idea for a video." And it's like, well-  

Dan Beresh: Yeah ...  

Joe Simone: that's not good enough, unfortunately. I can't make every video that everyone has great ideas for because there's a lot of great ideas out there, but the idea has to serve a purpose.

Dan Beresh: The brief is a forcing function, isn't it? It's a forcing function that forces you to think through why are we actually doing this? Is this [00:12:00] strategic? We'd love to throw the word strategic around. It's like you wanna make something sound important, just put strategic in front of it. But genuine strategy is sitting back and saying, how does this hang together with the rest of the stuff we're doing?

And, you know, one thing I've also heard, especially from our larger clients or enterprise folks, there's sometimes a, "Hey, marketer, I have this idea, and I'm, you know, uh, one of the owners of the business, and so- Yeah ... I have a lot of pull, a lot of power," and you don't feel as a marketer like you can say no.

And the brief is a way to maybe not say no, maybe s- to just convert this idea into a part of your actual marketing strategy. And maybe this is a project that you even take back and you can work with an agency on and say, "Hey, how do we make this work within the goals that you," same leader, "have set out for the year?"

And I like to believe that actually the brief could lead to some canceled projects, and I think that'd actually be a pretty good [00:13:00] thing.  

Joe Simone: Yeah. I mean, it avoids the spend, but like you said, it, it can... If this leader is, is really pushing for this idea, it's also a discovery phase of the project. Like m- well- Totally

maybe, maybe there is something here, and it's worth putting in the effort to kind of uncover what that is. And if you do uncover it, you can go back to that leader and say, "Hey, yeah, great idea. Look, look what this will do." And if it seems to fall flat, you've at least put in the work and you can say, "Well, we actually took a look at this and while it's a great idea, it might be better served elsewhere," or maybe we have to rejig the idea so that we hit these benchmarks that you've actually, you know, set out beforehand.

Dan Beresh: I love what you're saying about the idea that we should really go to the leader and, and start with curiosity, and I think often, especially when I was younger, I was, you know, pretty stubborn and I'd say, "This is stupid," you know? This is like- Yeah ... "Let's not. Why are we, what are we doing?" You know? But then as we mature, we realize, well, you know what?

Leaders are often leaders because they performed well and, and because they have a, a, a [00:14:00] broader vision. And I, we all know leaders for whom that's not the case. But let's- Mm-hmm ... give them the benefit of the doubt. And this- Yes ... in a way gives them the opportunity to do that and to say, "Hey, you know what? Uh, tell me a little bit more about what this is."

And, and I hope for you listening to this podcast right now, I hope that you are able to use the brief as a way to actually turn a project that's just a shiny object into something that's truly and actually valuable. And my God, I hope that that makes your life way less frustrating, because I cannot tell you the number of clients that I've talked to whose lives are just bogged down by asks from people who they feel they have to say yes to.

And ultimately- Mm-hmm ... they come out of the year and say, "What the heck did we do? Nothing hung together, and we didn't, we didn't achieve our, our goals."  

Joe Simone: Yeah. I mean, it's- I would say it's quite rare that these ideas from leaders are really truly, you know, aimless, but maybe we just don't know them, and it, it takes that kind of discovery phase to sift through and, and link it up to the [00:15:00] priorities that we're trying to achieve.

'Cause, you know, they're usually there. They're just, it's, it's usually like a diamond in the rough situation. You, you just gotta, you just gotta keep digging, and you just gotta keep uncovering and, and making those connections.  

Dan Beresh: Absolutely. And, and I'd say an external partner can also help with that. You may not- Yeah

feel like you are capable of saying, "Listen, I don't think this video is gonna go anywhere." Like, that just may not be possible for you given your, uh, your politics, your organization. That makes sense. So that's- I'll say it ... where you can bring in an external partner. Yeah, you will.  

Joe Simone: I'll say it.  

Dan Beresh: We both will.

We'll come in and, um, you know, we'll, we're, we're, we're nice, I promise. But, uh, but we'll, we'll make, we'll make the project into something that's truly valuable. Mm-hmm. Joe, all right, so let's get back to parts of a brief. So we've talked about the problem. We've talked about the objective. What else needs to be in there?

Joe Simone: It's really trying to be as detailed as you possibly can. Um, I really don't think there is such thing as going overboard in terms of the details when it comes to the creative brief because at the end of the day, this is to [00:16:00] align absolutely everybody on this project to what we are working towards. So as much as you can put in there, project phases if they're in there, and within those phases, what, what do we need to deliver?

Anything that kind of guides direction to how this project should be tackled and the objective that we're trying to achieve should be in the brief.  

Dan Beresh: I agree, although I think that there is a line, and here's what I mean. You can say in the brief, "This is a series of, uh, social, static social cards, and they're gonna live here, and they're gonna do this and do that."

But ... And maybe they're, I don't know, holiday-themed or something like that But then you can d- you can make a mistake. You can cross a line into each of the cards should feature five people who are sitting around a Christmas tree with a fire in the back. You know what I mean? Yeah. You start- Yeah ... to actually create the project in the brief, and th- what you start to do [00:17:00] there is really narrow that focus to something that is going to limit the ability of the creative people.

I think it's the same thing we were talking about initially, right? You want to enable the people who you're paying a bunch of money to bring their creative and their strategic lens and their vision.  

Joe Simone: Yeah, I wouldn't say you'd wanna put a lot of creative, um, I- it's called a creative brief, but you wouldn't wanna go so granular into the details about, like, what this thing looks like, whatever it is that you're creating.

That gets determined from, you know, the guardrails that we set up in the creative brief. That's what it is. It's kind of the parameters of what we're trying to achieve. It's ... I said this before on, on other episodes of the podcast, it's the box that you put the creatives in, because a creative-  

Dan Beresh: Yes ...  

Joe Simone: loves to be put in a box.

Put me in a box and I know w- where the walls are that I can push. I know how far I can go. But without those boundaries, it gets a little bit tougher to do. It could be anything, and you kind of get lost in [00:18:00] space of the possibilities. So it's, it's the size of the box that you're putting the creatives in and, and clearly defining, you know, what it is we're trying to achieve and what does success look like.

'Cause once we have what success looks like, we can kind of work backwards from inside our box to, to come up with a bunch of different ideas that, that fit the purpose.  

Dan Beresh: And success, by the way, does not look like my boss looked at the final creative and thought it was fantastic. I, I sure I'm preaching to the choir here, and I'm sure that if you're listening to this you're saying, "Of course you need metrics," but I'm here to say that in especially big B2B, um, you know, obviously you're gonna get metrics from a paid campaign.

Obviously there's certain metrics you can get from organic. But if you're in a situation where you've got a ton of leaders who are, for example, gonna post something on LinkedIn, uh, it's gonna be difficult for you to, to gather metrics. And I'm here to say upfront, please make a commitment to gathering some [00:19:00] kind of quantitative data.

Frankly, I, I, I'll step back. Qualitative data that is more than just a marketer's opinion. Because the- Yeah ... challenge that we have is straddling the line between the opinion of the marketing department and the effectiveness of the content. Uh- And I think the best marketer can step back and say, "Hang on, I may not love this But they love it.

Joe Simone: Yeah. Data is, is so powerful. You have people trying to buy up as much data as they can. Data is what gives us the credibility that what we're doing is being effective. Without it, we are working in a vacuum of what ifs and maybes, and I think that was good, and I like how it looks, so yeah, success. That's not what success looks like.

Did this convert? Did we get a lead from this video? Did somebody reach out to our sales team after seeing our video and wants to know more and wants to have a conversation?  

Dan Beresh: And I want to say also, [00:20:00] there's ways to consider these, quote-unquote, metrics outside of the box of your standard, okay, how many, you know, the, the view count and the click-through and the I fill out this form and et cetera.

I'll give you an example. Uh, we were, last year, at, uh, a very major conference in Vegas, uh, where we had done a bunch of work branding and, and, and video production for a major client. The client comes to us on the second day. They said, "Hey, you know what? That keynote video you made that we showed, people came to our booth and talked to our salespeople referencing that video specifically."

So that, to me, in itself, while not a hard numbers metric- Mm-hmm ... if you've got a few of those stories that you can tell, I think that starts to become very, very powerful. So to me, it's, it's... I get it. Me- measurement is hard. It's not always possible to do the empirical. But think a little bit outside the box in terms of what you can do to really put something together because I think at the end of the day, when you, when you set up great objectives and [00:21:00] ways to measure those objectives within the creative brief, you set yourself up for, for the ability to, to speak so much more knowledgeably and more successfully about the project.

So it's like you get a better project, and you have more of an ability to talk about that success later to your boss or your boss's boss and, and, and all the way up the chain.  

Joe Simone: The, the, those few people coming up and, and saying, "Hey, I wanted to talk to you because I saw that video, and what was in the video really got me curious about what it is you're offering," that to me is so much more of a success than the view count of that b- video being in the, you know- tens of thousands of views.

Like if, sure, it was viewed tens of thousands of times. Did those views convert to anything? That's where it actually matters. Well,  

Dan Beresh: we gotta talk about metrics on another podcast, Joe, because, like-  

Joe Simone: Okay. ...  

Dan Beresh: there's so much there, and I couldn't agree more. View count is such a vanity metric, and, uh, I mean, we're just flooded with bots, and now we have AI bots.

Yeah. Like, the, the, the older I get, the more bots there are, and you [00:22:00] gotta be thinking that these are bots that are watching your videos, scraping your content, all of that stuff. They are obvi- they're not human. They're ne- they're never gonna convert. Uh, so it's, it's also about, um, it's about the right metrics.

But I think, I think coming back to it, you know, for me in terms of what, what really needs to fundamentally be in the brief, I mean, you have some obvious stuff, right? I would, I would put the brand guidelines in there. I would put- Mm-hmm ... you know, mandatories. I would put any kind of, you know, customer data that you have, anything that's a, you know, a bit of a truth about those folks, as well as a very clear description of, you know, who the audience is gonna be for this.

And, you know, one other thing that I love to put, uh, in briefs is what's the action that someone is going to take after this is, this is done, and, like, where does that lead? Like, let's, let's, let's, let's make this part of a journey. Mm-hmm. I think that it's easy to say, "Well, this is a brand-building piece.

We're gonna, you know, we're gonna put it out there, and, uh, it's, you know, pure brand play, so there's no, [00:23:00] there's no, like, form to fill out and, like, buy our stuff." But I still think that each piece of marketing should be part of a journey- Mm-hmm ... that is driving people toward revenue, 'cause if it's not, like, why, why does it exist?

So really having that, that place in the journey almost identified  

Joe Simone: Like you said, the, um, the, like, the brand video that doesn't really have, like, a... There's no call to action, right? It is the awareness play. So to ask somebody, what's the action that you want somebody to take? Sometimes it's not, like, the action you want somebody to take.

If, if it is a brand awareness play, it could be how do you want them to feel after they watch this video? 'Cause that feeling, video is great at that. A lot of marketing content is good at making people feel. That's w- what it's designed to do. So if you can kind of tap into what you want them to feel, you can kind of redirect that feeling into action.

And it could be as simple as, I want them to see my brand video, and I want them to feel happy. Because now when they think of your brand, they [00:24:00] feel happy, and that's a good thing.  

Dan Beresh: Exactly. They associate that 100%. Yeah, I, I like that. You know, when you watch the Clydesdales at the Super Bowl, are you immediately cracking a Budweiser?

No. But are you thinking of the Clydesdales next time you go to the liquor store and you're deciding what beer you wanna buy? Hopefully. There's, um- Mm ... think, feel, do is something I, I like that I've seen in a number of successful briefs, right? What do we want them to think? What do we want them to feel?

What do we want them to do? And, um, and, and by the way, this is where I think audience specificity is really important because something I see as a major pitfall is, well, what's our audience for this? Well, uh, it's, uh, actually- It's everyone ... my favorite, uh, gen pop. Someone's like, "General population, that's who this is for."

If you are putting general population as the audience for your creative brief, I highly suggest that you stop right there and reconsider who this is [00:25:00] for because you just, it's just so, so broad. And if you're struggling with what should people think, feel, do at the end of your, you know, your campaign or after having, you know, interacted with it, that's maybe an indication that you're not being specific about enough in another area  

Joe Simone: Yeah, if you try to speak to everybody, you speak to nobody.

So y- you have to be, you have to be particular. And there's so many times when... And this is what the creative brief really helps isolate, is who are we really trying to talk to here? It, it can't be everybody. And if, you know, we do wanna talk to everybody, well, then we just make targeted assets at different segments of our audience because, you know- Yeah.

That's right ... what works for the CEO and the C-suite does not work for, you know, the entry-level consultant, but they still need the same information, you know? You have to, you have to speak to, to both parties the way that they wanna be spoken to.  

Dan Beresh: That's right, and I think the smartest marketers know how to segment in a effective way.

We don't have infinite budget. We [00:26:00] could segment infinitely across geographies and positions and, and, and, and a variety of other factors. So, uh, to your point, Joe, it's all right, let's take the one asset that you were gonna spend a ton of money on and convert it into, I don't know, three or four, right? And each of those has a defined target audience, which is a probably group of people, um, but for whom they, you know...

It, it- to me, that's like how do, how do people see value? What do, what do people consider to be valuable? That's something that I, um, I use a lot in terms of how I'm thinking about, okay, how are we gonna kind of, uh, kinda segment this? Joe, I, I'm just, um, I'm looking at the time here, and I know we need to, uh, I know we need to wrap th- things up relatively quickly, but something that you had mentioned to me, and I really wanna get this in, uh, is, is how fixed is a creative brief?

So you say you've created it. Everyone's signed off. Everyone's looked at it And things change halfway through the project. What happens? [00:27:00]  

Joe Simone: Things change. You know, I, I will admit I have treated briefs like they were gospel, they are set in stone. This is... Once it is locked in, it is version final. Nothing can happen.

That's not realistic. You know, sometimes you get a new stakeholder- Yep ... that comes in halfway through a project, and you know what? They have a great idea, and they have a new lens that nobody's thought about, and it could be tacked onto the brief. But it's important not to just go in and take every kind of new idea that comes in.

What you wanna do is you wanna take that idea, go back to the brief, and kind of stress test it against that idea. Does it fit or does it distract? 'Cause if it fits, fantastic. If it distracts, well, maybe we have to create something different to fit that objective. But it's not set in stone. It's, it's a, it's a living document that can be changed.

But don't go change it at the drop of a hat. Be very particular with the changes you make, so long as it's serving [00:28:00] your original objective.  

Dan Beresh: That's right, and sometimes your objective changes, too.  

Joe Simone: That's true.  

Dan Beresh: And let's be honest, sometimes there's a leadership change. We saw this on a project in the fall. A major project, started it out really excited.

Everyone was absolutely gung ho. Uh, and leadership change, and as a result, strategic direction change. And as a result- Yep ... the brief that we had written, the project we were doing, uh, was no, no longer fit the, the, the direction. So what did we do? well, we, we, we just went back to the brief and said, "What's gonna make sense now?

Let's, let's redo this, and let's,  

Joe Simone: let's pivot." Yeah, but we didn't start from scratch. We- That's right. Yeah ... like, we had that baseline, and we could kind of say like, "Okay, this no longer serves the new objective, so... But this part does." So you know, it's, it's modular. Let's call it that. Like, you can, you can pick and choose what, what works.

But you've got your North Star. You just always wanna work towards that, and the creative brief should be those guardrails that serve that to, to make sure that everybody on the [00:29:00] team understands that this is what we're trying to do.  

Dan Beresh: 100%. If you have stuff that you know about the customer, if you've done research, if you have information from sales teams, that should be valuable regardless of the strategic direction from on high.

So it's, to your point about reapplying, okay, new direction and how do we do, and Joe, to your credit, I think we came out with a excellent project at the end of that, uh, at the end of that, that, that, that project that we had to pivot. I mean, it was a, it was a major change, but we, uh, we kept going with- Mm-hmm

because we knew that the fundamental idea that, that you had come up with, and credit to you, the fundamental idea still rang true regardless of the strategic direction because it spoke deeply to the client's positioning in the market.  

Joe Simone: Well, thank you.  

Dan Beresh: Just some last thoughts for us. Uh, something I wanted to add, Joe, as well is I think that it can be easy for us to think about the brief as...

And I've said, you know, the agency should make the brief, right? But this is, it's, [00:30:00] the agency creates the kind of V1 of the brief and in my view should go into a meeting, which I would call a workshop frankly, where- Yeah ... w- we work on it with the folks who are in the marketing department. It's not, "Hey, let us present to you this fixed document, and you tell us if it's right or wrong."

It's- Right ..."Here are the things that we have said, we have interpreted from your documentation, from your client brief. This is what we've written out. Have we understood this correctly?" And my God, what a better conversation to have than to look at that V1 deliverable and to say, "This is completely directionally wrong," right?

Because when you're presenting the first deliverable, like that's, that's baked, and you're just looking for, "Tell us, you know, if this is right or wrong." With the, the brief, it's an opportunity to genuinely foster collaboration, and frankly, I think that collaboration in itself- Actually fosters a lot more, more value throughout the project and builds the relationship, which is better, better for everyone [00:31:00] I  

Joe Simone: think, I think it fosters trust, right?

Like, if you do it properly, our in- if you work together, uh, in tandem, it's a relationship like we've said, it's a partnership. Once you, you're aligned, there is an inherent trust there. Everyone is, has a shared understanding, so the creatives can go away and trust that they know that the ideas that they, they are gonna come up with will work to serve the marketer's purpose, and the marketers can go away and trust that the, the creatives truly understand their objective.

Dan Beresh: 100%. 100%. Joe, thank you so much, uh, for all your insights today. This has been so cool talking to you about creative briefs. Um, I mean, it's not a sexy topic, but honestly, I'm excited because I just think about the kinds of things that they enable and, and the, the blue sky thinking within which, you know, we're saying that, that creative box that I think really, really fundamentally enables.

So if you are not using a brief, if you are not with an agency that's forcing you into a brief, please, please, please start using them because they're so incredibly useful. This has been the Fide Podcast. We [00:32:00] are Fide Creative. Check us out at fidecreative.com, and we will see you next time

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