I got an email the other week from a client which basically said, “Remember that project we talked about for a few minutes back in February? Please go ahead and produce some “ideas” for me.”

Well – I guess the good news is that I am being offered a new job to work on. The bad news is, I now have to throw the ball back into the court of the client – a ball they more often than not – do not want.

I think some people think creative briefs are scary. They aren’t!

I think some people think creative briefs have to have all the answers. They don’t!

I think some people think creative briefs are hard to create. They are! And they should be!

The creative brief should be: brief, creative, direct, on brand, informative and inspiring! Like a very wise consultant once told me, “if my brief is boring why should I expect anything but boring creative?”

There a number of great resources out there for writing a brief and creative – creative brief. I particularly enjoyed Ted Grigg’s ‘Seven Essentials of the Direct Marketing Brief‘.

Remember that the road to great and inspiring creative from your creative team starts from a great and inspiring creative brief.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 10:15 am and is filed under Basic Design, Inspiration, direct mail. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.