The PLUG has been going since the summer of 2008. Back then we were the northern office of TCS and the credit crunch was just a nasty rumour. We were in quite a successful period with pitch wins and awards. But we didn’t feel like the rest of the business really knew what we were all about and what kind of work we were producing. When you’re outside London it’s easy to feel overlooked. At around this time the first batch of what has continued to be a succession of redundancies were in the air. We felt like we could do with boosting our profile within the business and so PLUG was born.

At first it was supposed to be something that everyone could contribute to, but when nobody did it quickly became the mouthpiece for the Wilmslow creative department. It showcased our work, things we liked, things we didn’t like and generally gave us the chance to take the piss.

Good faces for radio

Dan, Rob, Paul, Helen and myself started it and have kept it going for the last two years. Now, unfortunately, Paul is leaving the team. And it doesn’t feel right to keep the PLUG going in its current format. It feels like it’s run its course. The PLUG was always a northern thing. I think it’s about time we did something that all creatives north and south can contribute to and get involved in.

It obviously won’t be as funny as southerners don’t have a sense of humour, but I’m sure we’ll make the best of it. And now, as tears subside, I find it all vaguely amusing. To think we did all that and may I say, not in a professional way, oh no, oh no not us, we did it our way.

Just say no kids

Here’s what our new office really looks like.

Good, innit?

Can you guess which one they went with?

1

2

3

The more clearly your key issues are described, and the better your objectives are defined, the more likely it is that the creative thinkers will be able to apply their specialist skills to produce great solutions. On average, 75% of creative ideas go through three stages of approval, and 22% go through four. You need more ‘right first time’ creative work in recession, and you increase your chances of getting it by giving your creatives a tight brief. Informal or sloppy briefings, or changing the requirement midway through the process, cost you time and money. Set the objectives before the creatives start work, and stick to them.

Consider this example
Imagine for a moment you are not briefing a creative team. Imagine you are standing on the bank of a river and you want to build a bridge. You are surrounded by specialists like architects and builders. How are you going to brief them to get your perfect bridge? You would begin by explaining where you want the bridge to start from. That’s ‘Point A’. It’s not up for debate. They need to know that. Then you would say where it should go to. That’s ‘Point B’. If you were the architect, you’d need to be pretty clear on that before you started work. But would you tell them how to build the bridge itself? Probably not. That’s a job for specialists. You would tell them what the bridge is for – how many vehicles will need to cross it, what size boats need to go underneath it, etc. But actually building it is their job. You’ll sit back and wait for the drawings.

Briefing a creative team is like that. They need to know where you are now and where you want to get to. Ultimately the purpose of all advertising is to get people to do something. Which people? What do you want them to do? Answer those questions and you’ve got the basis of the brief right there. Tell them what you want. Not what you don’t want. Negotiate the brief with the creatives, don’t deliver it as a fait accompli. Their skills and knowledge can help improve it, and they will be more enthusiastic and confident if they have contributed. Great briefs are more likely to produce great work. Great briefs inspire and galvanise your creative team, poor briefs depress and confuse them.

I've always wondered what the first 3 bridges looked like

Here’s another example

The Pope’s account man, Cardinal Alidosi, needed to brief Michelangelo to paint the roof of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. How did he do it? He might have said:

A. ‘Please paint the ceiling.’
This is a bad brief. It gives Michelangelo no hint as to what the solution might be.

B. ‘Please paint the ceiling using red, green and yellow paint.’
This brief is worse. It still does not tell Michelangelo what to paint, and it also gives him a number of restrictions without justification, which will prove irksome and distract him from his main task.

C. ‘Please cover up the damp and cracks in the ceiling.’
This is much worse. It still does not tell Michelangelo what to do, and it gives irrelevant and depressing information which implies no one is interested in what he does because the ceiling will fall down before long anyway.

The actual brief Michelangelo was given, more or less, was:
‘Please paint our ceiling for the greater glory of God and as an inspiration and lesson to his people. Paint frescoes which portray the creation of the world, the Fall, mankind’s degradation by sin, the divine wrath of the deluge and the preservation of Noah and his family.’ Now that Michelangelo knows what to do, and is inspired by the importance of the project, he can devote his talent to executing the brief in the best way he knows. This brief helped produce one of the great creative works of all time.

You've missed a bit. Here and here.

So how do we do it better?
Assessing and responding to the ideas your creative team puts forward is one of the most difficult things account handlers have to do. Judging whether the creative work is likely to achieve its objectives takes imagination, skill and courage. Creative judgment involves a combination of art and science, of subjectivity and objectivity.

Here are a few ‘dos’
• Relax. Have fun. When creative people are having fun, the ideas flow more easily, and the work on the table may change for the better.

• Expect great work to go beyond the letter of the brief. There should always be a creative leap – the brief can only go so far towards a solution, it is not the solution itself.

• Ask for informal meetings to see the work at an early stage. It is much easier to make changes earlier than when people have taken entrenched positions.

• Judge the work against the brief.

• Does the work solve the business issue? Does it move the right people in the right way for the client?

• Get to know your creative team. Have lunch with them. Buy them a beer. Take them on holiday. Tell them they’ve lost weight. Find out how their minds work and which ads they admire. It will help you understand what they are trying to achieve for you.

• Define the creative idea. This is not the same as the execution idea. If you have a problem with the work, is it with the idea or the execution? Coming up with new executions is easy, coming up with new creative ideas is hard. Is the creative idea clever and original, distinctive, true to the brand, credible, campaignable, durable, etc.?

• What you say is more important than how you say it. You’ll never hear anyone say “I would have applied for that job if only they hadn’t set the body copy in ten point Garamond.”

• Question the idea. Ask what inspired it, how it would work in other media, why it will work, how it could be improved, what would change if we had more time. Questions such as these stimulate and involve the creatives to help tease out explanations. Don’t ask closed questions. They will kill the idea before you’ve begun exploring it.

• Understand yourself. Your first reaction to the work will almost certainly be subjective. You will think, ‘I like this’ or ‘I don’t like this’. That’s not a bad thing, but ask yourself what influences are at work on your opinion. Are you thinking of what colleagues might say back at your office? Or are you putting yourself in the candidates shoes and judging the work like its real human target?

• Try and manage clients expectations. We’re not going to be able do a photoshoot in the Bahamas on a budget of £300.

• It’s OK to feel a little nervous sometimes. In fact it can be a very good sign. Effective advertising should be innovative and distinctive. ‘Seen it before’ work is easier to buy but will be less effective.

• Be honest. Don’t pussyfoot around the issue or say what you think people want to hear. If you’re not happy with the work tell the creatives why, ask directly if it’s the best they can do. But don’t be rude.

• Allow time for reflection. Ask yourself constructive ‘how’ questions: how can we take the idea on? How can we adapt it? How can we make it better?

And a few ‘don’ts’
• Don’t email a brief to a creative and think that’s the job done. It is essential that you have a conversation with whoever is producing the work before they start. If you’re not going to be around when the work is being produced make sure you’ve had a conversation beforehand. There is nothing worse for a creative than to have questions that are vital to the work with nobody to answer them.

• Don’t guess at how long the job will take. Have a conversation with whoever is going to do the work before you book the time in. They will have more of an idea of what can be achieved in what time. This avoids too much or too little time being booked into the schedule.

• Don’t ask for “award winning ideas” espcially if you’re working on a 10×2 in the Southport Visitor.

• The creative team will usually not be as “up-to-speed” on a client as the account management group. It is easy to assume the creative has in-depth knowledge that he or she does not have. So it’s important that the creative team is given background information on the client and the job they’re working on.

• Account handlers can criticise concepts, but they cannot create them. A lot of adverts look like the minutes of a committee meeting, and that is what they are. Leave the creative decisions to creatives. If you don’t think they’ve made the right decisions tell them why.

• Creatives live on feedback. Don’t forget to tell them what the client said. When the job is going live and if it was successful. It’s soul destroying to spend time on effort on a piece of work only to never hear what happened to it. Many is the time that I’ve produced work and sent it to an Account Handler and not an acknowledgment they’ve received it, never mind what the client thought.

So what are we looking for in a brief?

Start at the start
• Who is the client?
• Job number?
• What is the creative budget?

Requirements and deadlines
• How is this message going to be communicated? (Media, Print, Online)
• When is the deadline?
• How is the work going to be presented?
• Who is going to present it?

Outline of the role
• What is the role?
• What are the benefits of doing this job?
• Who are we targeting?
• Where are they now?
• Why are they recruiting?

The proposition
• What is the single most important thing we have to communicate?
• What do we want the candidate to think/feel?
• What evidence do we have to back this up?

Objectives
• What do we want the candidate to do?
• What tone of voice do you want to use?
• What are the mandatory inclusions?
• What other information do you have that may be useful?

Finally…
Remember we’re on the same side. We both want the same thing. A happy client and to make money. We’re colleagues and when we work together it makes everything a lot easier and a lot more fun.

This has been cobbled together from varies sources.
Chris Herd: The Client Brief (2004), Damien O’Malley: How To Plan Advertising (1987), Patrick Collister: Judging Creative Ideas (2007),
David Ogilvy: Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963).
Talent borrows, genius steals: Nicholas Young (2010)

Rolf had the cheek to take the mick out of my beard!