Henry Gomez and I look closely at a clever ad from Johnson & Johnson's Band-Aid brand of band aids and together we discuss what we see and voila! We write a brief. And we post the brief within the episode for your viewing enjoyment (not available in stores). Henry and I urge all ad folk to practice this bit of thought exercise everyday to keep your brief-writing skills sharp.
Another shout-out to Baiba Matisone whose Creative Brief Bank provided the impetus for today's episode of #thebriefbros. It's a Crispen Porter Bogusky brief for Best Buy. Henry Gomez and I have always admired the agency's work, but do we love this brief? Watch and find out!
Henry Gomez and I do a deep-dive into a creative brief written by someone affiliated with the One Show. It's for a competition among "Young Gun" creative teams with a prize attached, a free Gameboy. Henry and I examine this brief and share with you our thoughts. It's another in a series we love to do where we look closely at a real brief. Thanks again to our friend Baiba Matisone, who posted this brief on her Creative Brief Bank.
First, special thanks to Baiba Matisone, who appeared on The Brief Bros., for posting this creative brief on her Creative Brief Bank. Henry Gomez and I did a top to bottom examination of this brief and shared our thoughts in this episode. We agreed...mostly. But even where we disagreed, we aligned on one thing: It's a great example of a single-page, well-written and inspiring document. Watch and learn!
Henry Gomez and I debate a seemingly mundane question: should a creative brief include deliverables or is that the creatives' job to recommend? Some of the finest briefs do not even ask the question. Others ask simply for the "Big Idea" while still others require every tactic. Where do you stand?
Last week, we heard from Sarah Walker-Hall and her take on the brief she wrote for Kiwi shoe polish. This week, Henry Gomez and I discuss and dissect the brief ourselves. I weighed in with my high praise when Sarah and I spoke, and today I continue my rave but this time with a chance to hear Henry share his thoughts as well. We love this brief and you have much to learn from it.
Last week, we met Sarah Walker-Hall, brand strategy group head at TRG in Dallas. She is a veteran strategist whose skills and dexterity as a thinker can teach all brief writers how to write better briefs. Today, she and I dive deep into her award-winning brief for Kiwi shoe polish, the resulting campaign for which also won awards. Sarah will pull back the curtain and share with us how she wrote this brief, what she did to make it unique, and together, we talk about what makes this brief, all 127...
You could say I waited 20 years to meet and talk to Sarah Walker-Hall. She authored a creative brief I have read, admired, written about and taught from almost since I began my latest career as a brief-writing instructor. In the first of a two-part series, we meet this remarkable woman who began her career in branding and found her way to strategy and planning. She has worked three times for TRG, formerly The Richards Group, in Dallas. Next time, Sarah and I will share with you the brief I love ...
We've had wonderful conversation with Marc Lewis, dean of London's famed School of Communication Arts. Today, Henry Gomez and I talk to two of his recent graduates: Jess Saunders and Roh Kerr, about their experiences at SCA, how they teamed up as writer/AD partners. And then Henry and I put them through a test: we reviewed a famous TV spot from the 1970s for Samsonite luggage, the one with the gorilla, and together we did a reverse engineering exercise to figure out the creative brief. We put th...
The final episode of our Hulu summer re-broadcast: Drum roll, please! Today we reveal our finished (draft) creative brief. Henry Gomez and Howard Ibach wrap up our exercise of writing a creative brief for Hulu. We’ll take you through every question on the brief and show you how Henry applied his thought-process to arrive at his final (draft) brief. We emphasize that it’s still a first draft because this is an exercise. We hope you have had as much fun watching our efforts unfold as we did brinin...
Part 2 of our Hulu brief writing summer re-broadcast: Henry Gomez and Howard Ibach continue the thinking process around writing a creative brief for Hulu. Henry has unearthed some juicy intel on Hulu right on its own website. He found Hulu brand guidelines, a treasure trove of insider goodies. We dig deeper and start to add initial ideas on sticky notes we placed around each box that we created on our Mural. At the end of our episode, it’s clear we are zeroing in on final thinking. Next time, we...
Henry Gomez and I are taking a short break in August, so we're re-broadcasting three popular episodes: our series on writing a creative brief for Hulu, a spec assignment prompted by viewers on LinkedIn. We'll see you again in September with new guests and new topics: Let the writing begin! Henry Gomez and Howard Ibach take the opening steps in the brief writing process, first with exploration and discussion. Henry shares the fruits of his research labor, and together we peel back the layers of t...
Our friend George Tannenbaum wrote an essay on his Ad Aged blog recently that sparked our interest. It was called I'll Be Brief and it's a great read about, what else, the creative brief. And it got Henry Gomez and me thinking. And talking. Are our expectations of a brief overblown? George makes this claim, and Henry and I respond. We invite you to tune in.
If only we could see the actual brief. Henry Gomez and I give you the next best thing: our take in another reverse engineering exercise on this week's episode of The Brief Bros. for BMW's unforgettable print campaign. Watch as we take you through our thinking to arrive at what could be the brief.
The Brief Bros. co-host Howard Ibach proudly announces a new feature on his website, the Creative Brief Archive. It's a free repository of finished creative briefs written by ad agency strategists for real products. There's also a growing list of student-written creative briefs. The briefs are broken down by Agency and Brand. Simply register with your name and email address and you're in. There are no fees, no subscriptions. You can view briefs, download them, even comment. More goodies will be ...
You all remember this spot from the 2010 Super Bowl: Betty White stars in a Snickers spot that kicked off a brilliant campaign to reposition the popular candy bar. Henry Gomez and I dig in and write a brief simply by watching the spot. We call it a reverse engineering exercise, something all brief writers should practice. Join us in the fun.
Two, two, two mints in one: great creative from Apple in its classic spots for the I'm a Mac campaign, and our attempt to write the brief in a reverse-engineering exercise. Henry Gomez and I have a lot of fun in this week's episode as we revisit what Adweek called the best advertising campaign of the 2000s by TBWA\Chiat\Day. Play along and write the brief with us. It's a great skill tester.
Joining Henry Gomez and me from Berlin, Baiba Matisone is a freelance strategist and creative brief devotee. She posted a list of blank creative brief templates that Henry and I surveyed on a recent episode, as well as completed briefs and thoughtful articles. The site, Creative Brief Bank, is well worth the visit. We talked to Baiba about her background, how a college professor shooed her away from her first love resulting in her fascination with strategy. To top it off, Baiba did a deep study ...
Henry Gomez and I have preached the importance of insightful and inspiring "answers" on briefs to get the most from our creative partners. But what, if anything, can we learn as brief writers from a template? A blank template? Today, we examine a couple templates from legacy shops and discuss what we uncover.
Reverse engineering is a wonderfully effective training device to get brief writers into the right mind-set for writing a real brief. It's a thought exercise you can do everyday, probably in less than a minute. Today, Henry Gomez and I watch a :60 spot for Amazon Prime and then "reverse engineer" the spot and figure out the brief. We don't know everything the agency (Weiden + Kennedy) knows, nor what Amazon told them. But as ad pros, we know a thing or two and can make more than a few educated g...
Our two guests from Account Planners Group Canada are Mark Tomblin , founder of Thinking Unstuck, and Michelle Lee, principal Uncommon Sense, who hold senior leadership positions with Canada's strategy organization. Henry Gomez and I dive deep into brief writing, brief training, and the industry's future with Mark and Michelle.
Henry Gomez knows more than most of us about the competitive world of cosmetic surgery. His dad is a practicing cosmetic surgeon, and Henry wrote a brief for him. This week, we examine Henry's efforts so you can see again how a professional tackles the challenges of a small budget project with a big challenge.
This week, Henry (http://henrylouisgomez.com) and I welcome back an old friend, Marc Lewis. He's the dean of the most successful independent advertising school on the planet, SCA, the School of Communication Arts in London. It is heralded as "The World's Most Awarded Ad School." Marc returns to share with us news about SCA's Creative Training (https://www.scacreativetraining.com) and to encourage ad folk on this side of the pond to take advantage of SCA's growing online resources. SCA, under Mar...
Henry and I discuss another brief written by Henry for a pitch he and his agency did not win. But the brief itself, for Delta Airlines, is instructive and we take you through it step by step. Since finding complete briefs is a challenge, this brief presents us with a wonderful opportunity to share our thinking. Watch and learn...and share your thoughts if you wish!
Henry Gomez, strategist and brief writer extraordinaire, and I talk about four mistakes marketers fall prey to when they write briefs. And we offer avenues to avoid these mistakes with better, clearer thinking. These aren't the only roadblocks marketers face, but they are biggies. Watch and then be honest: have you ever slipped up and done one or more?
Jim Melzer comes to us this week on The Brief Bros. from Santa Fe, NM. He represents a segment of our industry we have not explored and that makes Jim a unique guest. Jim has been a copywriter and creative director at legacy shops in Minneapolis including Colle McVoy, Miller Meester, Martin Williams and Clarity Coverdale, among others. His specialty: agriculture. And a close examination of his resume and portfolio reveals an astute creative mind driven by strategy and ideas, and a respect for a ...
Guest host Mark Jenson and I wrap up our three-part conversation with Ernie Schenck in today's episode. Ernie shares his thoughts on AI, the origins of his newsletter, Strange Alchemy and other insights on our industry. Our thanks to Ernie for giving us and you his time, his wisdom and his devotion to a profession we love and sometimes are angry with. And thanks as well to Mark for pinch hitting for my partner Henry Gomez.
Guest host Mark Jenson and I continue our chat with writer, creative director and legend Ernie Schenck in Part 2. Stay tuned for Part 3 next week!
In the first of three in-depth conversations, The Brief Bros. welcome a national treasure and a creative legend, Mr. Ernie Schenck. He has founded two ad agencies, won countless awards, and is a prolific writer and commentator for CA and lately his own newsletter on Substack, Strange Alchemy. Pinch-hitting for a traveling Henry Gomez is a past guest himself, Mark Jenson, lecturer at the U of Minnesota's Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communications. Mark and I bask in the glow of Ernie's ...
My partner and co-host Henry Gomez offers up a brief he wrote for the Cleveland Clinic Florida when he was a relative newbie as a strategist, and shares some of the creative it produced. This is an excellent exercise we should all do from time to time with a brief from our past. I tip my hat to Henry for sharing his thinking.
