Writing a creative brief is the first stage in making sure any creative work is targeted in the right area and achieves the aims both commercial and artistic. While many feel a creative brief exists mainly in the commercial field, and although it may not seem immediately relevant or obvious, a good creative brief can provide a great impetus for both commercial and more artistic endeavours in many fields. Audio creativity is just one field that can benefit from a succinct and successful briefing.
Writing the Creative Brief.
Writing a creative brief takes imagination as well attention to detail. In the commercial world it forms the bridge between the client or customer and the creative team. In more artistic terms a brief can galvanise a writer’s or artist’s thoughts, or if a team of people are contributing to a project it can focus the whole team in the right direction, stop any seemingly wasted effort but more importantly, ensure everybody involved knows what they're doing and why they’re doing what they’re doing. The form a commercial brief takes usually asks the following questions:
- Who are we talking to? The starting point for most broadcast work – know your audience.
- What do we want them to do? This can apply as a reaction to artistic work, or instructions in commercial terms.
- Why should they do it? Give people a reason to do something they’re more likely to do it.
The person taking and writing up the brief may vary according to the situation and the creative work required. These situations can be many and varied. It can be some of the following:
- The writer directly with the client.
- A producer may commission a writer or artist to do the work.
- The writer may focus their writing independently by writing and working to their own brief.
- In an advertising scenario, the account handler, or sales executive may take the brief .
- Programme makers will often brief creative personnel.
As a starting point for any creative work, a brief should set some parameters and even stimulate the ideas process itself to help write the resultant script. This can often happen for a number of reasons. Thinking about the eventual audience is one way to imagine what kind of work will have the most effect, and an artist’s choice may be to upset, entertain, motivate or just placate them, depending on the aims of the brief.
Types of Work Where a Brief is Useful.
Although the creative brief is more common in advertising and corporate work, a brief can work very effectively on all kinds of creative work, commissioned or not. The types of radio work that can benefit includes:
- Commercials
- Dramas
- Programme inserts and contributions
- Features
- News items and investigative programmes
- Music commissioning and music casting
The basic reasoning behind the briefing doesn’t alter and the same questions are as relevant and common to any brief.
- Who is the audience?
- What do we want them to do? (Emotionally or practical)
- Why should they do it?
Most creative work that is not commercially orientated and therefore of a more artistic or self generated endeavour, would appear at first to be subject to a brief from a higher emotional plain, but the reality is that a commercial brief, properly constructed can be as useful for any audio production, commercial or artistic production.
A brief is anything but brief.
Interestingly enough, a creative brief is anything but or even necessarily so, but it should also contain and convey however quickly, the following information:
- Deadline – the timescale when the work is required
- Commissioning body – the organisation the work is required for.
- Conditions – any apparent conditions that the creative work is subject to.
- Budgets – the brief may also give indications of the budgets affecting the work.
- The Universe – the brief may also detail the backdrop the work will exist within.
All the above detail is in addition to any creative information that the scriptwriter or director needs to begin working on the project. There may of course be two sides to any creative work. One are the ideas and the answers to the creative side of the brief, and the other is the practical answers that make any creative work relevant to the environment it exists within.
Presenting the Creative Work.
A creative brief replicated and presented before the work is presented is a very useful place to start and can easily set the scene for the presentation. It also focuses the minds of everyone involved and confirms agreement on the initial purpose of the creative work.
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