Creative briefs – something all graphic designers are familiar with, but that many also dread.

Some creative briefs are AWESOME – sharp, concise, to the point and full of valuable information. Others are a disaster and make you almost want to pass on a job (or even worse, a client).

So, what do you do when a bad creative brief lands on your desk? Do you pass on the job, or can you turn it around and own that project? 

Join The Angry Designers where they tackle the topic of dealing with bad creative briefs! In this episode, the beardos cover:

• the purpose of the creative brief
• the many different types of terrible creative briefs
• how to handle a bad brief and OWN the project

This episode will empower you to tackle any creative brief and leave you pumped to take ownership of your next opportunity!

 00:00
He could see the guy coming in and saying, yeah, I see my daughter on Tik TOK all the time. So I want to reach her. So let's have it. 

 00:08
How are we going to put our hydraulic cylinders on kick talk guys? All right. 

 00:13
She likes it. So I don't. 

 00:15
Know what it is. And what you see. 

 00:17
Is some guy in the shop. 

 00:20
Pneumatic cylinders, 

 00:22
Dancing, dancing. Oh my God. That's brilliant. Oh, 

 00:42
You're listening to the angry designer where we cut through the industry to help frustrated graphic designers survive and thrive. 

 00:53
Okay, buddy. Cheers. 

 00:55
Cheers. 

 00:56
Cheers. Hey, 

 00:58
This tonight, 

 01:01
Tell me about, I know I don't want to keep starting off every podcast to say maybe we should move it to like Monday I'd suggest Friday, but we did the podcast late Friday. We wouldn't end up, 

 01:15
It would be a lot of sloshing and slurring. 

 01:19
Yah. So buddy, how are. 

 01:22
You? Not too bad. How you doing, man? How you doing? 

 01:24
Well, I didn't think tonight would come. Like what? The day that I bet. 

 01:28
Right? 

 01:28
Seriously. I stood at my desk the whole day. Just Damn. 

 01:32
This was like a hardcore Workday for you too. 

 01:36
I had no. Yeah, Wednesdays generally have no meetings. Again, apparently I had no meetings, no lunches, bathroom breaks or minimal spend running back and forth. This is one of those days where it was just, I don't think I left my office once. 

 01:50
Jeez. We had to check to see if you were here. 

 01:55
I think I know the money thing is I was so busy. I didn't even go turn on damn music. 

 01:58
Oh. 

 01:59
It was like a library appear all day, which is so weird. It's so eerie. Again, it's just cause I was so I'm like, okay, I gotta turn on music. I gotta go put it up, put on a playlist. This is that. 

 02:11
Thing where you listening to music. 

 02:14
I know. 

 02:15
That's why it was so bad. It was weird. 

 02:17
It was just weird. You almost get too in the zone and then it's just that was an uncomfortable. Cool. 

 02:24
It's going to say in days like that, normally there's drum and bass pumping. 

 02:30
I got it. I gotta put on some drum and bass. I kind of get s**t done today. I was just like, I was super busy. 

 02:35
I couldn't even get. 

 02:38
Pretty brutal. So yeah. Had some awesome reviews. Oh, this week again, we had done. That was a great, we had a great episode last week. Everybody's feeling, I, I dunno if anybody who's listening to you for the first time, if you are welcome to our, where our humble show, where right now for reviews, we actually have a contest going on just to remind everybody every month for February, March and April, we're giving away a set of apple AirPods. Okay. All you gotta do for this is get on Spotify or get on apple, leave us a review. It can be a nice review. It can be a s****y review. I don't really care. You can be honest. Hopefully it's a nice one because we're really nice. 

 03:18
Guys. Come on. We're Canadian. We're Canadian. Right. 

 03:21
Please, please be nice to us. 

 03:22
Please. We're sorry for not. 

 03:26
And, and yeah, leave us a review, jump onto Instagram and drop us a note that you did so we can actually put you in the contest and that is it this week. We're we're doing our first, we're pulling our first winner this week. So it's going to be exciting. Yeah. I don't know if I'm going to put at the beginning of an episode or after. I don't know, but you'd probably be a next week. So that's kind of cool. 

 03:43
Right? Maybe what about on Instagram or something? 

 03:46
Actually, that is a great, 

 03:48
You're. 

 03:48
Brilliant. You're so smart. 

 03:51
It's really cool to kind of look at it and to hear your name saying, 

 03:55
I reached out to somebody and have to be like, are you okay if we actually, yeah, I'll do that first, but no, absolutely. That's a great idea. Kind of feels like we're making this up as we go along. 

 04:07
No, no. We have a plan. 

 04:10
The reality is we w we're helping people. We love helping people. We're we're literally just seeing what we go through on a weekly basis. Fairly lot of graphic designers go through the exact same thing. And that's what. 

 04:22
It's very comforting to know. Like some days you think you're you're alone and you're in this big silo. 

 04:28
Or you're thinking it's just. 

 04:30
To me, but no rest assured there's all this stuff is happening to everybody else. 

 04:36
Absolutely. And that's, and it's cool. So, I mean, by all means getting more reviews allows us to get to a broader audience, a bigger audience across the world. I mean, we've already got people from Australia. In fact, tonight's topic is going to be based on somebody from Australia who reached out really? Yeah. That's where it was just like, dude, that's a great topic. We're going to cover that one for sure. I mean, again, we get inspired from our listeners are angry designers and again, it's just, we're not the only ones who are angry. We just might be the ones that are spewing it out for the whole world to laugh. So, so yeah. 

 05:09
All. 

 05:12
Right. 

 05:12
Great. That's really, really cool. I didn't realize that, w were had that such far reaching, it's just saying, it just blows my mind. What was this? Gentlemen is a gentleman. I assumed. 

 05:25
It was a dude. He was a dude, the dude, what was his. 

 05:28
Top? What was his suggestion? 

 05:29
Well, and again, it wasn't so much as a suggestion, but I mean, he was having a problem and this is a problem that we all face. God knows how much your face. Dude, I just, he said it in my heart dropped in my stomach. I'm like, dude, if I could only share some stories, but unfortunately, what we're here to talk about today is the horrible creative brief. 

 05:50
Oh, 

 05:52
Like, it's just, it's like, it's supposed to be something that helps us. Yes. More times than not, depending on who's giving it's just a mess. Honestly. It's like, it's like, it's supposed to give you some guidance. Of insight is, but often, I mean, the thing is just nothing more than just a whole bunch of data spewed on a page that makes absolutely no f*****g sense. 

 06:15
Digital bar frightening, 

 06:17
Literally. Right. There's there's no depth about the story, the brand explanation. It's like, this, like, it couldn't be more robotic and and in researching this just cause I guess a lot of people just copy paste. They're often give it an a and this is true. Yeah. They're often given to like low level the junior. 

 06:35
Guys. 

 06:37
It's just like, and that explains why a lot of times it's just like, it doesn't make sense, but it's just, they're overdoing all the information and it's just, I can't work with this. 

 06:47
This is exactly it because your high up boss said, alright, Jenkins, do this, get this done for me. Did you like, what are you going to do? You're not going to send them a single. 

 06:57
Focused. I know. Right. 

 07:00
You could have jam everything. You go into that. 

 07:03
Why it's because it's like, they, the only purpose they serve is for people to cover their ass. And this is. 

 07:10
Why, 

 07:12
This is why, they throw everything in it. Like I can tell you, honestly, I've had, oh my God, dude. We've had like 10, 12 page creative briefs on, a website on a logo on, they tell us everything from how the company was bounded to the people in the company to the past founders, to the mission, the products. I'm like, dude, I don't really care. I don't need to know this stuff. Like, maybe if this was maybe, maybe if I was a junior designer and I had to start learning this stuff. But I mean, okay. As, as experienced designers, as good graphic designers, I would say everybody who listens to us as a good graphic designer. 

 07:51
Exactly. 

 07:51
Where we start honing our abilities to understand people, to understand things like we put processes together pretty quickly. It's like, when they're giving you like this, like literally we had this one creative brief, a website and they must've said, we like these styles of websites and they listed 10 completely different f*****g styles, new morphism, NGOs, minimalism, apples. It was so broad that we literally took one of the examples we gave to appease their stupid brief was we did everything they asked and we shoved it in, that website that Homer Simpson created. That's what it looked like. We had a little dancing Jesus on there. We had Maggie Simpson flying. Cause it just everything, honestly, it's just, I don't understand. I don't understand how people get to this point. And how do you think it's helpful? Right. Cause it's really not helpful to the process at all. 

 08:46
Again, I think at this point is down to, and we've experienced this a lot with clients. It's like, I don't know what it is I want, but that's not what I want. Or when I see it I'll know, I love that word. 

 09:00
Right. They just going to drop and they expect us to kind of sort through all this stuff. 

 09:04
Yeah. 10 websites, just the mountain main mall. 

 09:08
These are our favorite sites. They give you 20 of them. This is what we most see ourselves. Like, and they like, it's just, it is. It's unnerving because we have to, so this is something stressful, right? This, this is, this episode is not about writing the damn brief. This is the, how the hell to deal with s****y briefs. Right? Because honestly it's like the problems with briefs. I mean, they spend forever, but it always comes down too much damn information, often too much f*****g jargon that makes no sense business jargon. Right. That if you know the space, okay. You know, it's jargon. If you don't know the space, it's just confusing as hell. Like Margaret is sometimes think that they're, they want their brief to be thorough, but and they want everybody to know everything about their brand, their product and this and that. Honestly, I can't, my focus is not long enough to go through a 10 page brief. 

 10:02
It's really not. 

 10:03
Yeah. And that's so unnecessary. It's like, as a company, you should be, these are the highlights. These are these are the points that we're trying to get across here. 

 10:13
You know? Do you think that maybe somebody bits cause they're just they're insecure. 

 10:16
Yes. I totally agree. I totally would agree with that. It's like, look at us, did we do all of this stuff? We could do 10 pages of stuff. No, I'm not impressed. This is a pain in the ass. 

 10:31
Honestly, we got an email brief and she's like, oh yeah, I need you to quote on this project. Here's the brief. It was, it must've been a thousand words telling us where they're going, what they're doing this that finally, when you get down to the actual creative brief, it was like a paragraph. Yeah. And at that point it got lost. We didn't reply to this email for three weeks. Cause every time I opened it up, I felt like borrowing. Finally in the end I started by saying, what, like, you're not helping us out by doing a brief, like this. We're used to just tell us what you want and we'll do it for you. Thanks though. And she's like, oh, you know what? Because you took too long and we gave it to another agency, but next time and I was like, thank. 

 11:10
God, 

 11:11
This is one of those jobs we had to pass on because it was just, if this is what it was like, just, just to tell us what they're looking for. Can you imagine what the cycles of the scope creep? Like it's just, it would be never ending. 

 11:25
Would be never-ending it's funny because we just did a website for our start. We're doing a website for a time. When were doing the briefs and we're getting everything together and looking at the websites that they liked. Yep. I noticed that all of those websites looked similar. Like there was a lot of commonalities with that. I'm thinking that's gotta be a good client. Right. 

 11:46
It's a great, 

 11:47
When you get that kind of idea, like as opposed to what, 

 11:50
They have an idea of what they're looking for and what's that need, right. There is a difference and you're right. And, and coincidentally enough, they are really good customer and they're actually, and they're really, they're savvy, they're marketing savvy. They can get it. They're human speak. They're not like throwing out jargon and b******t. So no, you're right. It makes a difference because these other people with these, it's funny that you say that you mentioned the whole thing about the insecurity. Cause it's like, I'm thinking of some of the worst briefs that we've had in the past 12 months. And I genuinely think you're right. I think it's by people who just, they literally are throwing everything on there to cover their ass. They're expecting us to start this either. 

 12:26
The , 

 12:28
But I. 

 12:28
Mean, that makes sense. It. 

 12:29
Just, it just confuses everything. I, and, but the problem is in the end, they can point the finger to the agency. 

 12:35
I was just going to say, is that the clap back at the agency say, that's you guys completely missed it. You got it right. 

 12:42
Here, 

 12:43
Dude. So paragraph four it's right here. 

 12:49
Like it starts the story, just wines and wines that you have no idea where this thing, what I genuinely think that's what it is. Cause I mean, the agencies are always like, no matter what happens, it's always the agency's. 

 13:00
Fault. We're the fall guys. 

 13:01
We always have to, were the ones that the cover our. 

 13:04
Ass, 

 13:05
Which we'll get to later. Of course it had to do that. But, 

 13:08
It's like you said, with that one client that you were Ooh, God, this is you open it up. You're going to bar. If you dodged a bullet with that, we dodged a bullet, basically one of those nightmare clients, like it could have been way worse in it. Something like that, I guess buyer beware. You mean like, 

 13:26
Like almost like a telltale of what you could be getting. 

 13:28
That's. 

 13:29
Exactly. Yeah. And, and I mean, in all honesty, we, a lot of the briefs, we don't even get a lot of briefs from the regular customers anymore. Because again, it's a small synopsis. It ends up, we now know their product, we know their customers, we know their market. Literally all we need is a paragraph. Right. And, and that's kind of the goal where you want to get to. The real creative briefs are the important ones to pay attention to our windows, new customers, because it is a telltale sign. Right, right. Of what's to come, what I mean? Like, when you get people who jam in company info, right. They jam in the summary of the project objectives, target audience deliverables, they need competition, the timing possible budget, maybe technical specs, corporate guidelines, dude. This is a creative brief that we need. 

 14:15
Right. Too early for technical s**t. 

 14:18
Right. Like, don't look, it's just, do you want creative ideas or what do you want? They start telling you about history, deadlines. And it's hard. You can't tell that story in an easy to understand manner. In my opinion. 

 14:32
No, I absolutely agree. It almost, it's almost self-defeating for them like absolute, they're not going to gain anything from this. You know what I mean? Like it's just why would you spend all that kind of time on that to, just throw everything against the house, see if sticks like geez. 

 14:52
Guys. Honestly, I think a lot of this really comes. We go through a lot of these briefs, right, we're trying to understand what the hell these customers are trying to get to. There's other ways for designers to look for a lot of this information, which is why it's just like, you guys just need to understand what the hell it is you want. I think that's the problem is a lot of these customers have no idea how to explain. They may not even know what the hell they want themselves. They're looking to us to try to figure that out for them, which is like the worst part of this whole process, because you can never get that s**t. Right? No, absolutely not. Honestly, the most common mistake out of all the briefs that we get for sure. Hands-on is just, they want their f*****g job to do way too much in the brief. 

 15:36
Right? Like they expect it to do, this, they expect it to do that. It's just like, you kind of almost need, first and foremost, the purpose to be like a single purpose. 

 15:45
Right. 

 15:45
You need to kind of go in there and you gotta, try to help them understand their business goals a little better. Right. From there, focus on the most important business goals that they have. Right. This way you can kind of figure out what the purposes of this piece. Because again, it's just like, if they want it to do too much, it's just going to fail no matter what. Right. Because again, the expectations are way too high that they're listing. Okay. Yeah. That, one's obviously the first one, right? Yeah. 

 16:11
Just wait for a second is a mission statement. This is just like, this is just business speak, right? Like why. 

 16:19
Put. 

 16:20
That in there? I was just going to say this, it's like a, it's just like, I've seen these things before they're sold, laying in, 

 16:28
If you're coming to us green projects. Right, right. Right. Tell me what the hell is the purpose? What do you want this project to do? The website? Obviously the website, a lot more questions to be handled there. Right, right. A lot of it's, a campaign, a lot of its logo, a lot of its brand work, a lot of it's brochure work, right. Again, single purpose. Right. Start what the hell do you want the single? Number one, like they wanted to do way too much. Number two, a big mistake is, they've no idea. They don't have a clear understanding of who the hell, the audiences who they're targeting. Like they may know their customer. Again, if they can't explain to who that customer is, that's a huge problem in a brief. Yes. You know what I mean? People who need automobiles. 

 17:08
Thanks. People aged five to 50. 

 17:11
Yes. Yes. Who breathe air. 

 17:16
Okay. We don't have any aquatic people out here though. Okay. That's good. Yeah. You know, like, come on guys. People who drive. 

 17:26
No. Honestly, so what you've got to do is you've got to figure out more so than anything, like to get it, you need to be able to get a clear target audience that you're building something towards. Right. That's only going to help you out. Right. They're missing that one, right? Yeah. So, you gotta figure out what motivates that target audience you got to, find out about, but that's stuff that we know as designers. Well, as experienced designers, we know this, we know, generally, the type of people that they're looking for right off the bat, we'd we don't have to go crazy and get into personas and spend hours and hours researching. We understand this stuff. They don't, that's the scary. Yes. Right. That's where a lot of the dim for someone exercises or just as they can realize for themselves, Not so much on us. 

 18:06
Honestly I think that the biggest two mistakes that people have is they don't have a clear purpose for what is like, what exactly it is that they're asking. They don't have a good idea or that can explain who the damn target audience is. Like really? Those two things are probably the most important parts of any creative freak. Right? What do you want this thing to achieve? And who are you achieving it? All right. Let's start there and then backfill, 

 18:30
Right? 

 18:31
Oh gosh. All right. Like what's the purpose? What do you need it to do? And whose it plain and simple. Sometimes that's all I, 

 18:40
It's so funny. We I'm hearing this and it's just like, this is like, Jesus is coming into my heart. You know what I mean? Like, yes, this is exactly why people don't realize this. 

 18:51
I know. 

 18:52
The two simple. 

 18:53
And I get it. Maybe people are like, oh, you're not familiar with our brand. You're not familiar. And, but it's our job to familiarize. 

 19:00
We will do our research the end. 

 19:02
And ultimately that's exactly it. And they don't realize that. They're thinking that by spewing us all this information, barf that it's going to help us, we're going to let me tell you about our target market. They give me three pages on who their target audience is. And can we give me nearly enough? It starts off as a ten-year-old little girl and ends up as an 80 year old man. 

 19:22
Okay. Maybe narrow that down. 

 19:27
Either say doesn't help us out. Okay. Here, so what we have done though is of course, we've come up with a nice list of the types of briefs, Dude. Shit's real because these all came from real dark places within you talked to a few people, you gave us a couple. I had like, dude, this is horrible, but right. I enjoy these because these are real. Yeah. 

 19:53
Okay. We'll be scarred afterwards. Won't sleep for a week. 

 19:58
The first brief, the first type of brief that we're used to seeing, okay, it's the cement block. Okay. What this means, this brief is so damn tight. You can't move your feet once it's on round. You okay? Like there's no room to move anywhere within this brief. I don't even understand why they pitched us or whether they're coming to us because they have everything so detailed from the colors they want to use. The font. The types of images is that they're not looking for creative direction. They're looking for a Lackey. 

 20:32
They're looking for somebody to execute, 

 20:34
Right? This is the grader that is so damn tight. That really you can't do anything, but just, gets on your shoe that dumps you in the water. You just sink. Okay. The cement block, maybe this should be called the cement boots actually. 

 20:48
Cement men's shoes. 

 20:49
As well. Geez. 

 20:50
Yeah. Be careful with the Italian guy talking about this summit, 

 20:54
Sean, that we talk about. 

 20:55
Buddies. I'll better. I swear. 

 20:59
All right. All right. Number two. Okay. 

 21:02
Yep. 

 21:03
Round and round and round and. 

 21:07
Round. 

 21:08
This is the kind of brief that the customer actually has no freaking idea what they want and they can't provide any information besides the technical specifications, which aren't helping at this point. All you're basically doing is just going back around in circles. And they're just talking circles and circles. They start off here. They go there, they come back and they come back. It's just, it's a never ending loop, ? They keep repeating the same stuff, but it's all nonsense. 

 21:35
Geez. That's the worst. 

 21:37
Yeah. That is a little bit tough. It's tough because that when you can get any information. 

 21:41
Yeah. The exactly, which is completely opposite of shoes. People you need to have a baby or something. 

 21:51
Oh, all right. Number three. This one's called the kitchen sink. 

 21:55
Yes. Okay. 

 21:56
I love that. This brief is a brief that really provides no insight at all. It's just an overwhelming bunch of data points that have absolutely no depth, no explanation, no story in place. Every single thing that there is to know, except for the s**t that you need. That's what's in this one. Okay. 

 22:15
This one is. 

 22:17
The kitchen sink. I feel like, get a lot of these, sadly. It's just, and the funny part is I don't even read them when we got them. 

 22:26
Oh no. Yes. 

 22:27
The meeting, she was like, you read our brief. Right? And I'm like, yes I did. Oh, we could tell because you were right on the mark. 

 22:36
Exactly. Yeah. That's not the experience that I have. No. Don't know it's because I read all that. God. 

 22:45
All right. Number four, this one's called the never ending story. I was wondering if you're gonna go there with that one. Did you ever see that guy's hair by the way, Lamar who sang that song? No, dude is like, 

 23:04
Oh. 

 23:04
Yeah, the guy who ran the band, he was the singer who came up with the never story song or whatever. I mean, the song was a totally new song. Kind of cool. 

 23:11
I like that. 

 23:12
He looked like he had a botched eighties hair. Like it's hard to botch an eighties hair. Do you know? He had some, he had like, it was such a cool mullet spiky the top long in the back. He had like colored splotches, like bad dye jobs everywhere. It looked like his kid took, yeah, it's pretty bad. But. 

 23:31
Anyway, 

 23:32
Going back to this, The brief is called the never-ending story and this brief, okay. Changes constantly hours over days over weeks. Okay. It's like, they give you a brief, but then they'll update it. Then they'll update it. A day later, they remind you of something in, by email that they did. They'll want to call you a week later and they keep adding to this brief. Honestly, it never makes any fricking sense. Cause this brief is constantly changing. It's just like, it's anything that catches their eye and inspires them. They tell you, and they don't realize that they're telling it needs to be a boat. Right. It also needs to drive on land. So it's gotta be a car. It needs to be Intercontinental. So think of a plane. 

 24:18
Yeah. Now that I think about it needs to go to space to. 

 24:21
A plane with a jet on it that goes on the water, but drives on the lane. 

 24:28
You got that. That. 

 24:29
Makes sense. 

 24:31
Oh Jesus. This is the people that they're reading this constantly. They're like, you know, designed by committee. 

 24:41
Those are the worst that's right. Designed by committee. This happens because of, 

 24:46
Does everybody it's been passed around the office. Everybody's added to it. Yeah. 

 24:49
Yes. And they keep emailing you separately. I know weed. I didn't talk much in our committee meeting, but I just wanted to add this point to this. This is, 

 24:59
It was a sociopath. Shouldn't have this. Yeah, you're right. It's gotta have wheels and it's gotta be a bull. And it's like, oh f**k, come on. 

 25:06
Alright. I never had any story. Alright. Number five. 

 25:10
I got that song in my head now. 

 25:15
I hope you all enjoy that. You're welcome. Number five. Ready? Yup. 

 25:22
The. 

 25:23
Collision. Woo. Okay. Sounds good. That. 

 25:25
Sounds awesome. 

 25:26
Yeah. This is when the client's brief is completely full of contradicting statements and facts and information. It's like, almost like it's, they're merging these two or three different briefs into one. This kind of goes back to this whole example of like, we need it to be on the water, but we also needed to be on land. So stay away from water. 

 25:45
Yeah. Yeah. This is, I imagine this is the two interns fighting for the same job it's supposed to be this. No, it's gotta be. 

 25:53
Just a customer. Who's had a lot of wine in a night of writing a creative brief Early. Like we have this regular basis from one of our customers and I love them to death, 

 26:04
But I love that. I just, I just, 

 26:06
I just can't read it and I just like, Nope, who's it for? What's the message. We'll take care of it. Thanks. Cause I can't oh, 

 26:14
I think that person even actually commented that they were drinking wine at that time. Right. When your brief starts out with a, it could be the wine talking, 

 26:28
Let me know if you have any questions. Yes. Many. 

 26:33
You've just been hit with a collision. 

 26:35
Baby. Number six, the daydream believer. 

 26:40
Oh my God. You've got this, the song. 

 26:44
Cause that one too. Right? So this is okay. Everybody loves it. Every agency's got this one. Okay. This is like, they give you so much information and their expectation is so high. Like we want this to be a web. We want to win a Webby with this one. We need this to get a Clio award. Right. I need you to do it for 500 bucks. 

 27:05
Yeah. We have a problem with money. 

 27:09
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this is when their expectation and their budget just don't count. I mean, in my opinion, in that case, you better not be giving me a greater briefing. Like you better give me a wireframe with exactly what you want. Maybe you'll get that. 

 27:25
My mother used to call this champagne tastes with a beer pocket. 

 27:30
I love that. I love. 

 27:31
That. Exactly. 

 27:34
All right. Number seven setting the snack size. 

 27:39
The. 

 27:40
What? The snack size. Okay. This is when the client gives you just a taste of what they're looking for, but they don't actually want to tell you the whole story because they don't want to inhibit your creativity. You know? Oh, I don't want to tell you too much That I'm going to inhibit your creative process. If I had like a nickel, every time I throw my years, honestly, it's like, it's I don't understand this game that they play. Right. Because they think they're doing you a favor, but really it's like, they're expecting you to be a f*****g mind reader, no matter whatever you do, no matter what you do is never going to matter. They're never going to be happy with it. You don't have that vision in their mind. Yes. Right? Like dudes, you're not, you better tell us what the hell you want first. 

 28:28
And we'll address that. If we can do it good, if not, you could, they will not accept anything else other. 

 28:35
And save the doctor. Surprise me. 

 28:38
Surprise me, 

 28:43
Nicolas. 

 28:44
All right. So that's the snack size. All right. Number eight. Ready? Where's Waldo. 

 28:52
Where's he. 

 28:53
Come on. There's a whole brief here. We've got a brief, that's jammed with a lot enough thing and of something, but you have to search through the whole thing again. Again, just to try to figure out where the hell this damn thing is. I started this one. This is, this is when they give you all the backstory, all the mission statement. They give you the examples of other, this, their competitors, their history, blah, blah. And then one line. What it is that they're looking for. She's like, oh, I think I cut. No, it's not there. 

 29:26
No, no, no. That's oh, but where's wall. I love that. That's. 

 29:33
Great. All right. This one's a good one. 

 29:35
Ready? Okay. 

 29:37
The shotgun, 

 29:41
You talked about that earlier. Yeah. Let's get everybody, 

 29:46
Everybody on this thing. This is the creative brief. That is so wide. Spread that you can't make sense of it. It's like you, you don't ultimately the creative has to be for a nameless company. Something, a nameless product, like a nameless go-to because it's like, they're trying to reach everybody and everything, 

 30:05
Right? It's the S it's the five, the 80, 

 30:09
No, this is bad. This one kind of goes along with the next one, which is number 10, which is the jammer. They're trying to jam every single thing that they want. In one piece of creative literature, they want to tell their mission story, their history, the mission statement, their history. They want to have all their products on there, all the benefits in their product, their phone number, their web address, their chat number or whatever the hell, their social media, and do it on a single page. Yeah. 

 30:44
You want to hit every point that they possibly can. This is what my by-product does. It'll it'll make you rich. It'll yeah, exactly. 

 30:54
Absolutely. It's durable. It's C It is relaxing. Make sure you get that all in the creative execution, 

 31:03
Make it. 

 31:04
Pop, pop while you're out. Oh, and this one is the last one we want to end on here is, creative brief, but almost like stupid based on stupid strategy. 

 31:17
Right? Right. 

 31:18
This one is the shiny new media. Right. This is when somebody comes to you and you're like, Hey, what? We need a Tik TOK strategy. Get on that. It's like, dude, don't you don't detox hot right now though. We need to stop strategy. Right. 

 31:35
I'm going to break the internet. 

 31:38
It's was like, dude, you just need a regular strategy. Like come back with a bigger idea. Not just something to execute. It. It has absolutely nothing to do with your brand or could have nothing to do with it. They're just, they see something new and shiny out there and they figure they have to get on it. There's absolutely no real thought or reason behind it. Other than the fact that it's just like new and hot right now. 

 31:59
Exactly. 

 31:59
A huge mistake. 

 32:01
Never, never go with just that you, a strategy is perfect and it should go across all of these platforms. Right. If it's good, if it's good. 

 32:10
Of course, and you make it work on Tik TOK and you make it, accommodate the medium. Because again, it's like, w what'd we call it, we have a weird way of approaching form over function, but basically build it to suit the media in that case. That's how we use it in here. Don't just jump on it because it's something shiny and new. 

 32:28
Yeah, exactly. You could see the guy coming in and saying, yeah, I see my daughter on dock all the time. So I want to reach her. So let's have to. 

 32:37
Figure out how we're going to put her hydraulic cylinders on kick talker. 

 32:42
All right. She likes it. So I don't know what it is. 

 32:46
And what. 

 32:47
You see is some guy in the shop, 

 32:50
Pneumatic cylinders, 

 32:52
Dancing, dancing. Oh my God. That's brilliant. Oh, this is a, 

 33:10
Maybe not every shiny new media. 

 33:15
Oh, oh yes. Yeah, man. 

 33:20
So you're onto something. 

 33:22
You got a little bit, 

 33:24
I'll take a top up. 

 33:25
Oh, so needless to say, so those are our top 10 lists of. 

 33:29
Those are great. 

 33:30
The briefs that I'm sure we've all experienced that at some point. 

 33:34
Exactly. Everybody's had that kind of disaster Sydney. 

 33:38
Dude. And, and what's worse though, as professionals, we still have to try to deal with. 

 33:43
This s**t you still do. 

 33:44
Right. Proud to say that we do often, I'm lucky enough that I can just be like, Mac here, go. 

 33:51
Do this. 

 33:52
I set off and turn off. 

 33:57
No, no, 

 33:58
I will skim through them. I will. And there is a plan. There is, there is some methodology or there's a madness to this whole thing or whatever the hell that's. 

 34:04
Saying, what is it to the madness? 

 34:07
I always suck at these things. The reality is, what, we, as graphic designers, and this has been 22, 23 years of bad briefs, I suspect everybody's going to be dealing with these on an ongoing basis. There is a way to deal with these. Right. I think this is the frustrating part. This is why somebody reached out. It's just like, how the hell do I? Yes. And, and it did, it made us kind of sit back and actually think, our full process. Right. There's a good business case to this. It's actually a pretty good way of broken it down. So first and foremost. Okay. Okay. So obviously if it's an existing customer. Yeah. Okay. Generally you get to a point where you shouldn't have to have ongoing regular creative Brits. Right. Again, like I said, just understand, what the purpose is, the objective of what did you want to create in the audience. 

 34:51
Let's just assume that this has nothing to do with any existing customers, right? Yeah. Hopefully you've gotten to a point where you don't need that kind of direction anymore. Right. This is the partnership. Yeah. Let's see, it is somebody new, right. Somebody new and you've been feeling them out and they're like, okay, I'm going to send you a creative brief for this project. And you know, everything seems really good. First thing you want to do is set the stage right. From the beginning. Okay. As soon as they're like, I'm going to send you a creative brief, right. Just follow up with the, let them know that. Okay. That's great. You'll take a look at it and you'll go through it. Just before Warren, we may have a follow-up session after you give me the brief to go over, some additional information, some insights we might have some questions right. 

 35:33
Soon as you do that. Right. It doesn't show incompetence. Okay. It shows confidence. Right. Cause it's like, you know what? I know what I am going to have some questions, no matter what you give me, I will have some questions. Yeah. So set the stage. It doesn't mean you have to write. Cause I mean, it might be simple enough and you'll get it for a time, but you've already set the stage that you have a process. You have some questions, you want some answers. Yeah. Hey, whatever you send me, you know, I'll go through and I'll let you know. So again, take control early on. Right. So first off that's awesome. The important thing is there again, it shows process and it shows expertise. Right. And we can't stress enough. I mean, I can't, I, I profess this is that you want to make sure you position yourself as the expert. 

 36:14
Yes. Okay. You got to gain that and this is how you do it. You you're, you almost take control of the situation, even though you're receiving the creative brief. Right, right. Huge difference. Okay. That's it. They own control if they're giving it to you. As soon as you're like, Hey, I'm going to come back to, because I'm going to take control of this. Right. You're the expert. Okay. First and foremost, now when you get it, sadly, be prepared to read the damn thing. I hate to say it. Right. It's based on that top 10 list of the kind of race, it might even be a more search and destroy or seek and discover type of experience, but be prepared to read that damn thing. Even though it might be 10, 12 pages, it might suck. At least, once first and first, right. You've got to do that. 

 37:00
Okay. Now when you're reading, okay. No, the objective, that's the first thing you're going to be looking for. Right. What the hell is the objective? You need to define this. Okay. And write it down. Okay. Again, this isn't going to be concrete because again, in case somebody's sending you this to cover their ass, right. You need to pull out viable, legitimate s**t that you're actually reading within that belief. 

 37:22
This one of those where's Waldo scenario. 

 37:26
It really might be. Yeah. Like in that case where you've got to sit there and use your own common sense. 

 37:30
Yes. 

 37:31
Find out exactly the objective. 

 37:34
Reading between the lines. 

 37:35
Absolutely. Right. Yeah. The way we do this is we always start at the end, is that factor, right. Always, always start at the end. We try to find out what that end goal is, ? And then we work our way backwards. Right. Trying to find out what that end objective is that they're trying to reach, and understand what it is that you want to achieve. Right. This is where you have to dig up with all the parts that you can find that have anything to do with their objective. Okay. Most importantly, if there's more than one objective, you got to list that s**t out. Okay. Cause it's going to come back later on, but again, you can't have a multiple objective campaign or creative, right? It's ridiculous. Yes. You need to list that s**t out. This is why it's important to read through it. Right? 

 38:13
Because again, you need to find things that contradict themselves, but you also have to find things that can defend if they come back and be like, well, didn't you read it? No, no, no. That wasn't the objective. Yeah. 

 38:23
It's right here. Here it is. Yes. All. 

 38:25
Right. So first and foremost, right? Dig, dig to find that the objective number two, right? Know the audience, know the audience right now. Try to dig through all their information. Right. Be as detailed as you need to be if they provide very little about the audience, 

 38:40
Use. 

 38:41
Your own common sense. 

 38:42
Okay. Exactly like you were talking about with the cylinder guy, kind of what your audience is going to be. 

 38:49
Right, exactly. That I had no place to be on Tik TOK because 1350 on little girls doing their Tik TOK chances to care. The reality is if it's a B to B market, understand who the B2B customer is, if it is a consumer facing product, understand, is it more suited to, teens? It more suited to adults, male women, single try to understand if they don't list those people again, you have to list that audience for them. 

 39:16
Right. And that's by doing research and. 

 39:18
Great. Again, it could even be research about their industry. 

 39:22
Editors, writers. 

 39:23
It could be, you know, 

 39:24
Goldmine, you go to the competitors. 

 39:26
Exactly. 

 39:27
This is how you should be positioning your. 

 39:29
Key insights, right? 

 39:30
Yeah. 

 39:33
Drink, 

 39:33
Break. So drink, break. 

 39:36
Anytime you hear a school site. It's like you say the last time, it's like, anytime you hear us go silent, we're drinking, 

 39:41
We're having a sip or having a sip. Appreciate you. All right. So number one, know the objective. Number two, dig through this bad boy and try to understand the audience, this, that s**t out. Number three is know the S M P and tried to define the SMP and what an SMP is. It's a single minded proposition. I know. It sounds confusing, but it's not basically, it's the one key message benefit, compelling marketing reason that somebody would actually give a s**t about your product. Right? This is where you're starting to narrow down what the hell, the differentiating factors between them and their competition, right? Often it's a benefit, that they try to like the feature feature, but there's a benefit dug down somewhere with the feature, right. You may have to dig for this one. You may even have to come up with this s**t for yourself, but all the more reason why you want to plan that followup strategy, right? 

 40:39
Because you need to understand what this SMP is. And again, the fewer the better, okay. You can't focus on three or four things in the same creative material, because again, then all of a sudden people aren't going to understand when they're getting the material, what it is that they should be focusing on. Right. It's like trying to watch a juggler. Who's juggling four red balls. It's just too confusing. Right. But. 

 40:59
There's a big jumbled mess. 

 41:01
That's kind of what it is in this situation. Right. We refer to this as the Zed factor. Okay. These set factor is the single most compelling, marketable part of your product. Right. It doesn't have to be legit. It doesn't have to be different than anybody else. It's just gotta be the one thing that you could basically completely like, it has to be something to give people a reason to care that you can build your marketing around. Right. So, so an example of this in the industry of course, is back in the early seventies, right. Toyota was trying to figure out a way on how to differentiate themselves from everybody else. Okay. But they didn't really have anything. Okay. Because they were everybody was kind of, everybody was there, but they had this thing called any lock breaks. Oh. They weren't the first ones to have antilock brakes, but they were the first ones to point the s**t out. 

 41:51
It was there's effect. They were like, Hey, we got these awesome antilock brakes that are going to do this. They're gonna do. They focused on the single, life changing benefits that separates them, the company. Afterwards, everybody else is like, well, we got. 

 42:06
To Look like a follower. Yeah, 

 42:08
Exactly. Right. This is where you have to find that one main SMP that you can actually focusing on. Right. That, that one Z factor in my opinion. Right. So, and again, and if there is more than one, if they're trying to sell you that there's more than one, then you list that s**t. Okay. Again, you list that you list the audience and you list the objectives, from their briefs. Okay. This is all the information that you've done. Okay. Right. The next step that we do is we create a five to seven page presentation. Okay. The presentation basically, we list the objective that we try to achieve. If there's more than one, we list that s**t. And then we go back. Well, we read through the brief, it was very good, brief, we found a couple objectives in here and the kind of contradictory, they kind of battle off one another. 

 42:56
We find freedom from past experience, of course, is that campaigns creative works best when there's, a single objective. Yeah. So, if you want us to tell people to go to your website, it's going to be hard for them to go to your website. If you're also talking to Nicole, you, right. And, especially while they're driving, it's just, it's too many competing. Again, you want to make sure that you bring these things, you want to, list the objectives that they want achieve the audience you want to confirm. Right. The SMP again, if there's more than one, you want to list that there. Right. You put this in the discretion and then again, you use this as that follow-up questionnaire area. Right. And then what you do. Okay. You just, you can't be scared to ask questions. 

 43:33
It's, 

 43:34
It's not the enemy. 

 43:35
I know it. To me, I think if you're asking questions, you're showing engagement. You're you're saying, look, I'm trying to help you. 

 43:44
Yes. 

 43:45
Yep. You know what I mean? Like this is this, these are concerns that I have that I, I really need to kind of flesh these things out. 

 43:53
That's exactly the key word there. Right? You couch this in this, in the fact that you am implore a collaborative approach. 

 44:03
Okay. 

 44:03
Soon as you see that you're letting them know that you want them to be involved. Yes. Okay. You want them to be involved because the expert, right. You're like, basically you're making it sound like you're doing this, to benefit both. The reality is you just want them to agree on a direction. Yes. Okay. Ultimately, that's what it is. So it's collaborative. But again, you know, no. The reality is just to clarify the s**t, which helps you with the creative thereafter. Exactly. Again, you keep talking about, it's a process and you employ a collaborative approach that converts to, oh s**t. The, they have a process. They they've done this again. Again and again, they know what they're doing and that means money. Cause you can charge you charge, 

 44:46
Oh s**t, what Moss, come on. It's not all about money. Right. When you're hungry, it is, that's a sheer. 

 44:54
I mean, it's true again, it's you can take it, you can take that brief and come back with your best attempt. The reality is then it's just like, oh, they're going to only judge you on the creative. Your present might be good. Might be s****y. Might not. It might be fantastic, but not what they're looking for. You kind of screw yourself during this process. Okay. If you take their brief back, right. Come up with, dissected, come up with some stuff that go back to them and just let them know, this is a collaborative, we want to make sure we get this right. We, delivering something that's going to work for you. Right. That changes the whole game. That's a game changer, big time. Then, okay, so then it's a collaborative approach, right? Whatever. What we do is then because everybody wants to, end on a high note. 

 45:35
Right. We include, and you can even tell him, just say, I know this is a little preliminary, early on. Right. You include two or three mood boards. Okay. Mood boards being, you find creative exempt. This is when you can start using your own kind of, feeling what you think that you've gained from this so far based on their competition, based on what they do with their past, whatever. Right. Present them two to three different mood boards showing completely different kinds of creative executions that, group to course in like from, web logo ads to whatever. Right? Yeah. This way you can kind of start again, it's collaborative process. You start guiding them down the right path already. Now you've gotten the, you've gotten all your questions answered. You've identified the purpose. You've identified the audience and the SMP, and now you're helping through all this. Their feedback at this bank is now collaborative. 

 46:27
They're going to tell you what they're envisioning based on the mood board, based on the movement and that's key, right? Because again, it goes back to that whole, the hide s**t in their heads. If you can't pull that out, you could be turning stuff on a regular basis, right? No. Yeah. Make it a collaborative process. Show them some creative ideas, but not, you are creative ideas, just like general stuff. This way it's like, no, no, you don't. This is the direction I'm envisioning. This is not, it just starts that conversation. Honestly, I mean, across the board, we're all about collaboration here with our customers. Totally. Some people are a little bit more. 

 47:01
Nodal heard, used, 

 47:04
I can tell you one thing, they're not angry. That's for sure. We angry all the. 

 47:08
Time. 

 47:09
I'm curious all the time. No, but I mean, it's true. It's like, w we do the collaborative, which works for us. Well, totally. And it gets the customer involved at the right stages. We're still doing the execution. We're doing everything that we love. We just have less rounds of b******t between, right. Yeah. This is how you own that creative brief. They give it to you, they're in charge. As soon as you take control of that thing, right. You start pulling out and putting it back on them, like a smaller simplified version. Yeah. Just the main. 

 47:38
Laser-focused yes. 

 47:40
With the mood boards following up. Yeah. You own that whole reel. You own that hope. 

 47:45
Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. And it's so good. It's like, we've done this with clients before. Like we've recently, they were kind of this one client that we have just not really a hundred percent sure what they're going to do for their major focus. You know what I mean? Send them a mood board and they're like, 

 48:04
We're looking for, and then. 

 48:07
Everything kind of stemmed from that, Which is really cool. This is a client that we've had for the years. We kind of know. 

 48:14
Exactly. Exactly. Now they had a new idea for something, but they couldn't explain it. Right. Honestly, the goal here is to try to achieve clarity without looking like a f*****g amateur. Yes. Right. Because as soon as you do that, what are you Broadcast. 

 48:34
There? Suck it up buttercup, 

 48:39
But it's true. Right. And own that expert standings. Right. You have to do that by getting clarity by not looking like a kid doing this. Yeah, exactly. No, the objective, no, the audience, no, the SMP. Follow up with your questions or your little presentations to get your clarity and then turn it into collaborative session with mood boards to finish up on it. Because then you're finishing off in a clear direction. That's what you want. 

 49:03
Yeah. Brilliant. If you don't, this works for us too. I was going to say, you're going to get some out of these guys by doing this kind of these kinds of steps. Exactly. This is what you want. Instead of, instead of, the cement block shoes, you don't want that s**t. 

 49:20
Oh man. If I could tell you how many people, I don't want you to get throw into the river with cement shoes based on the ship. Wow. There's a lot of anger. 

 49:30
Yeah, totally. This, this does inspire a lot of angry thoughts for sure. It doesn't have to be this way. We do this. 

 49:37
This is why we do this. All. 

 49:41
Right. 

 49:43
Well, I mean, that's all I got. 

 49:45
Yeah, no, that's totally cool, man. I'm I'm hoping our Australian friend, it gets a lot of, 

 49:55
I'm going to find them up later to find out how it all went and it's made it an indifference and I'm gonna let them know that we did this. Yeah, I told them right off the bat, this would make a good one because this is something that we all deal with. Exactly. There's a lot of s**t out there and how to write a good creative brief, which, but that's not what we're doing. We've learned how to deal with it. This is how we do. 

 50:14
And, and to clarify that not a lot of people know how to write a good creative brief. Right. Which is why we get all this kind of Arabic. Yeah, exactly. And, and that was really interesting that, I did read a couple articles on that. Whereas it is like a junior function at some places where unbelieving, you're like, you're putting your client, you're putting your future. You're you're. 

 50:39
Basing it on that, on. 

 50:41
This. This. 

 50:42
Is kind of ridiculous. 

 50:43
Geez. I hope they help this poor kids that are doing the right thing, but they. 

 50:46
Should be teaching this in college. 

 50:50
Totally. 

 50:51
Along with the laundry, Your. 

 50:54
Taxes. 

 50:58
And writing a brief, 

 50:59
I've been writing a brief. Yeah. Those are four things you should know. 

 51:02
Otherwise, everything else damn. 

 51:06
Oh, that was great. White. 

 51:08
Dudes. All right. Well, listen, I hope you guys got something from this. I really do by all means, you know where to find us and you know that we got this contest we're going on. Please leave us a review, share us with some of your friends, your colleagues, let us let everybody know that we're out to spread the good word, graphic design, 

 51:27
The. 

 51:27
Angry. 

 51:27
Word, 

 51:29
Angry word. The truth is, we're here to help and biome. If you guys have something that you want us to share, you want us to talk about, or you're curious how we do it. Hit us up. Please drop us a line on our website. The anger designer.com hit us up on our Instagram. We've got an amazing Instagram following. Engaging we're constantly talking with everybody. Love everybody on Instagram and yeah. What, like, I mean, you can even hit us up on our podcast channels, right. By leaving us a great review, 

 51:57
Shameless, 

 51:58
Shameless plug. No, please, by all means, I hope you guys have gotten something good with this. Go to this episode. Let us know how it worked out for you. 

 52:07
Yeah. Yeah. This is great. All right. Jeez. I think we're good. Good job. Thanks. But. 

 52:12
No good job you buddy. My name is Masimo. 

 52:19
My name is.