Why Every Brand Brief Should Be Written Like a Heist Plan
In Ocean’s Eleven, the job isn’t just about cracking a vault. It’s choreography, character dynamics, and the correct van in the right alley. Now, swap out the pit boss for a brand manager and the casino for a consumer's head. Same logic. Lately, I've been collecting agency briefs the way some people collect vinyl. Most are fine. Some are polished. A precious few? Surgical. Hyper-specific. Almost criminal in how sharply they focus.
The most effective briefs I’ve seen don’t read like documents. They read like blueprints. They answer not only the ‘what’ and ‘why’ but the ‘where’s the weak link and who’s driving the getaway car if this explodes’. One had an entire paragraph on a particular type of silence their customer feels. Literal silence. Not metaphorical. That’s the sort of beautiful paranoia that makes a campaign real. Those details don’t show up in committee rooms. They show up when someone actually likes their job.
Still, most briefs read like they’ve been passed through three legal filters and a mood board cooked at half-heat. Vague KPIs. Target markets as wide as the horizon. A call to emotion without naming what emotion. Hope? Spite? Jealous admiration? Advertising is noise, but the good brand is the decibel we hear something rare in—the frequency of unspoken truths. You don’t get there unless someone, somewhere, is scribbling crazy things about an audience’s relationship with their bathroom mirror or the smell of new packaging. Be weird about it. Be surgical. And let the team plan the heist.
If you’re writing a brief, you’re the driver looking at the blueprint. If you’re on the creative side, you better be stacking the paint cans in the stairwell. Either way, one detail missed means the whole plan goes up in smoke. Start with the silence. That’s where all the action is.
The most effective briefs I’ve seen don’t read like documents. They read like blueprints. They answer not only the ‘what’ and ‘why’ but the ‘where’s the weak link and who’s driving the getaway car if this explodes’. One had an entire paragraph on a particular type of silence their customer feels. Literal silence. Not metaphorical. That’s the sort of beautiful paranoia that makes a campaign real. Those details don’t show up in committee rooms. They show up when someone actually likes their job.
Still, most briefs read like they’ve been passed through three legal filters and a mood board cooked at half-heat. Vague KPIs. Target markets as wide as the horizon. A call to emotion without naming what emotion. Hope? Spite? Jealous admiration? Advertising is noise, but the good brand is the decibel we hear something rare in—the frequency of unspoken truths. You don’t get there unless someone, somewhere, is scribbling crazy things about an audience’s relationship with their bathroom mirror or the smell of new packaging. Be weird about it. Be surgical. And let the team plan the heist.
If you’re writing a brief, you’re the driver looking at the blueprint. If you’re on the creative side, you better be stacking the paint cans in the stairwell. Either way, one detail missed means the whole plan goes up in smoke. Start with the silence. That’s where all the action is.