How To Read A Brief

Now don’t feel insulted you brilliant idea producing ‘creative’ you. We know you’re smart, we’ve just seen some recurring patterns in the ideas we receive that suggest you could do with a little guidance or highlighting of, erm, which aspects of a brief you need to pay attention to. If you want to keep submitting whatever you want, please go ahead, but if you want to know why some BRILLIANT ideas occasionally miss the mark, please keep reading.
 

Before we get to the actual brief structure, some overall things to keep in mind that are often missed:

1. Practicality

You have to make sure that your idea is possible to carry out and won’t cost too much. There is no point in having a brilliant idea that will cost $4 million to execute (yes we have had one of these).  

2. Originality and Relevance

Your ideas should be different & out of the box but still on brand. Often we receive ideas that are basic re-hashes of other campaigns or ideas that are amazing but just don’t suit the brief.

3. Effectiveness

The main bit of feedback we have received from clients is that there are many ideas that answer 60 % of the brief and miss the rest. Clients don’t mind if you answer the brief 100% and then add a little extra they have not asked for (but this must be a cherry on the top). For example, we have had ideas that are on brand, are practical and brilliant but just won’t work for a particular section of the target market.

4. Plan

Lastly, clients are looking for ideas that are new and will change behavior - they are going for the strange out of the box thinking submissions. All the ideas that have won have given some sort of plan as to how things will be rolled out and the goals for each step. 

The Brief Itself

Bear in mind that the briefs are very carefully put together between the brand and us here at Idea Bounty. Everything you need to know is in the brief, which means you also need to understand everything in the brief.
 
We want original ad exceptional ideas, but they also have to have a bearing on reality. The most effective ideas are often the simplest.

There are a number of past briefs available for you to look at on our site, and our current brief from WWF so please feel free to have a look at them!