A good brief starts with a better question.
“We need a wow factor.” Fair enough. A little more information would be lovely.
Start with the people in the room.
A leadership meeting, an employee celebration and a product launch can all involve a stage, a screen and a microphone. That is about where the useful similarities end. Each asks something different of the audience.
For a leadership gathering, the useful result might be a decision people understand and can act on. For a celebration, it might be recognition that feels personal. For a launch, it might be a product story people can explain after they leave. A brief gets much clearer when we agree on that result.
Give the creative team something to solve.
A useful starting brief explains who is coming, why they are coming, what they already know, what needs to change and what would count as a good outcome. Then come the date, location, budget range and the people who can approve decisions.
It also helps to say what has been tried before. What landed? What felt forced? What did the audience ignore while politely holding a canapé? Those details give a creative team something more valuable than a folder of references.
Let the objective make the spending decisions.
If conversation is the point, protect the time, seating and sound conditions that allow people to talk. If recognition matters, give the award moments enough rehearsal, visibility and care. If the product needs explaining, budget for a clear demonstration and content that survives the back row.
Agree the essentials before adding the lovely extras. Then evaluate each idea against the same question: does this help the experience do its job? It makes creative feedback more useful and budget conversations considerably less mysterious.
Leave some room for a better answer.
A good brief can be precise about the problem while leaving the solution open. Give the agency access to the people who understand the business, share the practical limits early and appoint someone who can bring feedback together.
At evenflow, that is the conversation we want before the design starts. It helps us connect the idea, the content and the production around something worth making.
Then we can discuss the enormous entrance arch. We are quite fond of those too.
From the portfolio / AccentureLeadership training, Goa ↗
Photographed work