A good brief is the cheapest way to get a better film. It doesn’t need to be long or polished. It needs to tell us what’s really going on.
The most useful line in any brief is usually the one someone says out loud: what I’m really worried about is…
Why it matters.
Briefing is easy to rush and expensive to get wrong. Research from the Better Briefs Project estimated that a third of marketing budgets is wasted on poor briefs and misdirected work. Most marketers and agencies also agreed that rebriefs happen too often. The fix is usually simpler than people think.
Describe the problem, not the film.
A lot of briefs arrive as a specification: two minutes, drone shots, three interviews and upbeat music. That’s a solution before anyone has agreed on the problem.
We’d rather hear what’s wrong. Staff aren’t finishing the training. Customers don’t understand the new service. The board needs convincing by March. Tell us that, and we’ll work out what the film should be.
Who needs to change their mind?
“Everyone” makes for a vague film. “Site managers who think this is another head office initiative” gives us something to work with. Then tell us what they should think, feel or do afterwards. One clear answer beats five competing ones.
Keep it to a page.
A useful brief answers a handful of questions:
- What’s the problem, and why now?
- Who is it for?
- What should they think, feel or do afterwards?
- Where will people watch it?
- What’s the budget range and the real deadline?
- Who signs it off?
Then let us ask questions.
A brief is the start of a conversation. The best projects we’ve worked on changed shape after the first call, because the questions uncovered something nobody had put in writing. That’s why we like being brought in early.
We also know that isn’t always an option. Sometimes the deadline was set before anyone called us, or the brief is a week old and the event is next Thursday. We get it, and we’ve been doing this long enough to hit the ground running.
Either way, we’ll still ask the questions. The answers make this project better, and the next one easier to start.
What it means for you.
You don’t need to know how to make a film to write a good brief. Be clear about what’s worrying you, who needs to hear it and what should change. We’ll handle the rest.