The Isosceles Project: Reframing the marketing brief

The marketing brief has become the forgotten part of the marketer’s job. While marketers and agencies both agree on the importance of the brief, they also agree that it is underused, or misused, by most marketers. Very few admit to spending enough time developing briefs that get the best work out of their agencies. There is no good explanation for why this is happening other than to speculate that we are making the process too complicated. The Isosceles triangle is used to illustrate how the brief is the foundation on which analytics are taken to the next level and experimentation is advanced through the thinking put into the brief. The brief process is a series of four documents that starts with a master brief that provides the brand strategy, positioning, target market, and so on. These are the things that do not change very often but provide the agency with the background necessary to avoid any missteps. Next is the campaign brief, the money document. This is the one-page sheet that provides simple, clear direction to the agency. This is followed by the words and music brief, which is the uniting of the media and creative teams to develop a plan that will provide value to the audience identified. Finally, an element brief is written to communicate the details of each creative piece needed. Part of the campaign brief will identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) and hypotheses to be tested in the campaign. This advanced experimentation thinking leads to micro tests, which focus on small changes that could have a big impact, and macro tests, which are strategic and long term. It is critical that this thinking happens as the campaign brief is drafted so that there is enough time for implementation. This is where the Isosceles triangle comes together. There are three things to remember from the paper: 1. Great briefs lead to great creatives, which lead to great performance. 2. Briefs do not stand alone but instead are the precursor to better analytics and experimentation. 3. Writing the campaign brief needs to be the top priority for today’s marketer.