Episode 1 - Introduction to the Creative Brief

Key Takeaways:

• Introduction to the Margeteers: Margaret Sherer and Margaret Bouse introduce themselves and their backgrounds in marketing and entrepreneurship and startups.
• The Evolution of the Creative Brief Process: They discuss how the briefing process has changed over the years, with insights on adapting these to meet current business and media landscapes.
• Challenges in Meeting Client Expectations: Both Margarets talk about the difficulties they've faced in aligning client expectations with marketing outcomes and the importance of defining success early in the project.
• Strategic Marketing Advice: They emphasize the necessity of starting with the end in mind, working backwards from desired business outcomes, and maintaining strategic focus despite creative aspirations.
• Insights on Budget Transparency: Discussion on how being upfront about budgets can streamline the marketing process and lead to better results for all parties involved.
• Building Trust with Clients: The importance of trust in client-agency relationships is underscored, advocating for a collaborative and respectful approach to achieve successful marketing outcomes.

Synopsis:

- Introduction by the Margeteers, as they share their marketing backgrounds and the purpose of the podcast.

- Discussion begins on the evolution of the creative brief process, with personal anecdotes from both Margarets on their experiences in adapting these processes in their careers.

- They explore the challenges of meeting client expectations without a clear briefing process, highlighting the transition from solo projects to agency collaborations.

- The Margeteers discuss the importance of defining clear business outcomes in marketing projects and how this can be lost when creativity overshadows strategic goals.

- A deep dive into the budgeting issues faced in marketing, advocating for transparency and strategic alignment with business outcomes.

- Closing thoughts on the importance of trust between clients and marketers, emphasizing the long-term benefits of collaborative relationships.

- The episode wraps up with an invitation to listeners to share their experiences with briefs on LinkedIn, setting the stage for a community-driven discussion.

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Transcript

The Margeteers Episode 1

[00:00:00] Okay,

let's do it. I'm Margaret. And I'm Margaret. And we're the Margateers. 

In this episode, the Margateers discuss the creative brief. I think we should talk about it. Talk about it. The Margateers. So I am Margaret Scheer. I am American, but I've been in the U. K. for 14 years now. I've had two careers, one at Big Tech. Um, I'm from Seattle, so that gives you a lot to guess from where I started my career at.

Moved over [00:01:00] here for my grad school. School and, uh, worked at a very large search engine before going on to entrepreneurship, um, about nine years ago. So I own my own digital marketing agency, Cittadina Marketing, which is the one stop shop for digital marketing and am a fractional CMO for scale up tech companies, tending to be B2B.

And I am Margaret Bouse and everyone calls me Marg. I've been in marketing for more than 30 years.E I started my first company at 17 years old doing logos. And so I have been in marketing in one way or other for more than 30 years. And I am currently a fractional executive with a couple of startups in the Boston area and just am an absolute fanatic about marketing and looking forward to sharing that with everyone.

Amazing. So what we're hoping [00:02:00] to do is walk through some of the challenges, best practices, bugbears of marketing. marketing challenges today. And I think we wanted to start out, well, I wanted to start out talking about the brief process. So I think the brief process, I mean, Mark, I'm curious about how in your career that brief process has changed.

If it has at all, I very much, when I was in house, Didn't follow any specific format. It was very clear. Like, I needed this. Please, let's just do this one thing. And then as soon as I went agency side, all of a sudden, the briefing process became much more important, yet much more ignored, I would say. But do you think that it's a very, like, has it changed in your years of being both in house and agency?

It really has. Um, I think one of the things was that in the beginning when I started [00:03:00] my career, I was a solopreneur. And I didn't really have any mentorship, and so I created a creative brief process organically because of the pain that I suffered in trying to meet customer expectations without having done any of that homework or had the conversations.

Um, and so. For me, it was something that I learned the hard way, and then optimized once I got into more of a professional career. So when I started my first real media job, it was with a magazine publisher in Southwest Florida, and. They knew all about creative briefs and I had a great mentor there. Her name was Janae and she introduced me to the concept of scoping the work, scoping the projects ahead of time in a formal way and getting sign off.

Um, it was a simple process then it wasn't. Super [00:04:00] robust, but it was formal and that was kind of like a really great introduction. And then from that point on, I have found the need to modify the creative brief process, or even just a briefing process in general, um, as times change, as media changes, and as the way that companies are organized changes.

What's great about it is it's very easy to adapt it to what the needs are. So what is, when you were starting, what was the greatest frustration? Like what part of the brief were you updating or wanted more clarification on from the client? Um, probably the biggest challenge was defining what success look like.

Yes, right. Like beginning with the end in mind is really important and identifying what it is that you're trying to accomplish and not just I found that people had an idea of what they wanted to [00:05:00] create, but they didn't really understand the business outcomes that they wanted from it. And then I like to focus on the business outcomes, like why are we even doing this in the first place?

What business outcomes are we looking from? And then from that, then we can formulate what the output is. And then we work backwards to determine what inputs are needed to create the output. So that's so funny because I will often tell clients that like I'm the wet noodle in the process because you get to somewhere in like a second iteration of creative and all of a sudden, or somebody has just been inspired by something.

Buy a new trend and they want to change your whole Project and I'm and I'm the one on the agency side I think that this is the thing that's so uncommon and maybe with working with me and I go That's a really nice idea. That's completely not the business Problem that you're trying to solve with this video or with these ads And so we have to save that for a different kind of thing and then the client, you know [00:06:00] frowny faces at me and then and then we keep going on to do the the strategic space, but I think it's trying to Hold myself accountable to the Business outcome that you're trying to achieve through whatever it is as well.

But I know too, with the business outcomes, I don't know, um, about your experience, but there's definitely been a few clients that I know that they're so. Brand and creative driven. I let, I let that, those ones go a little bit because I know that part of this process is something that's genuinely feeding their soul and creativity and they, they are doing this because they really want to do something super, um, visual and creative and different.

Um, I was going to ask, do you think that, so that's why you created the business, um, Or your own brief structure when you started, but that's still the problem today. It is. Do you think so? [00:07:00] Yeah, I mean, it's, I think that, um, it's really interesting. I was just at a really interesting conference. Um, and so I was made aware of this, uh, brief called better briefs company and they did a research and I love this where they say most marketers think they're good at.

writing briefs. Most agencies disagree. And the quote is, I consider myself or my clients good at writing briefs. The person writing the brief, the mark, the marketer was 80 percent agreed with this statement. Only 10 percent of creative agencies agreed with this. So this was only done in December of 2023.

And the gap has changed a lot. They first did it in 2015. And then the last time for that next question is 2021 is like, it's gotten worse. Like there's just a larger gap. Do you think that that's, I think that it's because there's too many tactics available. I [00:08:00] think that like there's, you know, I'm often told we need a video.

I don't disagree. But what do we want to do with the video, you know, or like, we need social and we were just talking about social before, but like, we need social. I'm like, I don't disagree, but what do we want to do once we're there, you know, and, and that part of the why we're doing it. I think is missed, especially because there's so many distribution channels and there's so many options.

How do you talk to your, um, partners? I'll say clients, whatever to try to like, how do you steer them in that to scope out the strategic purpose of their brief? Um, I really do a work back plan, which comes out of years and program management and project management. When you start with those business outcomes, then working backwards into what it is that you're trying to accomplish and then from that, you determine what media makes sense to reach those audiences that [00:09:00] will deliver those outcomes.

And then I work back. Backwards from there, because obviously the inputs that go into a video are very different than the inputs that go into something like a white paper, right? They're almost polar opposites, because one is more. Informational and emotional, and the other one is more about data and proving things systematically to, to get someone to arrive at a decision point or a conclusion.

So, you know, I, I, the business outcomes I think is one of the big gaps because having also been on the client side and engaging with marketing agencies in the past. Sometimes you wind up with a really great creative director, but they're all about the art and not as much about the the outcome. Um, and I really think that the focusing on the outcome has to be the, the, the primary purpose in any project and the only way really that you can tie it to any kind [00:10:00] of return on that investment.

Do you get pushback whenever you present this kind of, um, determination to focus in this particular project? Way, like, let's say you're talking to a really excitable brand person who wants to put a unicorn in the sky, which I always say again, I would say I love a unicorn in the sky, but why is it there?

Why did we put it there? Um, there's, there can be pushback. It really kind of depends on the person's persona and how dug in they are on doing it. Their way, or what their rationale might be, um, at the end of the day, you know, trying to have a compelling argument. I shouldn't say an argument, but really a compelling rationale for why you believe that your guidance is the best way to go.

Um, usually helps them kind of make that mental adjustment. And sometimes there's a way to do a twofer, [00:11:00] right? So we can do that. We can do the more. Business outcome oriented piece, but there's some way to integrate nuggets of what really inspired them into the project. Um, you know, without them feeling really like their idea was completely cast aside.

You know, usually there's some sort of inspiration in there. That's legitimate. There's a kernel in their hopes that we can logically tie into the project. And then, you know, the best projects are collaborative. Anyway, so I, I try and figure out a way to integrate it. I just try and make sure again that we're focused on the outcomes.

Um, one thing that you had mentioned, um, while we were discussing getting ready for this episode is that, that you also always kind of get the, we need to start right away. Yeah. Yeah. There's always a sense of sense of urgency. And [00:12:00] and people also think with digital that it's instant. Right. And so they're like, Oh, it's just easy.

Okay, let's just put it out there. Um, there's a lot to be said for getting started. And, you know, not letting perfection be the, the, uh, the barrier to making progress for sure. Um, but. The thoughtful approach will always win out. I don't mind doing some interim work projects to bridge, especially if there's something coming up, like, there's a conference coming up and we have to get something out or, um, you know, the, uh, executive team is going to be, um, you You know, doing a podcast or whatever.

And we want to make sure that there's some materials that support their message. No problem with that. But in the grand scheme of things, the overall marketing calendar has to, you know, deliver results. It has to be geared towards what we're trying to accomplish. And if, you know, and that's different by stage and it's different by industry [00:13:00] and the whole nine, but I think it's important to have those things in mind.

For sure. Um, what are, do you have anything in your required brief that's a little bit quirky or something that makes? I don't know if it's quirky, but I, I do have a, I do have a section on what do we not want to do. Um, so negative requirements, I think, sometimes are just as important as positive requirements.

So the negative requirements could be things like, you know, here's what we don't want to come across as. Um, or a negative requirement could also be something like, you know, please don't use XYZ trope because it's, it's overused and we don't want to be part of that even though it's a trend, right? Yeah. Um, I, I love having negative requirements because they give us a bounding box.

It's the same thing we do in software development. There's negative requirements, like make sure that we don't do XYZ, um, hugely valuable. [00:14:00] I totally agree. I've always find more insight to, especially if it's the first time working with a particular client, if they can go through why they don't, it's the why they don't like it.

I don't mind these are the negative requirements, but then I like them to go through and say, okay, if some things are just against brand book fine, but if it's, you know, their own aesthetics, and that's the person that's signing it off. I always find that really fascinating. And, you know, I love that. Um, so I have to say, like, this happens with the kind of size.

I don't know how to address this properly, but Because I work with fast growth companies will often get, you know, a request for a proposal, but you don't get any budget aligned with what they want to achieve. And there's been times too, where, because the brief is all about setting the [00:15:00] expectations, right?

Like what is the quality that you want? Do you want the, what is that magic triangle that I always say it's like cheap, faster, good. Right, right, too. And so it's kind of helpful. Maybe that's something we should add to the briefs. Choose fast or go just to the very top. Which two do you want to do? Because then that tells us where your patience lies.

But, um, this happens a lot and I, I'm really get frustrated around, uh, this gameplay, I guess, because I don't know why it is a game, but it really comes up all the time. And so my, Begging is to anyone who's listening, just be transparent about what the budget is, because I also feel like if you haven't picked the budget, you kind of haven't picked your strategic outcome.

Anyway, like, how much do you want to invest into this? That is so key. I love that insight because it's not unusual for people to say, you know, I have no idea. I just need you to scope it and let me know how much it's going to cost. Well, you know, it's going to come back to a negotiation. They're not going to [00:16:00] go.

Oh, okay. There's going to be some sort of conversation about scope or pricing. Um, it's just a natural part of the process. Very seldom. Has it not been? Um, and so, you know, I think that there's definitely a lot to be said for, you know, demanding a ballpark. Really? We need to have some idea. You know, my mom used to say, is it a bread box or a refrigerator?

Um, old school saying, but, um, Really just kind of understanding the game that you're playing, and then making the commitment that whatever that budget is, we'll do the very best we can within that budget. So, even if it's a low budget, it doesn't mean that you're not going to get a quality outcome. We'll, we need to know it up front so that we can right size the effort and make it as best as we can within that, that budget.

You know, I do a lot of startup work and startup advising and. Some of [00:17:00] them are self funding, and so they're still trying to figure out how to balance marketing and the scope of all the other expenses that they have in building their product and. Sometimes it's just a matter of, of, you know, acknowledging, listen, I know you don't have a lot to spend.

We need to do something. And it's our job, I think, as, as marketers to say, here's what we can do for little to no cost, um, you know, and, and this is the kind of impact that you can expect from it. Have them make the trade off because then they can look at the greater scheme of things across all of their expenses, everything that they have planned in their, in their operational plan to determine, okay, well, that's not really enough.

I really need to find funding for this in order to elevate level up with that work products going to be and and make that choice. Um, the other thing I find is sometimes they just, they need. They need some sort of guidance of what is [00:18:00] appropriate pricing for different kinds of work products, because especially for 1st time founders, right?

Or early, like. First time founders or people who come straight out of school and, and fund the company and they don't have the business background, they literally have had no exposure to know how much something should cost, like, what is an appropriate rate? So, back in the day, when I had my very first agency at the library, you had to go to the library.

There was a resource book in the resource section that you were not allowed to take out of the library. And they had all the standard rates for every kind of creative done by agencies. Oh, really? That's interesting. Yes. I'm old. Like this. These are some of the, these are, um, it literally was a resource library book and pretty much every library had it.

I was in the small town and they had it, um, but it, it literally had for every kind of work product, you know, [00:19:00] what is the hourly rate or what is a project rate? Um, you know, what's a typical advertising rate for certain kinds of, um, Companies, I mean, everything was in there and we, we use that to set pricing at the agencies to make sure that we were on par.

Now, there's the Internet. The Internet didn't exist back then, but, you know, people need to have some sort of ballpark and going where the, where that information is public, which is typically something like Fiverr misrepresents the actual Sure, it's for 8 for agency work, right? So, working with a freelancer versus working with an agency and having the benefit of the talent of an agency versus an individual, you know, there's a, there is a cost differential there.

Absolutely. I'm trying to think of like, what the. I think there's some associations here that kind of not, I wouldn't say act as a union, but, uh, [00:20:00] for agencies to say, like, this is this is broadly where we're seeing price ranges and so forth, but you need to be members of the association to get the inside information and it just varies, right?

It varies depending on on different aspects of it. Right, for sure. I think, look, we've covered a lot of information kind of quickly. I would say that the parts that we both are passionate about what's needed in next time you're building a brief is definitely make sure whatever that activity of the brief you're doing is anchored in the strategic outcome.

That you're hoping that this activity, uh, leads you to, or is part of that. I always say, and I'll say it all the time, I hate an unstung, an unstrung tactic. And if that is, you know, and those are ones that just don't have exactly as you say is what the, um, Strategic outcome is I, I've kind of gone hard into the please be [00:21:00] transparent about what the budget is or do a best estimate because it really does save everybody time.

And I think it's more respectful as well. So, those are my, what do you have any other things, Marg, about. What takeaways? I think there's an element of trust. You're working with a marketer on purpose. You've chosen that you're going to either, you know, um, outsource and or, you know, have an agency. That's part of the process.

Um, lean on them and let them bring their talent to bear. You know, they, they've chosen the field. They're passionate about the field. And if you've done a good job of qualifying your, you know, fractional CMO or your agency, you know, you need to trust that they're going to bring their very best selves to the table to help you grow your business and, um, that trust that you can place in them.[00:22:00] 

We'll definitely have better outcomes than, than if you go at it from a different angle. I think that's such an important, um, last thought because we really want your business to succeed. We really want the project to succeed. I don't know, you know, I don't know many, people in my world that wouldn't want their client to succeed.

So it's a matter of, um, you know, we're always looking at, we see everything as long term relationships. So it is saying, okay, how do we make sure it's strategic? Make sure we're transparent, building trust. It's great. Yep. Love it. Thanks, Margaret. Thanks, Mark. Good conversation. We've really enjoyed speaking about the brief process and what we're both curious to know is a time where a brief went really, really well, or when, or when it went really, really wrong.

So please head over to LinkedIn, look up the marketeers and comment and let us know. Thank you. [00:23:00] Thank you. Okay,

reset. Hi, I'm Margaret. And I'm Margaret. And we're the marketers. Let's do a countdown. Like how many, how many, what do we want? Like a thousand one. Maybe after I say, and I'm Margaret, and then we'll go a thousand one and we're the Margateers. Okay. Let's do that. Okay. Okay. All right. Go for it. Okay. I'm all red.

I'm Margaret. And I'm Margaret. And we're the Margateers.

That was a good one.

What about this? Like you say Margateers first and then all And it'll be funnier.[00:24:00] 

Do you want to try that? Yeah, we can do whatever you want. Okay. Let's do it. I'm Margaret. And I'm Margaret. And we're the Margateers. Gateers.

Cause I think everyone gets that, right? Cause it'd be like too hard to like I love it. Okay, let's do this. All right, all right