David: This is Call Us Disruptors. I'm David.

Jess: And I'm Jess. Today we're talking about creative briefs. Your creative brief is lying to you. Most creative briefs are project-management documents. They're not actually telling the creators what this video is going to accomplish.

David: Yeah. They'll say, "this is what we want you to make." Here's our logos, here's our colors, here's an idea, here's a script, it's going to be on TV or social.

Jess: But they skip the most important questions we need to know as creators: where will this run? Is this a repeat campaign or a one-off video?

David: Who are we trying to talk to? Who are we targeting, and what are they like? What do we want them to do? How will we know if this video is working? What have we learned from past campaigns? We usually don't get "here's what we've made before." We have to ask, "what have you made before?" and they go, "oh yeah, I can show you." What do you mean? I want to build off what you've already learned. Those are the most important questions, and in our experience, 95% of the time they're missing and we have to ask them. Which is fine.

Jess: That's why I like doing projects through agencies, actually, because they already have templated briefs built with the company. They have to put in a Google Drive link with past campaigns, and their questionnaires usually ask what you've liked, what's worked for you. Which is really nice.

David: We usually don't get those. Mountain's a great partner for us that way. VaynerMedia did a bit, Warner did a bit. But almost everyone else doesn't do any of that. So this is our PSA that there's things missing, because a creative brief shouldn't be about what you're trying to make. How can we make creative decisions if we don't know what it's trying to do? Otherwise we're just following a set of instructions. And what ends up happening is the creative team solves the wrong problem, really beautifully. It's a gorgeous video that doesn't address what they're trying to do.

Jess: Or who they're trying to do it to.

David: And when we do answer those questions, there's way more creativity, more strategic ideas.

Jess: And it's less of a waste of time.

David: We want the resources to be worth it, and it's less of a shot in the dark. A lot of brands think, "we're going to try this video, I hope it works." Well, you don't have to hope. If you answer those questions, who are you talking to, all the things we'll go through, those become strategic choices instead of "let's just find out."

Jess: Why is knowing strategy helpful during the creative process?

David: A lot of what we come up with comes from the strategy: who the main characters are, what the conflict of the ad is, what the solutions are, the humor, the style. That all comes from who we're talking to. What else are they consuming? What do they like? What are their pain points? Those strategic answers become the plot points, the creative points of the video. If we don't have them, we're just guessing. And you probably have information: performance data, sales data, conversations you've had. Why not start there?

Jess: What's the first thing you look for in a brief?

David: Target audience. First and foremost. If I'm targeting a Gen Z buyer versus a boomer, it's a completely different video, process, style, and pace. The way they consume information is different. The things they care about are different. So, target audience, 100%.

Jess: I have an example. We were doing a TV ad for prostate health. The jokes, the comedy, even the timing of the edit, as I'm making concepts I'm thinking of my mother-in-law, who's about 70, and how we have completely different senses of humor, what would actually tickle her.

David: What's interesting is you're thinking of your mother-in-law because she's the one who'd encourage your dad to buy the product, not the man himself.

Jess: When we're coming up with concepts, if I didn't even think about who this was targeting, it could completely flop.

David: And that's another good example, because we looked at the competition and they were all making the same thing. The brief we got was, "here's the video we want to make, here's the client's feedback on the initial idea." And we said, "are you sure? Look at the competition. Look at the target audience. How do you stand out?" So we did a similar ad, but told from the perspective of the dog who keeps getting woken up in the middle of the night because his owner has to go pee every two minutes. That's funny. It's stickier than a guy putting on slippers and shuffling to the bathroom.

Jess: When we know the target audience and where it's going and what its goal is, it makes me put myself in someone else's shoes. Putting myself in an older person's shoes, I'm like, they don't want to just watch boring stuff either.

David: And we ended up learning from that client that it's going to be mostly in Walmart, Walgreens, and CVS, which is a specific kind of buyer, and most of those customers are in certain parts of the country. That informs the style, the casting, a lot of it. But we were just given "here's what we want to make." I have another example. Another client, we won't name them, gives us a creative brief that starts with the props and the wardrobe. And it's funny, because I have no idea who we're talking to yet. I don't know the concepts, I don't know what we're doing. And they're like, "oh, that's coming up." So we go through all the props and wardrobe, they have questions, and I keep saying, "I'm sorry, I don't actually know yet." I end up listening through eight to ten pages of design before we even get to the concepts. Then we go through the concepts, and only then do I get to ask, "okay, who are we targeting? Where are their customers? What makes this different from other shoots we've done? What worked last time?" Then I have to go back through the brief later to figure out what all the design stuff was even for. If you're trying to translate that into a successful campaign, starting with the design first, instead of who we're targeting, where they are, what content we're mimicking, the concepts, and then the design, it's just a whole different process.

Jess: Which is fine too. Having the design first tells me a lot, because I'm up to date with trends and I've built a relationship with the person choosing the props. But from your point of view, someone putting the team and schedule and location together, there are a lot of questions.

David: Right, I can't choose any of that yet, because I don't really know what we're doing.

Jess: And you're thinking of it as a marketer, too.

David: Which is fine, we don't mind, most of our onboarding is asking these questions. But a PSA to all marketers: you'll get a stronger result if you start with a specific set of questions first.

Jess: When we get briefs like that, the concepts usually change a lot once we flesh it out. The concepts take on new life, or they become really solid. They go from "maybe they're doing this" to "there's a girl, she's 25, she's holding this, then she walks over and does that." It just fleshes it out.

David: And it means on set, in pre-production, in post, we can always go back to, "right, we're targeting a Gen Z girl who likes the gym, who wants this type of product." There are a lot of decisions in a video project, and I can keep going back to the same thing, because it was number one in the brief.

Jess: Another point: that creative brief made at the beginning goes all the way through pre-production, production, and then to our post team. The editor who edits these videos, this lands in his lap. He reads it too, and the edit is built off that creative brief.

David: It's such a good point, Jess. Brands have this data. What videos have worked, what hasn't, who buys their product, where. Every brand has this data now. So put it in the brief. This is who buys their product, this is where they live, this is who we're trying to reach more of, these are the videos that have worked on this platform, this is what we tried on other platforms. The number-one thing I beg from brands is: what's working? What have you tried? Because then we can build off it. Otherwise we do our own research off incomplete data that's private to the brand. And a lot of brands did that work to make the brief, but the brief doesn't include the work they did to get to the idea. So they lose that touchpoint about what actually matters in the ad.

Jess: When do you know a project's going to be difficult in regards to a creative brief?

David: When it's blank. When there isn't one. One thing that helps: the creative brief we can develop together. When I start asking questions and making suggestions and the brand is very rigid, it doesn't set us up to succeed. I'm not sure how we'll measure success, or make good, informed decisions. It makes it a riskier project, and it's an early sign there won't be a lot of collaboration.

Jess: David does our sales calls. I listen in sometimes. I remember someone called and you kept asking questions, and they were a brick wall. "No, we've done this before." "Okay, what were your learnings?" "It's not about that, we just need this video." It was like pulling teeth trying to get any information, and you were like, "okay, we can make this video for you, but come on, let's collaborate."

David: Not even change it. Just understand the why. It's business 101, start with the why.

Jess: I wonder if that's what's changed in video production. People used to call up a video team and say, "can you shoot this?" and they'd say, "yeah, sure." That still exists, but what's changed drastically is that as a video production company, we now have questions.

David: Before, when things weren't measurable, you just wanted it to be a "good video." What does that mean, it looks good, it's clever? But now I can actually see how it performs, how many people watched, how many seconds.

Jess: And it reflects on us. If it performs badly, it's on the video.

David: So they go, "that video didn't perform, wasn't a good team." So we have to change and find out: what are you measuring? Who's watching, where, on what platform? Is it a how-to video you send after purchase?

Jess: We're now invested in the outcome of the videos we make. We care, we want it to perform. We have to be more like marketers, ask more questions, so the metrics show it works.

David: The industry changed. If we don't, we lose the client and they never come back.

Jess: So when we get a creative brief, it usually has logo files, brand guidelines, product information, messaging hierarchy, legal requirements, mandatory claims, CTAs, deliverables, and the timeline.

David: Those are all there, and we can keep them, they're great.

Jess: They're really great. These things are important. But there's no strategy included.

David: So here's what we do at the beginning of every project, no matter what brief we get. We look for these five things.

Jess: This is the Savvy Framework.

David: Number one is who: who are we trying to influence. And I don't mean age or gender or location.

Jess: But you do mean that.

David: That's true, who can be age, gender, and location. But what's more important is: what do they like? What do they watch? What are their struggles? Like we talked about with Mike Rizzo last episode, do they drive a van or are they a truck person? Sense of humor. Why would they care about the product? What stage of buying are they in, do they even know they have a problem? I want to know all about these people, because that informs the creative.

Jess: Next one.

David: Where is this going to live, and how long. Is this a Meta ad? Meta ads have to be short, you've got three seconds. Is it a CTV ad? You've got thirty seconds, they can't skip it, they're focused.

Jess: Not necessarily. Sometimes that's when they go get popcorn. So sound is really important, saying the name of the brand right away.

David: LinkedIn, social, website, wherever it's going informs the creative. It tells me where to put the climax of the story, how to structure it, the tone, the pace. Completely different process. Then my absolute favorite: competitive context. Most people think, "I'm a drink brand, here are the other drinks like me." That's not right, and I'm passionate about this. A twenty-year-old buying Olipop isn't only looking at Olipop, they're thinking about other products that make them feel good and vivacious. They're not necessarily looking at other sodas.

Jess: They're looking at, I don't know, rust-proof, sweat-proof jewelry.

David: Those are the things they're considering buying with their limited money. So I'm more interested in what else are they buying, what are they being fed on Instagram and TV, what shows are they watching, what trends, what are their friends buying. If you put it in the context of "they're watching a Mr. Beast video or this Netflix show, they're getting these Meta ads," then you get to number four, references. Now you can watch what they're watching. I start pulling a collection of videos. We watch them, feel them out. What do we like, what do we hate? We like the text treatment but not the pacing. What's performed for our brand, what have we tried before? Now we have a nice foundation of who this person is, what they consume, what products are out there, where we're targeting them. As we come up with ideas, we have a strong, strategic place to build from. We've limited our playground to a little area we can improvise in, which actually creates better ideas. When you're in a huge, vast blue ocean, it's too much. But if you create a space to play in, now we can get fun.

Jess: Now we can get fun.

David: Number five, the last one: how do we measure success. It's so basic, but it's often skipped, and sometimes it's just never communicated to the video team. The agency might have it and never tell them. It's important for the video team to know going in. Are we tracking leads on the website? Clicks? Cost of acquiring a customer? Are we trying to make other ads perform better, hit them with a top-of-funnel piece?

Jess: How does the answer to that change the creative process for you?

David: We're working with a restaurant platform right now, it helps restaurants get seen on Google and do takeout. They do a lot of direct response, "here are all our features," ads on Meta, working great. They're expanding to CTV, and those ads aren't working, because they're too quick, too feature-focused, just being vomited at you while you're watching Game of Thrones. So we said, let's do more top-of-funnel, more pain-point related. There's a pain, then a solution. We can still mention a couple features, but make it fun. I know they're already running feature-rich ads people will see, so mine needs to make you remember the brand and feel something. That's very different from, say, the outdoor chair company, where it's "hit these three features every time" because that sells the chair. Different brand, different approach. And more than that: when we're done, they can look at "we were tracking how many purchases we'd get from this video, how many did we get?" Otherwise you spend the money, publish it, and just hope it did something, and it feels expensive. But if that video pays for itself twenty-fold, it wasn't expensive at all. It's so nice when a brand goes, "actually, the furniture we featured in that last ad sold out in a week." That means it worked. How can we build on that?

Jess: So if success isn't defined before production, everyone invents their own definition in post.

David: Yes. Should we show some receipts?

[Ad plays: Achieve HELOC]

Kid: My dad's trying to figure out a way to pay less on his bills every month. Kid 2: He should check out a HELOC from Achieve Loans. You can even see your offer in three minutes. Oh, and nice shirt. Dad: Thank you. Voiceover: See your offer in three minutes at Achieve.

David: In that discovery call the client said, "we're doing a HELOC," and we asked questions. They were great, they had really good information. It's not someone who's really struggling, it's mid-level stress. "How do I get my mortgage down? I can't do anything extra with that money, I want to put it toward my kids' college fund." A very specific phase of life and economic position. Not "I'm struggling and can't pay my bills," more "I just want to pay less, I want to optimize." We took that to ideation: it's probably a dad, the finance person in the family, let's make him Midwestern, they had data to support that. Those are the characters. And what was going on then was the rise of AI, everyone wanting to use it, including kids. So a very easy idea came out: a smart-aleck kid telling their dad to be smarter and use this thing. Low stakes, really fun, simple, natural. And it performed: a 4.8 return on ad spend on CTV, with a 27% lower customer acquisition cost, which matters for them because once you have a loan you're a customer for years, especially a HELOC.

Jess: But that's because you had all that information.

David: Because we had a lot of information. We talked to a specific person with a specific goal and pain point.

Jess: I find it really fun with new brands who've done videos before but never spent serious money on it, and we build a creative brief together. And then when they come back for more videos, that's our base, reopening a brief we've worked on before, but with different deliverables, a different concept, a different season.

David: Give an example. Plank & Beam?

[Ad plays: Plank & Beam]

We need something sturdy. What is that? What about Plank & Beam, solid wood, and it's stylish. Plank & Beam furniture, you'll wish everything was this easy. For dinner tonight, I'm thinking sushi. Find furniture you both agree on at Plank & Beam.

Jess: This one was really fun because we've worked with them.

David: That was our first one, and it's become the foundation of the style we do with them.

Jess: The people buying their furniture are usually first-time buyers, which puts them in a certain age bracket, and UGC-style video was really popular, so we based one of the concepts on that style.

David: In the kickoff call they gave us their customer, demographics, but also what they value, that it's solid wood and sturdy, and that women typically like the style. So there was this idea of "if they can both agree on it," which is what our data was saying. That's one through three of the framework.

Jess: On their brief there was something about, "if you make it through Ikea furniture, you'll survive." So building concepts, it'd be fun to do a couple who make it through choosing furniture together.

David: Because thank God they have Plank & Beam. In that kickoff call we pulled ideas from other furniture brands and other brands those couples buy from. They liked the ones that were a little risky, and said, "we'd love to be edgier." That was nowhere in the brief, and nowhere in their content, the examples they gave were very vanilla UGC. We were like, "wait, you like this?" And they said, "yeah, and so does our customer, we've been wanting to do this but didn't know how internally, that's why we used another team." So we made a riskier, edgier idea. They loved it, and now everything we do with them has an edge, and it performs really well. The results became a new benchmark for the brand: it drove 50% of sales from the featured collection, became top-performing of the whole slate, with a 50% engaged session rate and an 8% add-to-cart rate, higher than they usually get. Plus they got matching UGC and product photos in the same setting, a whole coordinated concept with a bunch of deliverables.

Jess: We've done a few other shoots with them since. Getting to know a brand really well, their audience, all that information, you keep adding to the creative brief, fleshing it out more each time. And if it performs well, you know what's going to perform well, which makes the creative so much easier.

David: And it's easier to be riskier, which is great. The riskier you can be in your advertising, the better.

Jess: We push a lot of our clients to be bolder.

David: Make a stance, be bold.

Jess: Most creative briefs are built around execution instead of outcomes.

David: Yes, it should be about outcomes. Instead of starting with a logo, start with who your customer is deeply, and go from there. Before you open Premiere or Figma or a camera case, answer the right business questions first.

Jess: Stop asking "what should we make," and start asking "what are we trying to do with this video?"

David: So somebody's writing a creative brief tomorrow. What's the one thing you tell them?

Jess: Don't start with the deliverables.

David: Start with the customer.

Jess: Yes. Because if you know exactly who you're trying to sell to, everything else becomes easier.

David: And if you skip that part, the creative team is forced to make assumptions.

Jess: And assumptions are expensive. So if you're opening your laptop to write a creative brief, make sure you don't lie to your creatives.

David: If you're enjoying what you're learning here, we've got awesome new guests coming up. Subscribe, give us a listen, and chat with us on LinkedIn.

Jess: And if there's anything you want us to talk about, drop it in the comments.

David: We'd love to. See you next time.