Answering the brief is not the KPI
Ticking every deliverable is how campaigns quietly fail. What we actually do with a brief before we agree to shoot it.
A delivered brief and a successful campaign are two different things, and only one of them shows up in your results. We treat every brief as a draft: we digest it, critique it, and send back a proposal that usually cuts something. The cut is the value.
How campaigns quietly fail
Most campaigns do not fail loudly, on the shoot day, in ways anyone can point to. They fail in the allocation, weeks earlier: budget spread evenly across a list of deliverables, each funded whether or not it changes the outcome.
You do not need three options for the talent's hat while the concept is still unsolid. You do not need the add-on photo set that has no placement, no plan and no owner. Every dollar parked on marginal things is a dollar taken from the things the audience will actually notice.
The 2015 problem
A lot of briefs we receive are recycled. Same format as last year, same deliverable list as the competitor, same idea that felt fresh a decade ago. Safe. And safe is expensive: recycled ideas get the scroll-away, and safe campaigns do not win anything, including attention.
We understand why it happens. Formats that got approved once are easier to get approved again. But the approval is not the KPI either.
What we do instead
When a brief arrives, in whatever state, we digest it, then we critique it, and then we send our proposal. Half-formed is genuinely welcome. The critique is not us being difficult; it is the first deliverable.
The proposal usually moves money. Each campaign gets prioritised on its own terms: sometimes the film is everything and the stills are a byproduct; sometimes set design is the whole premium feel and deserves the photographer's budget; sometimes the right answer is fewer deliverables, done properly. There is no template, because treating every campaign the same is precisely the failure mode.
The question we ask of every line is the use case. Where will this live, who will see it, what does it do there. Deliverables with good answers stay. Deliverables without answers become budget for the core of the strategy.
What this asks of you
A brand that hires us gets pushback as part of the service. Not on everything, and not for sport. But if a deliverable exists because it felt like you should have some, expect us to say so, and to show you what that budget could do somewhere it matters.
The brands that get the most out of us treat the brief as the start of the conversation, not the end of it. We are a little rebellious with briefs for the same reason a good editor is rebellious with a first cut. It is how the work gets good.
Before your next brief goes out: for each deliverable on the list, write the use case next to it in one sentence. The ones you cannot finish the sentence for are your reallocation budget.
Questions we get asked
- Why would an agency push back on a brief?
- Because the brief is a draft of intent, not a shopping list. Most briefs spread budget evenly across deliverables regardless of what each one contributes. Pushing back is how the budget ends up on the things that decide whether the campaign works.
- What should a brand do if the agency wants to change the deliverables?
- Ask one question per deliverable: what is the use case? If there is a clear answer, keep it. If the honest answer is "it felt like we should have some", that budget is available for something that moves the result.