Unlimited time, massive budget and no mandatories on your brief?
Then don’t bother reading the rest of this.
A brief like that is amazing, but most creatives will be lucky to get one in their whole career. I haven’t so far. Until one of them turns up, you shouldn’t feel limited.
You can get to great work by not just trying to come up with the creative answer to the brief but for the brief itself.
Find the workaround.
I was once on a brief that asked for 20’ second TV. The same thing the client had been running for the past few years. The budget and media were being spread thinly to try and get as many eyeballs as possible.
That didn’t feel like the most effective way to do that.
We didn’t go back in and say we need more budget or a different brief.
Instead, we looked at the practicals, the high views that were needed, and asked what creative approach could let us achieve that, however impractical it might seem. It led to a plan which took the same budget and used it in one high-profile splash moment across multiple channels, rather than spreading it out across one channel.
It wasn’t the obvious approach but it made total sense for the outcome the client wanted, and it really opened up the creative opportunities.
On other briefs and clients the same approach led us to creating products, TV programmes, events and more.
Look at what you have and use it to find creative answers that gives you different opportunities.
Don’t be one of those creatives that think’s a brief isn’t worth the effort if there’s no budget or time.
If you do that, you’ll miss out on great work.
Be impractically practical instead.
