Admation Blog

Q: I’m a marketing manager who oversees a studio team responsible for creating all the marketing output for our brand. Previously, our sales team filled out an electronic brief form to start a project, but it’s been superseded by an email brief (information just pasted into an email). The sales team says that it’s quicker and easier this way, but this isn’t the case for marketing. The reality is, in most cases, we don’t receive a proper brief and it usually takes another week of emailing to get one. Sometimes it just gets too confusing and I have to call a meeting to discuss it. Meanwhile, the project deadline doesn’t shift which means all of this to-ing and fro-ing eats into our production time. How can I get our briefing process back on track while keeping the sales team on board?

Briefly Yours PM

The Dilemma & The Fix Series - Part 6

The Dilemma
Adrianna is a production manager who received news today that yet another project commenced without a brief. How could this happen? you ask. Adrianna keeps asking herself the same thing. In fact, someone saw her in the lunch room making her fourth cup of ‘Bliss' tea and mumbling to herself - it’s not that difficult to write a brief.  Later, she was checking over a brief that someone did put together, only to find it was more frustrating than a jig saw with missing parts. She was last seen with her forehead on the desk repeating, someone pleeeease write me a proper brief.

Are you feeling frustrated like Adrianna? Or are you one of the Guilty Parties who avoids spending time on briefs? Either way, we have the fix for you. Let’s take a look at how you can all slam dunk the creative brief.

There are many important factors that lend to creating great marketing content. Brilliant ideas are the bedrock of memorable campaigns, but you also need amazing talent to bring your ideas to fruition. Less glamorous, yet no less important, is implementing an effective approval workflow process to ensure that your marketing output meets your objectives. A critical component of this process is the humble brief.

Everybody wants to achieve more, but in reality marketers are still not hitting the mark when it comes to producing more content. And while it looks like a simple case of not enough hours (or resources) in the day, the issue often has more to do with how marketers are managing their approval workflow.