A creative director once handed me a brief with one sentence: "Make people notice us."
That was it. No strategy. No positioning. No target audience demographics. Just a problem statement and implicit permission to solve it however we thought best.
It was the best brief I ever received.
Because here's what most briefs get wrong: they prescribe the solution while describing the problem. "We need a social campaign targeting millennials using humor and influencers that drives engagement." That's not a brief. That's a creative execution disguised as strategy.
Real briefs define problems. Great briefs define problems so precisely that solutions become obvious.
"We're invisible to our category" is a problem. "Create content" is not a solution, it's a tactic masquerading as strategy.
I've received forty-page briefs that said nothing. And I've received three-sentence briefs that changed everything.
Nike's original brief to Wieden+Kennedy: "We're number two. Make us number one." The strategy wasn't in the brief. The problem was. The solution—"Just Do It"—came from creative thinking, not brief writing.
Or Volkswagen's brief to DDB in 1959: "We have a car Americans think is too small, too ugly, and Nazi-made. Change their minds." One problem. Complete honesty. The result was "Think Small"—arguably the greatest campaign of the 20th century. The brief didn't prescribe the solution. It just stated the brutal truth.
Compare that to most briefs: "Develop integrated marketing communications that increase brand awareness among target demographics while driving consideration and maintaining brand equity." Every word technically correct. No word actually useful.
So when writing briefs, I've learned to ask: if I could only keep one sentence, what problem am I actually trying to solve? Everything else might be context, but only one thing is the problem.
Start there. The solution will follow.