The Brief Bros.

No Single Individual is a unique business model. It is a company of woment strategists who work for legacy shops like Deutsch NY, FCB NY and TBWA\Chiat Day LA. Founded by Christine Olivas in 2021, No Single Individual is an "all-freelance firm [that] provides ancillary strategy and account teams to agencies across the globe, from the industry’s biggest names to hyper-local creative shops," accordi...

My co-host Henry Gomez stays connected with other strategtists, especially on LinkedIn. He received an email recently from Mark Pollard, author of Strategy Is Your Words, and a well-known and respected strategist and strategy coach. Mark had compiled a list of the top ten traits he thought all strategists shared. My buddy Henry saw a similarity between these ten traits and some things he and I tal...

Henry Gomez and I relish every chance we get to feature a young advertising talent who is already shaking things up. This week we continue our series of interviews with recent grads of US and UK advertising programs. Allow us to introduce you to Elizabeth Gordon. Elizabeth is a 2023 grad of the U of Minn's Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communications. And she came recommended to us by our...

Most creatives aspire to become creative director one day. And most creatives believe they have the chops to lead a creative department. But making the leap from art director or copywriter into a leadership role takes more than a promotion. Our guest this week is an old friend, TJ Bennett, owner and creative director at The Pudding Factory. He's back to talk about his coaching practice to help asp...

Join Henry Gomez and me for Part 2 of our conversation with a master of the artform, Neal Foard. He tells us more about his new online, self-directed tutorials at Storyfire to help you practice and polish your own stories. So sit back, grab a bowl of popcorn and take it all in. This is good, old-fashioned entertainment. For small group and corporate training in writing inspiring creative briefs, c...

For 30-odd years, Neal Foard was an advertising copywriter and creative director, working on major brands like Toyota. Then he morphed into what I call the Garrisoin Keillor of the Internet. He's a storyteller extraordinare, whose mellifluous voice is part velvet fog, part maple syrup. With thousands of presentations under his belt, Neal stands in front of a black screen and shares his life experi...

Mark Liebert leads the Marketing Training & Development Center at the ANA. His team of dedicated professionals connect subject-matter experts with ANA members to enhance their marketing and advertising skills. Since the beginning of our podcast, Henry Gomez and I have revisited the subject of training many times. So today, we meet an experienced trainer in his own right, and also an exceptiona...

It seems like an obvious question: What is the strategy? But even asking it opens a can of worms. What do you mean by "strategy"? Then you can ask, why do so few briefs ask this question? This week, Henry Gomez and I tackle the conundrum of what role strategy plays in writing a creative brief and whether the question belongs on the brief. For one-on-one, small group and corporate training in writi...

Henry Gomez and I decided to take a breather and talk about AI. No panic. No exaggeration. No gloom and doom. Just the real stuff. It's here and it ain't goin' away. What's its role in advertising creative? In the creative brief? This is only the first of what we both think will be many conversations. But after insightful chats with two guests, Tim Brunelle and Sherry Horowitz, both experts in AI,...

What is a manifesto? Is it a creative brief? Or like a creative brief? And how does a so-called "manifesto" help us understand a brand? These are some of the questions Henry Gomez and I discuss today on The Brief Bros. We review and dissect one of seventeen brand manifestos, this one for Avis, posted on LinkedIn recently by Lonnie Elliot.

Who says the advertising industry can't attract ambitious young talent? Not our guests this week on The Brief Bros. We welcome Anna Clayden and Hope Whitehead, art director and copywriter respectively. They teamed up while studying at London's premier School of Communication Arts. They join Henry Gomez and me to shed bright light on the rigors of SCA and where it has led them. And they share a spe...

Writing a great brief depends on more than great writing. Agency vet and Strategy Finishing School founder Julian Cole joins Henry Gomez and me in an insider's look at briefs. You'll learn something new after this week's episode of The Brief Bros. For example, did you know that an "artist" and a "detective" creative director respond differently to the same brief? This is only one insight Julian sh...

Love it or hate it, AI is here to stay. But like all new toys, what we don't understand tends to scare us. So this week, The Brief Bros. invited Sherry Horowitz, the self-described AI Conjurer, to talk about the intricacies of creating imagery with AI using language prompts. Her deep knowledge revealed how hard it is to use AI to its fullest. And why AI is also so powerful. There is much more to l...

We welcome the creative chairman of BBDO/Singapore, Tay Guan Hin, to this week's episode of The Brief Bros. Henry Gomez and I asked Guan about his career in art and graphic design. Guan revealed a common thread among many creatives: his parents had other plans for him. But his passions led him to advertising anyway. His new book Collide: Embracing Conflict to Boost Creativity, demonstrates how thi...

This week, Henry Gomez and I discuss a video posted by Julian Cole, a link to which we included below. He explains the differences between a marketing and a creative brief. Julian is a noted strategist, teacher and mentor to young strategists. And we have invited him to be a guest on The Brief Bros in the coming weeks. Henry and I dissect and expand on his thinking. The training I offer on brief w...

In Part 2 of our conversation with Ben Levy, creative director and presentation coach at SellItGreat.com, Henry Gomez and I ask Ben about "nuts 'n bolts" problems all presenters face. This is a fascinating and enlightening conversation you don't want to miss. For one-on-one, small group and corporate training in writing inspiring creative briefs, contact Howard Ibach at creativebriefworkshops.com...

Presentation Coach Ben Levy has made just about every mistake you can imagine as a presenter of creative work. And he'll show you how you can avoid them in his training on creative presentations. This week on The Brief Bros., Ben is our guest in a two-part episode. He is the founder and Head Coach at SellItGreat.com, and he shares his experience, his research and his practical advice to help creat...

From the "Shameless Commerce Division" of The Brief Bros. (no apologies to Car Talk's Click & Clack), today Henry Gomez quizzes me about my creative brief workshops, my promise to attendees who want to learn how to write better briefs, my teaching philosophy and how I got started. You can get the details at creativebriefworkshops.com. Batteries not included, no assembly required, not available...

As our first episode of the New Year, Henry Gomez and I review 2023 and talk about what stood out for us on The Brief Bros. Amazingly enough, Henry and I wrapped up our third year together! And we still like each other! Enjoy this conversation as we share our thoughts on what mattered most in our on-going conversation about briefs, briefing and advertising. Till next time! Bye-bye! For one-on-one,...

This week on The Brief Bros. Henry Gomez and I review and discuss a tool created by a friend and past guest, Tim Brunelle, called the Creative Brief Coach. ChatGPT is everywhere, causing either havoc or joy depending on your point of view. Tim's tool is a worthy topic because he laid out the details of its development, and gave Henry and me an argument to follow and debate. Join us as we dissect T...

Henry Gomez and I review an undated creative brief for the UK's famous soft drink Tango, ad agency unknown (if you're privy to the info, please share in the comments section). I featured this brief in my first book on the creative brief, and I included it in my rotating list of briefs for my creative brief workshops, but I have not used it in many years. Henry and I share our thoughts and I see ne...

In our ongoing series, Henry Gomez and I review a creative brief written by a London-based agency for its client, BBC. The brief was written to create a new campaign to promote the BBC's on-air coverage of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. We even have creative so you can ask yourself if the work answers the brief. For one-on-one, small group and corporate training in writing inspiring creative...

Gabi Kinney joins Henry Gomez and me this week in a continuation of our series on young talent in our industry. Gabi is a recent grad of the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the U of Minnesota, a familiar name to anyone who follow The Brief Bros. This young woman is blazing a powerful path for herself at Broadhead and we delight in quizzing her about her career trajectory. I...

Kudos to our friends Matt Davies and Pieter-Paul von Weiler, past guests on The Brief Bros., for their partnership with the Marketoonist Tom Fishburne and the Institute for Practitioners of Advertising (IPA), the oldest professional organization in our industry. They've assembled a Compendium of brilliantly drawn cartoons that reflect their global survey on creative briefs, published in 2021, and...

Today, Henry Gomez and I examine a creative brief for a popular frozen foods grocery story in the UK, Iceland. We love briefs for everyday products and services because these are the "widgets" advertising professionals cut their teeth on, creatively and strategically. That they are "everyday" things makes them real and necessary, but also challenges brief writers to find a clever and strategically...