The Brief Bros.

Henry Gomez and I have added a new series to The Brief Bros.: Conversations with recent college grad about their new careers. Today, we are proud to present Tyrese Leverty, a recent grad from the University of Minnesota's Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communications. He was recommended to us by our old friend Mark Jenson, a venerable instructor at Hubbard. Tyrese is a brand planner and he...

Did you know that the famous poster of Uncle Sam pointing his finger and declaring, "I want you..." is more than 100 years old? Henry Gomez and I stumbled across this iconic image as we searched for old ads to discuss, and we decided it warranted an episode of its own. We have good reasons, too. Tune in and find out.

Henry Gomez and I look closely at a clever ad from Johnson & Johnson's Band-Aid brand of band aids and together we discuss what we see and voila! We write a brief. And we post the brief within the episode for your viewing enjoyment (not available in stores). Henry and I urge all ad folk to practice this bit of thought exercise everyday to keep your brief-writing skills sharp.

Another shout-out to Baiba Matisone whose Creative Brief Bank provided the impetus for today's episode of #thebriefbros. It's a Crispen Porter Bogusky brief for Best Buy. Henry Gomez and I have always admired the agency's work, but do we love this brief? Watch and find out!

Henry Gomez and I do a deep-dive into a creative brief written by someone affiliated with the One Show. It's for a competition among "Young Gun" creative teams with a prize attached, a free Gameboy. Henry and I examine this brief and share with you our thoughts. It's another in a series we love to do where we look closely at a real brief. Thanks again to our friend Baiba Matisone, who posted this...

First, special thanks to Baiba Matisone, who appeared on The Brief Bros., for posting this creative brief on her Creative Brief Bank. Henry Gomez and I did a top to bottom examination of this brief and shared our thoughts in this episode. We agreed...mostly. But even where we disagreed, we aligned on one thing: It's a great example of a single-page, well-written and inspiring document. Watch and l...

Henry Gomez and I debate a seemingly mundane question: should a creative brief include deliverables or is that the creatives' job to recommend? Some of the finest briefs do not even ask the question. Others ask simply for the "Big Idea" while still others require every tactic. Where do you stand?

Last week, we heard from Sarah Walker-Hall and her take on the brief she wrote for Kiwi shoe polish. This week, Henry Gomez and I discuss and dissect the brief ourselves. I weighed in with my high praise when Sarah and I spoke, and today I continue my rave but this time with a chance to hear Henry share his thoughts as well. We love this brief and you have much to learn from it.

Last week, we met Sarah Walker-Hall, brand strategy group head at TRG in Dallas. She is a veteran strategist whose skills and dexterity as a thinker can teach all brief writers how to write better briefs. Today, she and I dive deep into her award-winning brief for Kiwi shoe polish, the resulting campaign for which also won awards. Sarah will pull back the curtain and share with us how she wrote th...

You could say I waited 20 years to meet and talk to Sarah Walker-Hall. She authored a creative brief I have read, admired, written about and taught from almost since I began my latest career as a brief-writing instructor. In the first of a two-part series, we meet this remarkable woman who began her career in branding and found her way to strategy and planning. She has worked three times for TRG,...

We've had wonderful conversation with Marc Lewis, dean of London's famed School of Communication Arts. Today, Henry Gomez and I talk to two of his recent graduates: Jess Saunders and Roh Kerr, about their experiences at SCA, how they teamed up as writer/AD partners. And then Henry and I put them through a test: we reviewed a famous TV spot from the 1970s for Samsonite luggage, the one with the gor...

The final episode of our Hulu summer re-broadcast: Drum roll, please! Today we reveal our finished (draft) creative brief. Henry Gomez and Howard Ibach wrap up our exercise of writing a creative brief for Hulu. We’ll take you through every question on the brief and show you how Henry applied his thought-process to arrive at his final (draft) brief. We emphasize that it’s still a first draft becaus...

Part 2 of our Hulu brief writing summer re-broadcast: Henry Gomez and Howard Ibach continue the thinking process around writing a creative brief for Hulu. Henry has unearthed some juicy intel on Hulu right on its own website. He found Hulu brand guidelines, a treasure trove of insider goodies. We dig deeper and start to add initial ideas on sticky notes we placed around each box that we created on...

Henry Gomez and I are taking a short break in August, so we're re-broadcasting three popular episodes: our series on writing a creative brief for Hulu, a spec assignment prompted by viewers on LinkedIn. We'll see you again in September with new guests and new topics: Let the writing begin! Henry Gomez and Howard Ibach take the opening steps in the brief writing process, first with exploration and...

Our friend George Tannenbaum wrote an essay on his Ad Aged blog recently that sparked our interest. It was called I'll Be Brief and it's a great read about, what else, the creative brief. And it got Henry Gomez and me thinking. And talking. Are our expectations of a brief overblown? George makes this claim, and Henry and I respond. We invite you to tune in.

If only we could see the actual brief. Henry Gomez and I give you the next best thing: our take in another reverse engineering exercise on this week's episode of The Brief Bros. for BMW's unforgettable print campaign. Watch as we take you through our thinking to arrive at what could be the brief.

The Brief Bros. co-host Howard Ibach proudly announces a new feature on his website, the Creative Brief Archive. It's a free repository of finished creative briefs written by ad agency strategists for real products. There's also a growing list of student-written creative briefs. The briefs are broken down by Agency and Brand. Simply register with your name and email address and you're in. There ar...

You all remember this spot from the 2010 Super Bowl: Betty White stars in a Snickers spot that kicked off a brilliant campaign to reposition the popular candy bar. Henry Gomez and I dig in and write a brief simply by watching the spot. We call it a reverse engineering exercise, something all brief writers should practice. Join us in the fun.

Two, two, two mints in one: great creative from Apple in its classic spots for the I'm a Mac campaign, and our attempt to write the brief in a reverse-engineering exercise. Henry Gomez and I have a lot of fun in this week's episode as we revisit what Adweek called the best advertising campaign of the 2000s by TBWA\Chiat\Day. Play along and write the brief with us. It's a great skill tester.

Joining Henry Gomez and me from Berlin, Baiba Matisone is a freelance strategist and creative brief devotee. She posted a list of blank creative brief templates that Henry and I surveyed on a recent episode, as well as completed briefs and thoughtful articles. The site, Creative Brief Bank, is well worth the visit. We talked to Baiba about her background, how a college professor shooed her away fr...

Henry Gomez and I have preached the importance of insightful and inspiring "answers" on briefs to get the most from our creative partners. But what, if anything, can we learn as brief writers from a template? A blank template? Today, we examine a couple templates from legacy shops and discuss what we uncover.

Reverse engineering is a wonderfully effective training device to get brief writers into the right mind-set for writing a real brief. It's a thought exercise you can do everyday, probably in less than a minute. Today, Henry Gomez and I watch a :60 spot for Amazon Prime and then "reverse engineer" the spot and figure out the brief. We don't know everything the agency (Weiden + Kennedy) knows, nor w...

Our two guests from Account Planners Group Canada are Mark Tomblin , founder of Thinking Unstuck, and Michelle Lee, principal Uncommon Sense, who hold senior leadership positions with Canada's strategy organization. Henry Gomez and I dive deep into brief writing, brief training, and the industry's future with Mark and Michelle.

Henry Gomez knows more than most of us about the competitive world of cosmetic surgery. His dad is a practicing cosmetic surgeon, and Henry wrote a brief for him. This week, we examine Henry's efforts so you can see again how a professional tackles the challenges of a small budget project with a big challenge.

This week, Henry (http://henrylouisgomez.com) and I welcome back an old friend, Marc Lewis. He's the dean of the most successful independent advertising school on the planet, SCA, the School of Communication Arts in London. It is heralded as "The World's Most Awarded Ad School." Marc returns to share with us news about SCA's Creative Training (https://www.scacreativetraining.com) and to encourage...