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A few weeks ago, there was an article in Ad Age, Want More Out of Your Agencies? Write Better Briefs. True to Ad Age biases, it layed all the blame on Clients who didn’t provide clear enough direction to their BDA.
The article, based on a research “study”, went on to say that 30% of agency time is wasted because of crappy briefs, 40% of briefs give poor direction and only 1% give clear performance expectations.
Those are pretty lame numbers. Sure, Clients might be lazy about doing the math on performance expectations, but, I don’t think the Client is completely to blame. If BDA’s want a better brief, provide better direction.
Not ONCE have I ever received a template from an agency on how my brief should look or what information I should provide. So, I make it up on my own. Since I don’t live in the agency world, I have no idea what information BDA’s may or may not need or what information they truly care about it.
Problems always have two sides. If BDA’s and Clients worked together as partners and didn’t leave the other in the dark, maybe the Brief wouldn’t be such a pain point or time waster.
Ad Age has no horses in this race, so I’m not sure why it’d have biases. In fact we’re usually accused of being biased towards marketers, not agencies. But we try to remain objective and look for marketing and media news and insights that will help marketers connect with and sell to consumers, regardless of whether it might be framed as positive or negative for either advertiser or agency.
That’s cool. This article, like others I’ve read, seem to pity the agencies and never get the flip side from the client’s POV.