Creative teams aren't AI. Stop briefing them like they are.
This was originally created as a think piece for posted on A Side of Greens LinkedIn page.
PLEASE stop writing the brief like a prompt.
I've opened briefs where the copy was already written. A suggested headline. A "single most important message" that ran 83 words. Reasons to believe. Proof points. And then the deliverables, each with the headline and CTA already filled in. At the very bottom... "Make it scroll-stopping."
I'm sorry, what?! lol.
And I know exactly what happens when creative teams read it. Something turns off. No, teams aren't flipping tables and dramatically storming out. They just stop searching for the idea and start plotting the fastest way to churn out deliverables. So they paste it in Claude and see what comes back. Leadership wants AI implemented anyway, right?
No shade to whoever wrote it. Buuuuut the brief was written for a tool. It's a laundry list that treats a creative team like a function: take this and make it look/sound pretty in 20 variations. You're asking for an assembly line of one-dimensional ideas.
Then the work comes back, and everybody's confused. "Why is it so flat? Why didn't the team get creative with it?" Because nobody briefed the idea.
That's a marketing brief. Is it useful? Absolutely. But it's NOT a creative brief. Which of these three pillars is actually the idea? What's this audience carrying around that the research deck didn't account for? Nobody answered that.
When it comes to impactful creative and brand, knowing a lot isn't the same as knowing what MATTERS.
A creative brief is what happens after somebody reads all of that and decides what it means. I've seen it done well. Somebody took the same research, looked at the same three pillars, and wrote one sentence: "Parents don't have a cooking problem, they have a six o'clock problem." The idea, why it matters, and what we're deliberately NOT saying. (Cue the angels singing.)
That brief makes the team lean in. There's tension to push against. They can argue with a POV. And they might even find the better idea hiding behind it.
Inspiration is the difference between a team that thinks and a team that processes. Give people a laundry list, and you've told them which one you want. Don't be shocked when they find a faster way to do it.
If you want creative teams to do what a tool can't, stop briefing them like AI.
Give them a point of view.
Then get out the way.