Categories: Articles

Where Does Amazing Work Come From?

Every brand wants amazing work. Every agency wants to create amazing work for the brands that they represent.

It doesn’t just happen. The cash register doesn’t start ringing on its own. Having consumers talk about a brand is rarely something that starts as organically as it seems. People often ask me about where great ideas come from. There needs to be a root. A foundation. A beginning point. An agreement between the brand and the agency about where they must wind up. We live in a results-oriented world now. It’s a place where every piece of creative can (and should) be tested and analyzed. We also live in a real-time environment, where even TV commercials can be posted on YouTube to see how they perform. Measurable, real-time and there’s lots of it. Advertising takes on many different forms now. Much more than the traditional, TV, radio, print and out-of-home model. Native advertising, search engine marketing, sponsored tweets and more. The stakes have never been higher.

Everything starts with a great brief.

What looks like a simple document is – in reality – an agreement of how audacious and serious a brand is about making the right impression. You won’t find a marketing professional who doesn’t take the brief for what it is: page one of a much bigger story. So, how do the most creative people in the world think and use the brief? It turns out that Bassett & Partners (a brand and strategy design firm) wanted to know the answer, so they created an incredible mini-documentary titled, Briefly. If you are curious about how to write a better brief or how to deal with the briefing process (and who isn’t it), please watch this… and share it with your team… and the brands that you represent.

Here it is: Briefly…

Briefly from Bassett & Partners on Vimeo.

(hat-tip to Min at Twist Image for the find).

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.