The Live Brief

Sometimes, it’s best to not over analyze everything.

We often give ourselves a timeline of steps to take when receiving a brief from a client and typically, we take well beyond a day to boil it down.

…is all of that time really needed, it’s so exhausting to go through the Same.Process.Every-time.

I participated in a live brief that took place at the Havas London offices on week one, at first, I was not quite sure what was going on (as my team simply asked me to join a meeting in the cafe) then quickly understood we were being tasked to deliver a recommendation based on a 10 min brief within about an hour. The room was a mix of all agencies under the Havas network and we were quickly put into teams and set to go!

An interesting part of the briefing process was that a media vendor co-hosted it – this particular one was in collaboration with Microsoft, this allowed for framework to participants, as all recommendations had to be based on the vendors owned properties.

The teams were set to independently deconstruct, build strategy, and plan creative activation’s based on brief, while specialist from each of Microsoft platforms were available for questions (i.e. Skype, MSN, Xbox, Bing, etc.)

Once teams completed their recommendations they were given a set time later in the day to present to Havas & Microsoft representatives – and the winners received a nice reward!

A small amount of time can make a big impact……Benefits of the Live Briefing process:

Networking within the Havas Network– Our network is constantly growing, the more opportunities for our teams to come together the better

Building Partner Relationships – We often keep partners far from this process upfront but…let’s face it, we have some pretty major relationships throughout the Havas network and are under-utilizing them. Do we really know their full offering? Inviting collaborations with vendors only allows us to build more concise and meaningful brand recommendations. Let’s bring meaning to the word, partnership

Focused Creativity – Typically, when we sit with a brief, we also go about our day, run in and out of other things, and never REALLY give our full attention to it. The Live brief forces us to be in the bubble for a set period of time

Ground Work – It’s a base to build our recommendations off of – the collaboration of all teams allows for new perspective and focused thinking allows to quickly build our core Exposure — These sort of exercises allow all levels throughout the Havas community to get in front of people within the organization and others that otherwise may not happen

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In my eyes a technique that we should use more often to gain momentum on NEW and existing business!

So let’s cut to the point and host more Live Briefs!