Why we tell people to give us an impossible brief
Spoiler alert: its mostly because it’s 2021.
Initially it was just a comment. Just opening up to let people tell us what’s on their mind in an unvarnished way, not in the way agencies have educated them to think is professional.
The gist of the conversation was:
“Just give us the goal you need to shoot for, be direct around the constraint you face into in the real world, and don’t be worried about whether the two can fit together yet.”
Then we started to ask for briefs like that every time. The result felt more like a dare than a scope — which is why the work was better.
Right now a dare is more professional than a traditional brief.
Why? Because these are not normal times.
Inviting the impossible brief
There’s a weird dance clients and agencies or consultants go through when they first meet.
We’ve partly convinced ourselves that this conversation is an admin process. The shaping of a client starting point into an agency scope. On the flipside, we also have this need to perform our methodology as if every challenge that can be imagined must fit through the same set of steps. Even though we know that wasn’t ever how the good work happened.
It’s always been needing a refresh. Right now we actually *have* to do things differently. Boring briefs don’t fit interesting times — and accepting them turns agencies and consultancies into knowledge alibis
These are scary times perhaps, uncertain times for sure, but opportunities for real change by their nature.
The charade of looking at strategy, or marketing, or product development in 2021 as if the methodologies of 2019 are still what’s needed is so plainly wrong it takes a vested interest not to see it.
The only strategic questions worth asking at the moment are these:
What’s the previously impossible product your customers now seem to be asking for?
What’s the previously impossible timescale you need to have impact by?
What’s the thing you need to ask of your supply chain you are pretty sure your current partners can’t deliver?
Whats the previously impossible thing that we have to make happen now?
If you aren’t asking these questions then to some level you haven’t understood 2021.
What makes 2021 different
The world economy has been paralysed for over a year and is now starting to re-open. The enforced reset of strategy, ways of doing business and consumer behaviour that comes with that means that whole industries are looking at the world with a new perspective.
Leaders are feeling a need, and getting pushed by investors, to imagine this moment not just as some chance to get back to pre-pandemic normality. It’s a chance to Build Back Better.
If the rest of us are to help that process we need to change the way we do things.
The only brief worth writing right now is one that we would previously have called impossible. So it’s the only one we should be asking for.
How to write the impossible brief
Like a lot of good things. sometimes the radical thing is the simplest version.
For me the right way to frame the challenge right now is:
Clarity on the goal ( we need to achieve ______)
Clarity on the constraint (without ______, or before ______ )
Clarity on why this matters (so that we can ______)
If you get that straight, and get in front of the right people, then there are a whole host of new solutions being found.
I’ll share more on how we are answering the impossible briefs here soon — but this shouldn’t be a Label Ventures only thing.
If we are going to face into the challenges of 2021 the least we can do is be direct about them.
If you want to test this whole thing out then you can just book in to dare us and put us through our paces below;
To find out more about Label Ventures visit label.ventures
