October 4, 2021
Briefing for social creatives isn’t always as straightforward as many people think. To help make sure your social briefs always hit the mark, we’re going to run through some quick tips you should always keep in mind when briefing yo ur designers to ensure that you’re collaborating and outputting effectively.
Don’t be too descriptive:
One of the most frequent and most frustrating briefing styles is being far too descriptive or prescriptive. For example, if you brief your design team and cover off each element of the creative in a strict fashion – you remove the opportunity for creativity and restrict your designer’s ability to flex their creative muscles.
Additionally, too many parameters can create more problems than they solve. By removing autonomy from your designers, they no longer have the ability to make sensible decisions to enhance or improve creative assets. And, most importantly, if you brief too prescriptively too frequently, you’ll quickly break down any trust between yourself and your designers.
Now, this isn’t to say that you can’t be descriptive when the situation requires it. For example, if you have a very strict brief from a client – it’s important to take that into consideration. The important lesson here is to understand when there’s an opportunity to let creativity take the wheel and seizing that moment to delight your clients.
Quick Wins vs Creativity:
To try and maintain a balance between output and creativity. For example, if you’re briefing 4-5 creatives to your design team, consider having 3-4 of those briefs being simple outputs (EG: single social cards with text) while giving your designers more room to flex creative muscles on the last few.
This provides your design team with an opportunity to create great content while also outputting a larger volume of assets. Resulting in a happier client, happier design team and far better creatives.
Trust your Designers:
Whilst there will always be some elements of creatives that must be cemented for specific brand reasons such as logo position, size or colour – place faith in your designers when there is room for creativity.
The fact of the matter is that your designers will know how to make thumb-stopping creatives and by only providing them with cookie-cutter options – your creatives will never be able to reach the heights it needs to stop your audience in their scrolling tracks!
Watch the full Serious Social Live these tips are taken from: