Great Quotes for Planners #40 -The Art of Lighting a Creative Brief

"There are two kinds of light -the glow that illuminates and the glare which obscures" -James Thurber

A fundamental task of any planner is to take a complex problem (or client brief) and turn into something which the creative teams can work with.

Generally, there is an 'expansionist' phase to this, where the planner shines a bright light into every dark crevice in order to understand the issue in its totality. This may mean interrogating the product, deconstructing the brand architecture, mining the data, wading through the trend reports, talking to the customer, etc.

While this is a necessary stage, it is critical that we don't get blinded with information. And it is even more important that we take the time to do the 'reductionist' phase and light the creative brief in an artful manner.

(photo credit: peteer01 on flickr)

Comments

[sean]

That's a real gem, thanks for sharing it. I've heard a creative say 'the planner is out guiding light' and thought that nailed it. But this adds a real nice dimension of the negative obscuring glare. The blinding nonsense of heaps of data or a milquetoast insight, as opposed to a glow. Tres joli. Thanks