The Anti-Creative Brief

Want better ads?

Try this:

Tear up your next creative brief.

That polished doc with bulletproof CTAs, tone-of-voice guardrails, avatar deep dives, and 16 bullet points?

Yeah — that one.

Most briefs don’t inspire great creative.

They contain it.

They make the work “correct.”

And “correct” is usually just another word for forgettable.

They keep teams aligned.

But alignment often means middle-of-the-road.

And middle-of-the-road = skipped in-feed.

The brief is a control mechanism.

It’s built to mitigate risk. To satisfy stakeholders. To avoid mistakes.

But breakthrough ads — the ones people notice — aren’t safe.

They’re messy. Specific. Sometimes…wrong.

They push past the brand voice.

They sound like someone real — not a polished corporate deck.

So try this instead:

Throw the playbook in the trash.

Give your creatives something weird.

A prompt. A meme. A screenshot from Reddit.

A review full of spelling mistakes.

A 2am Slack message that reads more like a dare than a direction.

Write the brief like a friend texting an idea mid-scroll.

Don’t tell them what to say.

Show them something that makes them feel.

Flip the Frame:

TL;DR:

If your briefs are safe, your ads probably are too.

And safe ads don’t get remembered.

So next time, brief like it doesn’t matter.

Because that’s when it usually does.

Best,
Peter Delle
Media Buying Consulting