That focus group reply made me rethink my whole brief approach

Been writing ad briefs for 6 years. Always packed them with data points, metrics, every bit of research we had. Last month a focus group in Austin, this older guy said, 'I don't care about any of this, just tell me if it's worth my money.' He was the third person to say something similar that day. Realized I was burying the actual point under numbers. Clients were nodding along but the end consumer saw through it. Now I lead every brief with one simple sentence about the core promise. Has anyone else trimmed their briefs down and seen better results?

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the_oscar13d ago

Ha, six years of cramming data into briefs and the REAL takeaway is people just want to know if their money's worth it. I once wrote a 14 page brief that was basically a spreadsheet with a smiley face at the end. Now I try to keep it to one paragraph and my boss acts like I'm being lazy, but the client actually remembers the pitch now. That Austin guy was doing us all a favor, honestly we were just building sandcastles for ourselves.