How Scale-Ups Have the Chance to Rewrite the Client Brief

It would be fair to say that many of us who have worked in the media industry have formed a love-hate relationship with the client brief over the years. 

My mind would race, full of optimism when receiving a new brief. This was often short-lived when basic information was missing, and it was apparent that no proper care had been taken. I began to think that the brief had become a fleeting thought, pushed to the bottom of the to-do list. I believed I’d never set eyes on a streamlined, illuminating brief again. 

Thankfully, working alongside scale-up businesses has restored my hope in the medium. They have granted me vital insight into how the briefing process can be improved. This is something that established brands should take heed of if they wish to stay ahead of their competitors and fully use their media agency.

What’s the risk of a broken brief?

In an ideal world, a brief will strike a balance between immediate challenges and longer-term ambitions. In reality, when coordinating the brief comes around, short-termism is commonplace as clients are already focusing on the next campaign or are most likely buried under a mountain of work.

Complacency appears to have seized some brands and buried itself deep into the company’s inner workings. Businesses believe that the tactics that got them to where they are must be sound, so why would a brand-strategy meeting be needed to discuss longer-term growth ambitions? 

I’ll tell you why. Protecting future growth. In the recent earnings call, ASOS CEO, José Antonio Ramos Calamonte, admitted that more than 80% of the fashion giant’s marketing investment had been focused on performance marketing. And as such, its focus on short-term returns left insufficient spend for building 'longer-term brand awareness'. And the impact has been well and truly felt. Not only did customer acquisition slow, but the cost to acquire a new customer increased.  

The brand did have a plan to act, announcing in April it would increase marketing investment in the second half of 2022. Yet, global supply chain issues caused headwinds for the business, forcing it to cut investment once more. But in its attempts to minimise the impact on profitability, customer acquisition declined even further. 

ASOS’ lack of concern about the long-term should act as a wake-up call. Even for titans of industry, what worked in the past, doesn’t get you where you want to be tomorrow. What’s needed is a fine-tuned, well-formatted marketing brief that prioritises - and protects - future growth. Interestingly, scale-ups internal dynamics make them the perfect business type to ‘fix the brief’. 

Scale-up Saviour 

Understanding the inner workings of your client’s business may seem impossible for agencies working with established, global businesses with huge marketing teams and multiple client stakeholders. But when the founders and co-founders are just one click away, there is a genuine chance to feel closer to the business.

Though having limited time and resources, scale-ups don’t face the inner bureaucratic blockades that big brands face. They’re able to approach challenges with a more agile and flexible perspective, which makes them ideally suited to consider alternatives to the static annual plan and brief.

Here is what this new holistic approach could look like: 

Step 1 - The process starts by assimilating what’s essential. Initiate a client immersion workshop, inviting the senior team to share results, visions and future ambitions. Encourage every idea to be fully explored and dissected so no stone is left unturned. 

Step 2 - Take the finalised inputs and map out current business performance to understand existing strengths and weaknesses along the customer purchase journey. For example: Are you winning at conversion to purchase but losing at retention and loyalty? You want to be able to remove sources of friction along the customer journey. 

Step 3 - Formulate a growth plan with a clear set of prioritised actions, responsibilities and targets to improve optimisation at each stage. After each campaign, the growth plan should be updated to ensure continued progress towards the agreed longer-term strategy. This approach forces you to consider how short-term decisions can support longer-term ambitions.

By establishing a broader framework for growth that encourages atypical views and approaches, you can pinpoint where you’re going, the strategy to get there and how to understand effectiveness along the way. And while the last few years have proven that life can sometimes be unpredictable, if we can learn anything from other brands' past failings, it’s that a holistic approach can make the journey to the top far clearer. Most importantly, it will prevent you from thinking of each brand action as a single snapshot. This is truly all about the bigger picture.