Working to a brief

A wide variety of jobs and projects in the media industry require the use and understanding of briefs. These briefs can come in all different forms, from formal to informal to contractually binding to simply spoken word. Briefs are an important of the media sector and can require a range of skills particularly when it comes to negotiating terms and working within the guidelines outlined in a brief.

 

Contractual briefs

require a legally binding document with whoever you’re working for. This is normally a highly formal way of constructing a brief as it has to be extremely clear to both parties what is expected as the whole thing is done within legal frame work. In the brief the client will state clear guide lines that must be followed if the company does not they could face legal action taken against them. 

 

cooperative brief

This is a type of brief where there are multiple companies brought in by a client to work together on the brief created by the client. Both companies coaberate on the project this means that there can be conflict between both the companies which would mean that they could use a negotiated brief to fix any of these issues.

 

 

Negotiated Briefs 

This is when all parties involved in the brief negotiate the terms, this type of brief has many benefits as it allows for a clear communication between all people involved. It creates an opportunity for the clients and creators to discuss any ideas or issues they have with a project.  

 

Informal Brief 

This is normally a verbal brief used when a client will simply state what they would like to be done. These briefs are not legally binding. This type of brief can often mean that there is more discussion between the two leading to the creator having a full and complete idea of what it is that they are being asked to create. 

 

Competition Brief 

This type of brief comes up when a company will simply state what they are looking for usually on a online platform of some kind and creators will pitch ideas to the company. This type of brief is hugely beneficial for the companies because it means that they get to choose the best possible piece of work out of all the entries.

 

http://www.iamcreative.org.uk offers such briefs to young creators offering them competition briefs from companies. In the five million young futures brief they asked for a viral marketing campaign to draw attention to their charity works. This required creators to have an understanding of exactly what they were asking for including; a knowledge of the brand, their target audience and something that could quickly catch on. They also made it clear in the brief they did not want to use the standard tropes for charity advertising, which usually employ emotive content used to make the audience donate. They were looking for something to make people feel happy and gave several examples of marketing campaigns that they wanted to emulate. The target audience they were aiming for were young people so around 16 to 25 but other than that the aim was pretty broad so a creator would have to make something that could span all other demographics other than age. 

 

formal brief 

This is when a client gives a media company a brief of what they want and gives enough information for the company to create the product the client is employing them to made. These briefs are formally agreed on but are not always legally binding whereas a contractual brief is.

 

For example with the brief we were set for the Cornwall Channel project, it was a formal brief working for a real client in a very short space of time. In the brief was outlined the certain parameters that were necessary for it to be shown on TV, this required things such as, no swearing, no copyrighted music or footage and for it to be appropriate for it to be shown on TV. It also had to be localised for Cornwall as the channels main brand identity is tied very closely with cornwall and cornish culture. 

 

Tender Brief 

 

In this instance a client will advertise their brief and a media company will put together a concept that they will pitch to the client, this means that lots of companies could potentially pitch to the same client, the client will then choose the concept that they think best suits their brief and offer the job to that production company.

 

commission brief

 

When a big media company will employ a smaller media company to make the product, the larger company will then use said product for a client. Who will then pay the smaller media company, the brief is only negotiated using the larger media company as a middleman.