So Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense plays a character who’s already dead. Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father and Hugh Grant ends up never marrying in Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Fun right, all those spoilers?

Well, apologies if you haven’t seen these movies yet (shame on you). They’re still great to watch. Really. You just know how it ends now.

The same goes for briefings. It’s about something you want to explain, nuance, get other (the agency people) excited about. Instead of building up the suspense to that afternoon meeting, people send it as a pre-read.

A pre-read.

So what happens is that an account person gets this, reads it, forwards it with comments to the strategy person. This strategy person reads it and the comments attached and replies back whilst forwarding to the ECD, who then reads it along with all the comments, and replies with their comments. Tone has been set.

Next day the marketer enters and 3 people happily (or less happy) welcome this person. The marketer starts going through the brief (hopefully it’s brief, not long) and presents the objective and meanings. At least, that’s what the marketer thinks. The others have already been biased by them reading the pre-read and might not get the nuance the marketer is going for. And somehow the agency people kinda lip sync along with the brief… aren’t they excited, challenged, surprised?

You can see how this can lead to proposals that don’t seem to hit the nail, all kinds of frustration back and forth and so on. And let’s blame the agency for any undesired outcome. All because of that pre-read.

There’s an easy solution to this. Just don’t send a pre-read of a briefing. Save the momentum. Cherish the nuance.

Double the action, triple the excitement.