If you've been in this business long enough you know both sessions. The grinding one where good ideas feel like they're hiding from you. And the rare, almost heady one where they just arrive. I had one of those recently...and it surprised me.

It was a warm spring afternoon in March this year and still early in Myriad's pivot. I was headed to a creative session for a new client with my longtime business partner, the ever ready Tony Cope. As I zipped in and out of traffic, I was mulling what it felt like to be back on the frontlines of creative production after years of agency leadership. Honestly, I was not really looking forward to the occasion. Sure, early in my career, brainstorming concepts was a key part of the fun of running a production company: anything goes, the more weird and distinct the better. Plus, there was an element of collegial competition involved. Prost to the co-worker who threw out the winner.

But after 30+ years, I've taken a lot of swings and "enjoyed" a fair share of misses. I've seen a lot and have come to feel wariness (and weariness too, for that matter) at the creative stage. As most of us know, dreaming up ideas that convey what a brand wants to say in a fresh, clear manner that also happens to work within the budget is a helluva challenge.

So as I pulled my sporty Honda Civic Hatch (aka "Champ") into a space and headed to the conference room I was naturally cautious. Creative sessions long on ambition and short on truly meaningful context about the audience yield what I can only characterize as mild mental pain mixed with doubt and fatigue.

When You Know Your Audience

Yet this particular session would prove different. Tony and I started with reflecting on the brief. This was the project's second attempt, the first pass having been too thin to be formative. We confirmed the basic items we'd need to share during the pitch with the client and honed our methodology, then…we just started talking.

The first idea came relatively quickly and was the standard low hanging fruit; the next perfectly imperfect, but interesting still. We took turns excitedly scribbling on the whiteboard. Those who know our handwriting can likely envision its "Pollock as a kindergartner" qualities. We thumbed through a set of audience comments from a survey we'd advocated hard for. The same survey that helped deepen that skimpy first brief.

Eventually, because of those comments and the people who gave them, we had what turned out to be the winner. I don't recall if it was Tony or me and don't care. Prost to both of us. Most importantly, to the client who embraced the idea of human centered questions and the audience who poured their lived experience into the answers, giving us everything we needed to know about what to say and how to say it. Indeed, this creative session felt different. Effortless, even. Simply because the audience had a seat at the table. They gave us the playbook in return.

When the Brief Leaves the Audience Out

But that's all too rare. I've been in creative sessions informed by briefs that are probably in the top 20% of what video production companies receive: narrative arcs, core messaging, tone direction, inspiration references. Someone worked hard on those. And still, there is a consistent flaw that reliably turns those sessions foggy, fatiguing and frustrating: a one dimensional, bullet point portrayal of the complex humans in the audience. One experience comes to mind (audience notes from a real brief, details removed):

• CEOs and decision makers.
• Heads of government bodies.
• Employees.
• Current perception: awareness exists but understanding is limited.

That's it. That's everything we were told about the people the video was meant to move. Not what keeps them up at night. Not what they believe. Not what would make them trust this or dismiss it. Not what's happening in their unique corner of the world that makes a message either timely or irrelevant.

The Question Nobody Asked

And so: that brief knew exactly what the brand wanted to say. But it had almost no idea what the audience needed to hear. The creative coming out of it could turn risky; more like throwing a dart without glasses on than aiming with precision.

But here's the thing: it's not whether the brief was good enough. It's whether anyone in the process stopped to ask the audience anything at all so the ideas that followed reflected their lived experience. One conversation before the brief changes everything.