How To Write An Inspired Creative Brief

"All of the above in a charming, personable, tongue-in-cheek style that makes How to Write an Inspired Creative Brief not only a pleasure to read, but a well-nigh essential foundation on which to build a successful advertising career." -Dave Butler, Creative Director (retired ), TBWA/CHIAT/Day, Los Angeles "Howard Ibach has written the essential brief for the briefers, a simple, memorable, enoyable book for those who need to practice the art of strategic reduction for a living. He expounds several oft-forgotten principles: simplicity, clarity, collaboration." -Steve Wehrenberg, CEO, Campbell Mithum Advertising, Minneapolis

In a step-by-step process, Howard demonstrates how five key ingredients on every creative brief work together to produce the single-minded proposition (SMP), the singular message that explains your brand's promise. Then he introduces you to two thought leaders who offer alternative ideas on where the creative brief can go.

"The Business Skills Every Creative Needs! Remaining relevant as a creative professional takes more than creativity--you need to understand the language of business. The problem is that design school doesn't teach the strategic language that is now essential to getting your job done. Creative Strategy and the Business of Design fills that void and teaches left-brain business skills to right-brain creative thinkers. Inside, you'll learn about the business objectives and marketing decisions that drive your creative work. You already have the creativity; now it's time to gain the business insight. Once you understand what the people across the table are thinking, you'll be able to think how they think to do what we do." -- Provided by publisher.

The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixar’s singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve. “Might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”—Fast Company For nearly thirty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner eighteen Academy Awards. The joyous storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable. As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the twenty-five movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as: • Give a good idea to a mediocre team and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team and they will either fix it or come up with something better. • It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them. • The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. • A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody. Creativity, Inc. has been significantly expanded to illuminate the continuing development of the unique culture at Pixar. It features a new introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts, and changes and updates throughout. Pursuing excellence isn’t a one-off assignment but an ongoing, day-in, day-out, full-time job. And Creativity, Inc. explores how it is done.

Brenda Ueland was a journalist, editor, freelance writer, and teacher of writing. In If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit she shares her philosophies on writing and life in general. Ueland firmly believed that anyone can write, that everyone is talented, original, and has something important to say. In this book she explains how find that spark that will make you a great writer. Carl Sandburg called this book the best book ever written about how to write. Join the millions of others who've found inspiration and unlocked their own talent.

Most of us have an intuitive sense of superior branding. We prefer to purchase brands we find distinctive—that deliver on some important, relevant dimension better than other brands. These brands have typically achieved positional advantage. Yet few professionals have had the formal training that goes beyond marketing theory to bridge the “theory-doing gap”—understanding the specific techniques and strategies that can be used to create brands that attain positional advantage in the marketplace. Positioning for Advantage is a comprehensive how-to guide for creating, building, and executing effective brand strategies. Kimberly A. Whitler identifies essential marketing strategy techniques and moves through the major stages of positioning a brand to achieve in-market advantage. Introducing seven tools—from strategic positioning concepts to strategy mapping to influencer maps—Whitler provides templates, frameworks, and step-by-step processes to build and manage growth brands that achieve positional advantage. This book presents real-world scenarios, helping readers activate tools to increase skill in creating brands that achieve positional advantage. Brimming with insights for students and professionals alike, Positioning for Advantage helps aspiring C-level leaders understand not only what superior branding looks like but also how to make it come to life.

A look into what lies behind creativity from one of the advertising industry's leading players Creativity isn’t an occupation; it’s a preoccupation. It is challenge for everyone in the modern world—from business and advertising to education and beyond. Here, the world-famous advertising creative John Hegarty offers a pocket bible of creative thinking, aimed at provoking, challenging, and inspiring greater heights of innovation. From Renaissance art to rock ‘n’ roll, Hegarty takes a wide-angle view of creativity as he sets out to demystify the many ups-and-downs that can arise during the creative process. Paralyzed by the blank page? Daunted by cynics in the workplace? Money leading you astray? Hegarty combines personal experience and anecdotes along with clear, pragmatic, and good-humored insight into tackling all creative challenges head on. Over fifty entries, including “Good is the Enemy of Great,” “Respect Don’t Revere,” “Get Angry,” and “Bad Weather” relay useful and generous advice on how best to improve, sustain, and nurture creativity in any profession. Accompanied by copious irreverent line drawings from Hegarty’s own sketchpad, Hegarty on Creativity is concise, accessible, and richly rewarding.

Offering insights from the spheres of anthropology, psychology, education, design, and business, Creative Intelligence by Bruce Nussbaum, a leading thinker, commentator, and curator on the subjects of design, creativity, and innovation, is first book to identify and explore creative intelligence as a new form of cultural literacy and as a powerful method for problem-solving, driving innovation, and sparking start-up capitalism. Nussbaum investigates the ways in which individuals, corporations, and nations are boosting their creative intelligence — CQ—and how that translates into their abilities to make new products and solve new problems. Ultimately, Creative Intelligence shows how to frame problems in new ways and devise solutions that are original and highly social. Smart and eye opening, Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire illustrates how to connect our creative output with a new type of economic system, Indie Capitalism, where creativity is the source of value, where entrepreneurs drive growth, and where social networks are the building blocks of the economy.

Here are the ideas, experiments, and inspiration to unfold your imagination and get your writing to flow off the page! This is the everything-you-need guide to spark new poems and unstick old stories, including lists of big, small, gross-out, and favorite words; adventurous and zany prompts to leap from; dares and double dares to help you mash up truths and lies into outrageous paragraphs; and letters of encouragement written directly to you from famous authors, including: Annie Barrows, Naomi Shihab Nye, Lemony Snicket, C. M. Mayo, Elizabeth Singer Hunt, Moira Egan, Gary Soto, Lucille Clifton, Avi, Betsy Franco, Carol Edgarian, Karen Cushman, Patricia Polacco, Prartho Sereno, Lewis Buzbee, and C. B. Follett. This is your journal for inward-bound adventures—use it to write, brainstorm, explore, imagine—and even rip!