Every Brief Deserves a Different Answer

There is a question we're asked at the beginning of almost every project, regardless of whether it's a marketing strategy, a brand refresh or a major live event.

"So, what do you think we should do?"

It's a perfectly reasonable question, but it's one we rarely answer straight away. Not because we don't have ideas, and certainly not because we're trying to be mysterious. The truth is much simpler than that. At the beginning of a project, we know almost nothing. We know what we've been told, we know what the client believes the challenge is, and we know what outcome they're hoping to achieve. What we don't know yet is whether those things all point to the same solution.

That's probably the biggest misconception about consultancy. People often assume they are buying answers, when in reality they're buying perspective. Our job isn't to arrive with a process we've already decided to follow or a presentation that's been lightly adapted from the last client. Our job is to understand enough about the business, the people behind it and the challenges they're facing that the right answer has a chance to reveal itself.

Sometimes that's reassuring for a client.

Sometimes it's frustrating.

There are occasions where someone comes to us convinced they need a new website, only for us to spend an hour talking about their business without mentioning their website once. By the end of the conversation it becomes clear that the website isn't really the problem at all. It's simply reflecting a business that hasn't yet found the clearest way to explain what it does or why people should care. Building a new website at that point would simply give the same problem a nicer design.

The same thing happens in events. We've seen briefs that begin with ambitious production ideas, elaborate stage designs or requests for more entertainment, only to discover that the audience experience has never really been defined. Before deciding what people will see, hear or remember, we have to understand what they're actually supposed to feel. Without that, every decision that follows is based on assumption rather than intention.

Those conversations are rarely quick, and they're not always comfortable either. They involve asking questions that don't have immediate answers, challenging ideas that may have existed for years and occasionally suggesting a completely different direction from the one that was expected. That isn't because we enjoy making things more complicated. Quite the opposite. It's because we've learned that the shortest route to a solution isn't always the first route that presents itself.