Sunday, April 30, 2006

A creative brief and a baby walker

I got my 6 month old son a walker, complete with some music which gets him going. It was quite an experience putting Anirudhha on the walker for the first time. When I did so, I could first see that Anirudhha was not a happy baby. He didn’t seem to like getting confined to a small frame with wheels which had a padded seat and backrest to support him. His defense mechanism worked to the fullest, he wouldn’t leave my shirt as he was getting dropped in his walker for the first time. When I did manage to wriggle out of his hold and stepped back with anxiety as to how my baby son would respond. He did with a kind of a war cry, he didn’t seem to like his new walker.

I pulled Anirudhha off the walker puzzled thinking what I should be doing, to make him enjoy sitting in there. Then stepped in my wife, she was quite confident that he would start liking his walker and he would be comfortable in it.

Roopa first took Anirudhha for a guided tour of his walker, she first made him hear the musical sounds from the walker. He was smiling, that was an improvement. She then took Anirudhha’s finger near the buttons that would teach him Cat, Hen, Cow, Dog etc. My son was amused to hear different sounds, he slowly started moving his hands trying to make his own musical sounds. He was happy, slowly he was getting to know his new friend, the walker.

And now Roopa makes him sit in the walker, he seems happy. He kept pressing different buttons for his dose of music and also started to move slowly. Wow what a sight it was to see my baby son trying to take his first steps using a walker.

It was then I was remembered about the creative briefs we write, it has quite a few similarities to my sons walker.

Similarity in terms of acceptance by the creative folks… The story is similar to putting my son on the walker, here it is putting a brief on my creative team.

When I walk into my creative teams room with a brief in hand, the first thing I would face is rejection.

I wouldn’t take any brief now, we loaded.

This brief is a cliché, it sucks as usual

Hey you have just cut paste your previous brief, given it a new name and got it here

I am not taking any of your briefs now

Here I take Roopa’s approach. Try show my creative team the colorful carrot my brief would buy them, in terms of awards & accolades, a raise and how interesting life is going to be after they finish working on this wonder brief from me.

Once I finish doing this first round, I would see some kind of an acceptance. And now I sit down with them and try take them through my brief.

Here they go, this product wouldn’t sell.
It doesn’t make any sense

Now, I try show them the other support I have to prove that this indeed is a good product and it would sell. I barely manage to convince them.

Now the discussion veers to the proposition.

We can’t take this, this is rubbish
Now the third and final round of convincing them starts. This time to prove how interesting the proposition is. And I do manage to sell my brief and I would have my work ready in a couple of days. What a life getting kids and creative folks on the walker!!

2 comments:

Sajan said...

As you know Women are entirely different sex. What works for them may not work for us. So if you are trying your wife's approach in your office, it may work better if you are a woman.

And about handling babies, trust me, they are naturally better experts than us. For example, my wife can open the door lock carrying the baby with no extra effort. But to me it's two things to be done at the same time. It's one tough multi-task for me.

RajaB said...

Sajan... Woman indeed are a different sex as you say. But the issue here is about patience & common sense. The more patient you are, be it office or home, be you a man or woman the greater is the chance of acceptance. But your approach should be commonsensical, and that is most important.