Briefing & AI: the right reflexes to adopt

What if your best briefing partner was… an AI that asks you questions? 🤖 We use artificial intelligence to generate answers. Yet, the best ideas always start with the right questions. In an era of express requests and endless back-and-forth communication, communicators would be wise to shift their approach: fewer instant responses, more questioning increased ????

Being interviewed to structure a brief, challenging a document before sending it, exploring new creative avenues, crash-testing a message with your personas, translating your graphic identity into actionable terms… This approach is not a renunciation of expertise.On the contrary: AI doesn't replace the communicator, it reveals their requirements. In short, moving from a brief that describes to a brief that asks questions ✨

So, how do we make...AI: A true partner in thinking Without delegating the brief to someone else? What mistakes should you avoid, what reflexes should you adopt? And how can you improve clarity from the very first draft? We'll break it down with concrete examples and ready-to-use prompts: a practical toolbox to move, once and for all, from confusion to clarity 🚀

Back to the basics of the brief

The brief, or briefing, generally refers to an information meeting: instructions, recommendations, directives… It's the starting point for any communication project. No, it's not a mere administrative formality; it's an essential strategic management tool.

So, what exactly is the point of a good brief?

• To have a written recordto limit oral exchanges and potential misunderstandings.
• Give a clear basis to a communication project.
• To have a guideline common ground with all stakeholders.
• Enabling the COM manager to know the workload of the collaborator.
• Provide a frame for all stakeholders.
• Organize the work according to deadlines
• Having all the information necessary to build the communication plan and having a clear vision of the course

And what are the risks of a bad brief?

• A series of back-and-forth trips : each "corrected" version calls for a new one, without any criteria to decide.
• Time wasted on both sides : for the communicator who is redoing, as for the applicant who is waiting.
• A mutual frustration : the applicant does not feel understood, the communicator feels reduced to mere execution.
• A tarnished image of the profession : the COM risks being perceived as a production and execution function, not an advisory one.

Ultimately, the brief is the communicator's score: an orchestra conductor who composes with different teams and different constraints.

The 5 components of a solid brief 

• The issue

The issue must be clearly stated by the client. What are the objectives of this project? What is the desired outcome? Precisely defining the issue will influence the quality of the consultation and therefore the work delivered.

How to define objectives? With the SMART method Your objectives must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

However, be careful not to confuse the stakes, which provide meaning, with the objectives, which provide direction. This common confusion invariably leads to a vague brief. “I want to create an impactful campaign” or “I want to increase visibility” are not objectives, but stakes. In other words, if I cannot measure the outcome of my request, it is a stake, not an objective.

The correct reasoning? Issues > objectives > KPIs > Actions.

1. The challenges define the strategic framework
2. The objectives provide a clear target
3. KPIs allow us to evaluate
4. Actions serve objectives (and not the other way around).

• Target

It is essential to specify the core target audience you wish to reach in order toto guide communication. This primary target audience should be distinguished from the secondary target audience. Age, gender, socio-professional category, values, aspirations, consumption habits… The more details you provide about your target audiences, the more relevant your actions will be.

• Constraints

We know it, Creativity is born from constraints! The constraints for communication can be diverse: respect for the graphic charter, respect for regulations, respect for partners… These must be identified before starting the execution of a project.

However, be careful not to be too restrictive: the more the guidelines are drawn, the more difficult it will be to explore new territories, to take a step aside and to gain originality.

• The means

Resources are the means. Budget, required skills, time spent, channels used… Resources enableto provide a structured and realistic response to the constraints encountered.

• The indicators

Finally, the indicators answer only one question: How will we know if it's a success? Whether they are quantitative – open rate, reach, participation, traffic… – or qualitative – understanding of the message, change in perception, feedback from the field… – the indicators must be defined from the briefing to guarantee a correct orientation of all your actions.

It's not necessary to choose many indicators, but rather the right ones: each indicator must stem from an initial objective. Otherwise, you risk measuring activity rather than the true impact.

Brief & AI: your new thinking partner

❌ What AI cannot do:

• Replace your knowledge of the context
• To arbitrate for you between several options
• To validate the political or strategic relevance of a decision
• To sense the internal power dynamics and the sensitivities on the ground
• Ensuring the accuracy of an answer without critical review
• To lead the human exchange in place of the communicator

Ultimately, AI accelerates the thinking process, but it's up to the communicator to stay focused, discerning, and decisive. It doesn't create a brief; it helps you refine it by challenging your ideas, identifying blind spots, and structuring your thinking.

✅ More specifically, Artificial intelligence can help you create a better brief by intervening at different stages of the process:

1. Structuring a brief starting from a simple idea, even when the project is still vague.
2. Challenge a brief existing by detecting omissions, inaccuracies, areas of blur and blind spots.
3. Generate multiple creative avenues and alternative formulations starting from the same objective.
4. Test a message by putting yourself in your target audience's shoes to assess its understanding, relevance, and impact.
5. Constructing personas to better understand your audiences and simulate their reactions to a message or idea.
6. Adapt or rephrase a message depending on different profiles, objectives or problems.
7. Translating a graphic or editorial identity with specific instructions.

Like a good brief, a good prompt relies first and foremost on context, a clear objective, and a precise framework. At each of these seven different stages of the process, standard prompts can be developed.

✅ Good practices to remember:

• Assigning a role to the AI, such as "you are a demanding creative director," helps to focus the tool's attention.
• Provide it with a precise context: company, issue, target, constraints… AI doesn't guess your implicit assumptions (like an agency!)
• Impose a response format: one-to-one questions, a table, criticality… Remember, you're in control.
• Always challenge: just like when taking a brief, always dig deeper and rephrase.

❌ Bad practices that should be promptly banned:

• Never share your confidential data: anonymize it or use the enterprise version of your tool.
• Don't delegate your brief: AI can't write the brief 100% for you.
• Don't accept the AI's first answer: just like the brief, the AI ​​challenges itself
• Don't consider AI as an oracle: it doesn't replace human interaction with the requester, nor does it replace final validation.

Brief & AI: piloting, measuring and leveraging

Each indicator, directly linked to an objective defined in the brief, allows us to verify the effectiveness of the communication campaign. These include:

1. Performance indicators, which measure the impact of a communication: awareness, understanding, memorability, engagement, participation…
2. Performance indicators, which measure the effectiveness of the resources deployed: costs, deadlines, distribution, quality of targeting, repetition of the message…
3. Performance indicators, which allow us to monitor the smooth progress of the project: adherence to the schedule, budget, deadlines, tracking of deliverables…

Several approaches are possible and complementary to measure these indicators. Quantitative methods allow us to measure results: audience, traffic, engagement, etc., while qualitative methods focus more on understanding reactions, perceptions, and obstacles.

Finally, studies and feedback from the field enrich this analysis in order to obtain a more global view of the impact of communication.

And what about AI in all of this? Artificial intelligence isn't just useful for preparing a brief. It can also support the evaluation of a communication campaign by helping to analyze results, structure feedback, and identify lessons learned.

• She can define the right indicators : by translating the objectives and proposing suitable KPIs to facilitate the monitoring and evaluation of a communication action.
• She can analyze the results : by quickly synthesizing quantitative data to highlight the strengths and areas for improvement in your communication.
• She can leverage feedback from the field : based on verbatim comments or qualitative feedback, AI can highlight lessons useful for improving your future communication actions.

📸 The photo and video brief

The basics of a good photo brief

A photograph is never merely aesthetic; it is first and foremost the answer to a communication objective. Therefore, a photography brief follows the same principles as a communication brief: the more precise it is, the more relevant the result will be.

Before embarking on a photoshoot, it is essential to define several elements by asking yourself the right questions:

• General questions These questions help to define the project: What is the objective of the shoot? What subject will be photographed? What retouching will (or will not) be required? Who are the images intended for and in what context? On what media will they be distributed?
• Emotional issues aim to define the intention of the image: what story do we want to tell? What atmosphere, emotion or message should the images convey?
• Practical questions Regarding the organization of the shoot: how many images are expected? What are the shooting locations? How much time should be allocated for scouting, travel, and shooting? What are the deadlines and budget?

Photo & AI brief: the right reflexes

As with a traditional brief, artificial intelligence can facilitate the preparation of a photo or video shoot.

It allows, in particular, to:

• Verbalize the visual intentionBy translating a brief from an idea or a need. Speaking the photographer's language is already half the battle for a successful brief!
• Identify the questions to ask yourselfby anticipating the technical or logistical information that should not be forgotten
• Structuring the narrative flow from a video before filming. The AI ​​provides the skeleton, your story does the rest.

However, AI does not replace the photographer's eye or the exchanges with the service provider. It simply allows for a more complete, clearer brief that is easier to challenge.

Ultimately, whether it's a communication campaign, a photo report, or a video, the principle remains the same: a good result always starts with a good brief.