The forgotten art of problem solving and the brief
As the media-gorged marketing industry continues to mature and agencies and clients alike become more-and-more literate in these once mystical arts. Has the humble problem/solution model been forgotten?
Many decision makers often find themselves in a position where they are embarking on a project that has been assigned a clear outcome, be that an event, DM pack, press campaign or website. They know what is to be produced, what message it needs to covey but do they know why? What was the initial business problem that needed a solution?
Knowing this core problem can be the most insightful, important and mentally liberating piece of information for any marketing manager or agency who would call themselves a problem solver.
The foundation of the creative and strategic marketing industry is the brief. In it’s purest form the brief both outlines the problem that needs solving and provides contextual information that arms the would-be solver with a rounded view of the business world the client inhabits.
This then allows the business problem to be solved in whatever way is appropriate.
However in the current climate it is increasingly difficult to divine the root business problem beneath the layers and layers of discussions, proposals, ideas and vested parties.
This goes some way to explaining why the format of the brief in general asks so many questions. These questions and therefore the brief is not only for pricking the imagination of the problem solver but also to try and root out the core business problem itself from the client. It is important to ask these questions of our clients so that we can move ourselves away from being simply ‘solution-producers’ and once again becoming ‘solution-architects’ (pardon the jargon).
In situations where we are asked to simply produce rather than solve a problem, one way of discovering this vital impetus could be to ask the client to simply rephrase their requests.
Example request:
We want a new website as our traffic isn’t currently high and we need to present ourselves much more professionally.
We ask the client (only the client can do this) to rephrase using a simple goal template:
- We want to __________ because ____________ so that ___________.
Example goals:
- We want to increase traffic by 20% because we need more exposure so that we can generate 8 more leads per month.
- We want to update to a current look because we need to be more relevant to our customers so that we can raise our rates by 10%.
- We want to write four industry-related articles per month because we want to help our industry so that we can form two partnerships per month.
By separating “the means,” “the reason,” and “the ends” we clarify the project owner’s goals as they describe why they want them and how they intend to achieve them. This is a great way to flush out deeper, possibly unknown, intentions that will help the problem solver make better decisions and dodge surprises later in the process.
The goal statements are a collaborative process. Revise the goals until all parties agree on them and understand them AND THEN WRITE A BRIEF WITH THIS AS THE FOUNDING INFORMATION. This, in capable hands, can only result in something that is much more effective to the client’s business problem.
In a world were the perfect solution to a problem could be as cheaply produced as a page on Facebook only by proving our worth as problem solvers and monetizing this conceptual service as much as we do for production can we grow.
Referenced: Taking the guesswork out of design