The Master Guide / 02 The brief and research · The meeting
Opportunities and meeting questions
Bring 3–5 things the client hasn't seen, and 8–12 short questions, each with your suggested answer.
Bring 3–5 things the client hasn't seen, and 8–12 short questions, each with your suggested answer.
Opportunities (decided; the count is this Guide's default): each tied to the objective, none touching a locked item. One short paragraph each: what you noticed, what it opens up, what it adds to the film. Typical sources: an unclaimed category code, a ritual the brand can own, a format (9:16 first, a series, a song), a recurring character or device the brand can keep, a risk you can remove. Write them as confident suggestions ("There is room to…"), never as critiques. Anything that would change a locked item becomes a question instead.
Meeting questions [proven for the order; the count is this Guide's default]: 8–12, in one list, the questions whose answers would change the concept first, logistics last. Each traces to a gap or contradiction in the analysis and is put as a partner's short, answerable question.
Success: what result makes this a win, and how it is measured.
The one thing: if the film can land only one message, which.
Audience priority, when the brief names several.
Contradictions, each as a choice between two clear readings.
Appetite for risk, with two reference points to set the level.
Fixed, open or off-limits: script, characters, casting, copy, music, on-screen text, restricted content.
Language and dialect for each spoken part, and who on their side checks it.
Who appears: real people, talent, an existing brand voice. Ask on every project whether the client expects a celebrity (Egyptian advertising often does). A celebrity's face comes only from the photos and agreement the client arranges with that person; otherwise recognisable, ordinary people are cast.
Approvals: the one decision-maker, the rounds, the dates.
Deliverables, budget and timeline. If the brief asks for more than one main ratio (16:9 and 9:16), ask: each extra native ratio is generated on its own and adds its own cost (quote the expected figure and the ceiling), or is it a crop-safe reframe you accept?
Online versions (decided): is each a feed edit (rebuilt for the feed, its first seconds written in the treatment and approved by the client) or the same story, shorter? How each is made: Graphics, captions, versions and delivery → Versions.
On the page: the question in 25 words or fewer, then "We suggest …" in 15 words or fewer.
Your brief says "warm, never sentimental". Can the mother's moment be quiet, with no music swell? We suggest yes: the silence carries it.
Sources
Robert Novorolsky, LBB, "The subtle art of the rebrief".
Margo Mars, Free the Work, questions for the brief call.
The IPA's tips for tissue meetings.