Chris Phyland

Chris Phyland · 2025-12-18T20:27:01.205Z

The concept of the marketing brief is no longer required, should not be suggested, and was flawed from the beginning. Here is why AI has confirmed what we always suspected. What is a brief supposed to be? Deriving from the Latin word ‘brevis' it means as you would expect, short. In military parlance, it's a briefing on the situation, and that is the same in marketing. Here is the situation for you to react to… Enter the SITUATION. We needed a brief because the situation was very hard for the human brain to get their head around in a short space of time. Research, along with many and varied components make up this situation. In our view we think there are around 15 different categories that may contribute such as price, awareness, distribution, function, research, needs/wants etc all often quite unique to the product itself. There are a couple of highly important elements including zero party data sets TBPC use as part of this, but that is for another story. So, we needed a short summary of the situation. And then we have the world now. With the right agentic teams and LLM’s now operational at a level approaching human, you can combine what is known in the world and publicly available, with what you know yourself and is proprietary to you, your brand, your company, in minutes. The world gets very small, very quickly, and can be summarized and organized in an instant. Word of warning - just remember everyone else can do this too. So why, now, do we need a brief? You don’t. There's devil in the detail as to “The situation”. Most importantly what do you know that differentiates your awareness of the situation vs someone else’s? We have built that into our machine and can talk to it at length, but rest assured differentiated insight will decide 90% of your success. A brilliant creative idea will not deliver a business outcome if it is based on the wrong raw information. Example of the situation not being tight, was a major global brand, who launched a toilet brush with a foaming spray built in. Seems obvious right? We created an ad. People bought tons of them. Guess what happened? The spray ran out and people just kept using them as toilet brushes. Guess where the manufacturer was going to make their money? The refills. Hilarious. Expensive. And a cautionary tale on why briefs were flawed before AI. Go back to the military scenario and insert the word OPINION. Human nature allows us to construct our version of the brief, which is a summary of all the important information vital to business success. Often with vested interests in the hope of a certain outcome (awards at Cannes, the want to use a certain supplier, the budget it has to meet or need). Can you imagine the response from the senior military officer? “Nobody asked you for your opinion, sonny.” So, a brief is at least now, imaginary and not required. Yet I bet we let it live on for a while. Phylo #Marketing #CPG #AI

Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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The Brand Power Company

Charles Sturt University

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My job at The Brand Power Company is simple: take the gamble out of marketing.
For too…

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The Brand Power Company

Toronto, Canada Area
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Toronto, Canada Area
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Toronto, Canada Area
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Melbourne, Australia
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Melbourne, Australia

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Charles Sturt University

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1996 - 1999

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Chris Phyland

Toronto, Ontario, Canada 2K followers 500+ connections

About

Experience

The Brand Power Company

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Education

Charles Sturt University

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View Chris’ full profile

Other similar profiles

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