On briefs that arrive in PDF

Roughly half the briefs that arrive at the studio inbox arrive as PDFs. The PDF is, in almost every case, a slightly disguised RFP. Twelve to thirty pages. A long preamble about the company. A list of “deliverables” that has been written by someone who has not done any of the work involved. A timeline that is approximately half what the work would actually take. A fee range that is, almost without exception, a third of what the work needs to be billed at to be worth doing.

A few rules I have settled on for these.

If the PDF is from a procurement department, the studio does not pursue. The procurement department is buying design the way it buys office chairs. The fit is wrong on both ends and there is no point pretending.

If the PDF is from a marketing director who has been told to “find an agency”, the studio asks for a thirty-minute call before responding to the brief. On the call, the question is: is there an underlying problem that the brief is pointing at, or is the brief the actual scope. Half the time the brief is pointing at something else, usually positioning, and the project the client actually needs is different from the one they are asking for. The other half the time the brief is the scope, and the studio can quote against it.

If the PDF is from a founder who wrote it themselves over a weekend, the studio replies with a short email saying the brief is interesting and proposing a call. Founders’ weekend briefs are the most likely to turn into good projects, because the founder is, by definition, the decision-maker. The brief itself is usually wrong in detail and right in spirit, and a thirty-minute call is enough to reshape it.

The thing that does not work, with any of the three, is to respond to the brief as written. Studios that quote against PDFs as if the PDF were the truth tend to lose to studios that do not. The reason is not, usually, price. The reason is that the studios who responded to the underlying problem produced a more compelling proposal than the studios who responded to the document.

A useful framing, from a previous post: the brief is the second draft of the project. The first draft is the conversation that led to the brief. The third draft is the contract. The studios that work mostly on the first draft, ignoring the second, end up with stronger third drafts.

For studios looking for a more rigorous framework on this, Blair Enns at Win Without Pitching has written more thoroughly than I have on how to triage incoming briefs. Jonathan Stark’s Hourly Billing Is Nuts is in the same neighbourhood. Both are short. Both are worth the time.

The companion post on contracts and the small print covers what to do once a brief actually becomes a project.

I used to respond to every PDF brief that came in. The studio now responds to roughly one in five. The win rate is higher and the work is better-fitted. The other four would, in any case, have been the wrong projects to take.