Loose Plans Sink Campaigns
How a focused media plan and a consistent creative platform gives brands a voice worth listening to.
David Ogilvy’s much repeated quote “Give me the freedom of a tight brief” offers that strict constraints, not loose ones, frees creativity by forcing focus and clarity.
The same can be applied to the media plan. “Give me the freedom of a tight media plan’ focuses the thinking and leads to work that is tailor made to the medium.
The opposite, the loose media plan, is the killer of creativity. It usually arrives with the dreaded phrase “matching luggage,” which sounds coordinated but really means “creatively anaemic,” it’s the kind of plan that tries to please every channel and ends up pleasing none.
A tight media brief takes the medium seriously. It makes the channel part of the idea. It forces the creative team to use the format’s strengths and produces work that sings in its medium rather than gasps across ten.
Pair that focus with a strong brand platform - an umbrella idea sturdy enough to hold every channel together - and you’ve got a brand with real presence. The tone, message, and intent stay consistent, while the expression flexes effortlessly across cultures, contexts, and languages.
Take the latest work for Virgin Active. The brand platform “Where Wellness Gets Real” and subsequent brand campaign “Leave The Cult, Join The Club’ rallies against the toxic messaging rampant in the wellness industry. The tight media brief was ‘billboards.’ The result, ironically, freedom.
Instead of Frankensteining assets for every algorithm; the team wrote for the road, crafting lines that worked at 30 mph - short, sharp and self-aware. The umbrella thought stayed the same, but the expression evolved, refreshed, yet unmistakably Virgin Active.
Virgin Active : WE ARE Pi
Combining a strong brand platform with a tight media brief creates consistency for specialist teams to play. The platform gives the brand consistency and the tight media brief offers the the opportunity to refresh the message.
A loose media plan usually results in the same ‘key visual’ repeated ad nauseum, literally. A tight brief gives the brand confidence to reinterpret the platform and make the message work for the time, the place and the cultural moment.
Brand Platform ➡️ Tight Media Brief ➡️ Specialist Teams
Great ideas don’t suffocate in tight briefs, they start to breathe. So next time you’re in a briefing and hear the words ‘key visual’ or worse, ‘matching luggage,’ take a deep breath and say it proudly: tighter please.