A Quick Dip into Effective Briefing with Petra Trudell

This week we’re dipping into the art of briefing with copywriter Petra Trudell. Petra explains what a ‘good’ brief and a great working relationship looks like and how to better brief our partners.

Petra Canan Trudell is an American copywriter and journalist whose work has appeared in print and web publications throughout the US, UK and Japan. She’s created and managed marketing, editorial and advertising content for a range of clients in the tech, wellness, hospitality and music industries, working with small businesses, public figures, nonprofits, government agencies and Fortune 500 companies to refine their brand voice and improve their international reach through dynamic, accessible copy. She lives in London with her husband and their Shih Tzu, sharing her shopping tips and finds in her weekly Substack, MIDDI.

In this podcast you’ll find out: 

• Why lining your ducks up before you contact a freelancer is key to success 
• Why there’s no such thing as too much information
• Why being  brutal and detailed in your feedback to a copywriter is good for you, and them
• About setting clear expectations upfront 
• Why sharing the dynamics of the team counts as much as brand voice

Connect with Petra: You can follow her on LinkedIn, Facebook , Instagram and read more about her work on her website. You can also subscribe to MIDDI on Substack.

Thank you for listening! 

A Quick Dip is about starting conversations. If you’d like to share your thoughts, keep the conversation going, and ask questions you can connect to Sarah on LinkedIn.

Sarah: Hi everyone. Welcome to a quick dip, a series of short conversations about culture, communications, and change. I'm Sarah Black, founder of Athru Communications. I'm the communication strategist who is passionate about making sure you're not endlessly creating comms content, you're actually starting conversations that matter to your organisation, and that's what this podcast is about.

It's a series of conversations, introducing ideas to help make your communications activity more culturally relevant, more inclusive and more effective.

Hi everybody. Welcome back to another weekly episode of A Quick Dip Into Culture, communications, and Change. I'm your host, Sarah Black, and this week we're gonna take a quick dip into briefing the art of briefing, freelancers, agencies, communications professionals, other consultants effectively and successfully.

And I'm delighted to be joined by Petra Trudell. Petra, say hi and introduce yourself.

Petra: Hi Sarah, it's a pleasure to be here. So I am a copywriter. I have been working in copywriting for more than a decade at this point. My background is in journalism and in marketing. I specialise in lifestyle content as well as copy related to tech, DEI and global mobility. So I am based in London and I work with companies of all sizes as well as individuals and public figures, just to help them create a more accessible message.

Sarah: Fabulous. Thank you. So, um, let's talk about being briefed successfully. What does it take to effectively brief a communications professional to get the results you want?

Petra: I think before you even decide to contact someone, you have to have all of your ducks in a row. You have to know what your voice is going to be, what the point you're trying to get across. You need to know your audience, the vision for your brand. If you don't know what your goal is and who you're trying to reach and why I can't help you yet, and you just really need to have those points fleshed out before you even start, once you have all of that direction kind of in place.

The basics are, you know, I need the type of copy you want to work on. How much of it, you know, is this for social? Is this for a blog? Is it an article? is it a white paper? How often the budget that you have and when you need it by, those are the basics. Um, and then we can start building from there. The more you can give upfront, the better. Even if you think you're giving me too much information, it's probably not too much. So that is bullet points about your message, any demographic information, you know who your audience is, how old they are, where they live, what languages they speak, their profession, their salary.

And then you know the limits that you have, lengthwise, how many pieces of copy that you want, and how concise you want it to sound. You know, all of these little details. If I'm speaking on behalf of you, what do you want to sound like?

Sarah: I agree with you, I think people tend to be a little scant on the detail, and I'm always like, more, more, more. There's never enough. You can never tell me enough. And although we do quite different things quite often, the briefing process is you can get a certain amount into way into a job and then discover that maybe there's just some fundamental thing that hasn't been communicated.

Where have you found that it's tended to maybe not go well? Maybe people have given you a lot of information, but there's still a disconnect. What's your experience been with that?

Petra: I think people have very specific ways that they talk or things that annoy them about how other people speak to them, and maybe it's they don't want to put down another brand or another person by using them as an example, but people have phrases that annoy them. They have words that they don't like the sound of or things that they would never say, and part of this comes down to how well I speak to you in our first initial conversations. It's on me as well to kind of conduct an interview casual conversation to really get to know you and your personality, but when you're just not honest about how you want to sound or if you're trying to put on a voice that isn't authentic to you, we'll run into problems there because if I'm writing one way and you're just kind of letting it go, even though it's bothering you, then the copy probably isn't very effective.

Sarah: Yep. I agree with you. And I think that's one thing that's quite often there's an expectation.

Kind of disconnect in that, um, client will expect to issue a brief and then it just all be perfect the way they envisage it in their mind. And I think one of the things that I always say, it's a process that we will learn together as we go, but to getting to know you, experience of working closely with somebody, whether it's developing internal comms strategy or working on a cultural change strategy, there is a process of familiarisation getting onto the skin as it were to do that.

Um, any tips for anybody who wants the briefing process to be more robust?

Petra: Like you said, having all of your information available upfront and also having questions to ask the person that you're interested in working with. You know, if you're bringing on a professional, they're obviously talented, they should have, you know, the work to back that up and to be able to show that.

But you need to set clear expectations for them about when you need things by, and then also be prepared to give feedback often, especially in the beginning. And so if you're not going into it knowing that this is a time commitment that involves more than just kind of firing off an email and saying, I need this written up by this time, it's not that straightforward.

Even, you know, the most experienced people that charge the most money, you know, they've gotten to that point and they can work quickly because they know how to ask for what they need and they're, that's who they, what they're getting for their clients. So I think to be more successful in the briefing process, you need to have your information level, set your expectations and really work together to come up with the best type of workflow for the two of you and then honor that agreement.

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely I think that ways of working together piece is really important, and often that's something that I don't see in briefing, experiences where that's a verbal brief or a written brief.

By the way, folks, sometimes both of those are really helpful. Is or isn't that, like, how do you like to do this? Do you like to have all my emails on a Tuesday? Or whatever that happens to be. I, I think that's a real miss for a lot of people and the not understanding that you don't just brief and it happens that there is an investment of your time in correcting and negotiating and working together.

Um, you brought up a really important point for me in terms of working with people, which is around feedback. And I think there's an art giving great feedback, and it would be interesting to know what your expectations are around feedback or how you try and address that because I know a lot of clients are uncomfortable with saying, hey, I don't like this.

Petra: Sure. So for me, with feedback, honesty is the best policy as we always say. You're not gonna hurt my feelings because I am representing you, I am writing your voice, and this is at the end of the day, it's your brand, it's your product, it's your vision. So if I am not being true to that, you need to tell me. You know, you can be as blunt as you want the feedback that helps me the most, you know, like we said, if right in the beginning someone says to me, these are words I would never say, these are phrases I would never say, I can start building a glossary off of that, and that's something that I keep creating as we work together.

Also, giving me a little bit of why you hated a phrase that I used instead of just crossing it out in red and say redo this. Why did it make you feel something? do you feel like it didn't answer a question or created a new one that you aren't prepared to answer or that we're not gonna get to in this piece of copy?

So tell me what, what the hole is that I created, or what kind of reaction it's sparked in you that made you just say, you know, that's not me at all. So I think the more detail, the better, and explaining how you reacted to it, gives me an idea of how your customer might have reacted to it as well.

Sarah: I absolutely agree. I think understanding the why is really important and when a client takes time to do that, it makes it, you know, whatever you're creating, the impact just increases because you've, you're getting closer to what really is the underlying voice. I know we talked a little bit about individuals, but when you're working with brands, I think this can sometimes be a little bit harder in that quite often someone just hands you the brand handbook and goes, good luck, essentially. So we're thinking about being briefed around a brand because a lot of people can own a brand and an organisation in a sense. What are some of the things that you might want to focus on in a briefing from them around brand work?

Petra: For the brand, knowing their target demographic is the first place to start because knowing where they're based, how old they are, the type of, you know, spending that they're usually doing, that kind of gives me more of an idea of how to speak to them.

Brands do all sorts of in-depth research about, you know, literacy levels and reading levels, and they do a lot of quality control testing and the type of language people respond to. So that is always helpful. And then so, you know, little questions like, do you want to use slang? Do you wanna be funny? Do you want to make jokes? are you trying to sound like a friend? or are you trying to sound like an authority? or is it somewhere in the middle? So even though it's not a person you're speaking on, you know, it is in a, in a certain way, if that makes sense. And so I think a brand needs to really tell you clearly who they're speaking to and then you know what their overall mission is for their product, for their service and that helps a lot.

Sarah: Yeah, agreed. Um, and I would add as well that if you are being brought into a client project, sometimes that's a big team. One of my colleagues is brilliant because when she briefs me, she'll tell me factually what's happening, what's the problem, what's the solution we need. But she will also give me a sense of what the people are like. In the sense, here's what you're gonna be working with, here's the context in a sort of almost psychological emotional sense of here's what you're going into these people are frustrated and they, they've had to hire somebody, or you know, they haven't done this before.

This is new to them. And I think all of that context, if you're going into a team situation, or working with an individual being introduced is really, really helpful. So, quite often, and I know this has happened to you because we've done it together, is you're brought into work alongside an existing team of, of other professionals, as the, as the communications person.

And what I find really useful is being brief sometimes on the team dynamics. and expectations. That's been really, really helpful to me is to get a sense of who I'm working with, not just what the professional need is.

Petra: Yeah, and a brand, especially if you're joining a team, like you said, they probably have a workflow in place already.

They might tap on you to help them refine that in some way, but you need to know where you fit in, who your key stakeholders are, who you'll be communicating with on a daily basis. Because if it's with an individual, you might be the first person that they've hired, and that's a process you kind of develop together.

But a brand, especially a big one they've got a system like that in place and you need to know what the boundaries are.

Sarah: No, absolutely. And, and it is back to that thing about personal preferences as well, how members in the team like to engage in how they fit together, and if that is smooth running, you don't become a problem, a bump in the road. Um, as it were. Yeah, no, absolutely. Petra any other tips? any kind of like nightmare situations to avoid if, if you're sitting at home rewriting your brief right now.

Petra: It's important to, when you're setting up a brief budget is a really important thing to keep in mind. I think you need to not only know what you can spend for the physical copy, but think about what else is considered billable time.

You know, people who are hopping on phone calls with you for an hour to go over all these details that's billable time, and you're asking someone to do work, and you need to make sure that you are not continuously moving the goalpost or changing the scope of things after you've made an agreement. So that's why having a concise brief, you know, that you are capable of sticking with and treating it like a contract.

You should probably also have a contract, a separate one as well. But your brief is basically a contract, and if that's going to change, you have to make sure that you know, you're communicating with your professional because you know freelancers, they can end a project as well. You know, either person can end that agreement.

And I've had clients before that we agreed on something and then they kept reducing it based on budget needs, or they kept changing what I was doing. And then both of your budgets kind of get away from you and then the product doesn't turn out as well.

Sarah: No, and nobody's happy, and we would all like to be a little bit more happy about these things. I agree. I think having a really open and honest conversation about what's included in the budget, how does this work? You know, what, what will you factor in? and then being aware that if you keep adding things that that just eats budget. Or you're gonna get a bigger bill. But I think a lot of times where it goes wrong, it's that lack of openness about those conversations.

And I've worked with people who just don't wanna talk about money and we kinda have to really, You know? that's part of the deal.

Petra: You have to do research for that. I mean, you know, if you're going to somebody who's website lists, you know that they've worked with these massive companies before and very recognisable names, you need to understand what they're probably going to charge for that.

And it should mean that you get your work back in an efficient manner, and it should be clean, and it should sound as like you as possible in as few drafts as possible. But you know, you need to know who you're pitching and what they would expect to receive from you as well.

Sarah: Yeah. One last point because we haven't really talked about this.

I just wanted to mention it, is that you and I both work globally. And so sometimes you, we, if it's not explicit in the brief and we know that we're working with a global organisation, we need to talk to 'them about kind of being globally accessible or globally inclusive. And so that's something to think about.

If you're working with an organisation or an individual who's got a global reach, you can't rely on them articulating that otherwise, cause I just assume that we know. But that is something that you might sometimes need to probe.

Petra: Exactly. I've worked with large companies who have been taking their US English copy, and it is being translated and sent to more than 50 other countries, and you really have to know how to flag certain expressions. They might think that that means you're sucking the personality out of their copy, but you're risking, your brand's own growth if you do that, because you can isolate people, you could offend people, and so you need to trust the person you're working with and understand that the feedback can go both ways in that regard. Especially if you're bringing on somebody like yourself who has a lot of global experience.

Sarah: And I will just say yes, that's a huge part of it and also just because you might all have a shared language, English doesn't mean that things are expressed the same way, equally. As as we sit talking as a, an American and another American, we both know this from our conversations and our experiences having in both countries.

Petra thank you. I hope that's been helpful to people on, on both sides of the briefing equation when it comes to having some better communication and some more impactful output. So thank you very much.

Petra: Thank you, Sarah. It was great speaking with you.

Sarah: Thanks. Bye. If you've enjoyed today's conversation and maybe wanted to join it, then please do get in touch so that we can talk more.

I'd love to hear from you. You can sign up from my newsletter by finding me on LinkedIn. And let's connect and continue the conversation.

Thank you.