Many moons ago, a brilliant strategist and a fun human being once shared this gem: Whenever you come across a project with an unclear brief, remember to extract answers for the four main Ws: What, Who, Why and Where.

1. What are you aiming to do: sell, solve, tap, make?

2. Who will be seeing, reading, listening to this?

3. Why now?

4. Where will you use it?

This basic structure still comes in handy. And surprisingly, quite often. Especially useful during verbal and one-line briefs, which is quite the norm nowadays.

There are times when we insert an additional W between What and Who—When do you want this?