We tore up our old creative brief.

And wrote a new one.

Okay, here’s the thing: Most of the tools we once used to do our job two or three decades ago — the typewriter, rubber cement pickup, stat camera, rubylith, X-Acto knife, fax machine — have all been supplanted by something better. So why the heck are we using the same old creative brief?

This is the questions we asked ourselves a year ago at Mintz + Hoke, the 48-year-old agency in the black-bear-infested wilds of Avon, CT. We took a hard look at our brief and asked whether it was still doing the job. This brief was originally written when I was in high school. And I had a feeling since cell phones, Chipotle, the Internet, same-sex marriage, laptops, Febreeze, ATMs, The Kardashians, Fitbits, avocado toast, Nintendo, Tickle Me Elmo, Chicken McNuggets, Prozac, GPS and the Frappuccino are all new since then, it was a good bet that our creative brief could stand some scrutiny. The first step was to answer the question:

What was wrong with the old brief?

Well, nothing, really. I’ll be the first to admit that the old brief worked, and worked well. Heck, I used it for 25 years and in that time, we conducted some impressive business and won some nice, shiny awards…