Flip the Brief: Donna's Outside-the-Box Creative Exercise
Donna didn't find "Where's the Beef?" by staring at the brief and writing down the obvious answer. She found it by asking a different question entirely. The brief said Wendy's has more beef. The conventional answer was to show the beef. Donna and Cliff Freeman's answer was to make you miss the beef — to turn its absence into the punchline, and hand the whole thing to a tiny, fierce grandmother named Clara Peller.
That's the move. That's what this exercise is about.
Every brief contains two answers: the one everyone will pitch, and the one that makes the client's jaw drop. Your job right now is to find the second one.
You'll need:
- A timer (set it for 10 minutes per phase)
- A notepad or blank doc — no templates, no decks, nothing formal
- The sample brief below (or swap in a real brief you're currently working on)
Sample Brief:
A regional frozen pizza brand wants to increase trial among adults 25–45. The product truth: it tastes surprisingly close to delivery pizza. The conventional message: "Better than you'd expect."
If you're using your own brief, write down the single most obvious, expected campaign idea first — the one that practically writes itself. That's your starting point. That's the box.
Phase 1 — Write the Boring Answer (5 minutes)
Write the conventional campaign. The comparison taste test. The "surprisingly delicious" tagline. The happy family at the dinner table. Get it out of your system. Don't judge it — just write it.
This is important. You can't flip the brief until you know what you're flipping.
Phase 2 — Ask Donna's Question (10 minutes)
Now look at your conventional answer and ask: What's the absurd truth hiding inside this brief?
Push yourself with these prompts:
- What does this product actually do to people? Not what the brand wants — what really happens?
- Who is the last person you'd expect to deliver this message? (Remember: Clara Peller wasn't a casting choice. She was the idea.)
- What would happen if you took the product truth completely literally — to a ridiculous extreme?
- What's the funniest, most honest thing a real customer would say about this?
Write down every answer, no matter how weird. Donna's rule: don't self-censor before you've written it down. The impossible idea on paper is always better than the safe idea in your head.
Phase 3 — Pick Your Flip (10 minutes)
Review what you wrote in Phase 2. Circle the idea that made you think we can't pitch that — because that's almost certainly the one worth developing.
Now write it out as a rough concept: the scenario, the character who delivers it, and the one line that captures the whole thing. Don't write a script. Just enough to make someone else see it.
By the end of this exercise, you'll have two things side by side: the brief's conventional answer, and your Donna Weinheim answer. The gap between them is your creative range — and the wider that gap, the more interesting you've become as a thinker.
The best outcome isn't a finished ad. It's the moment you write something down and think, I can't believe I just wrote that. That's the feeling Donna has been chasing her whole career. That's the feeling that made a grandmother saying "Where's the beef?" into a cultural phenomenon.
Comedy, absurdity, unexpected casting, impossible scenarios — these aren't shortcuts. They're legitimate creative strategies, as long as they're rooted in something real about the product. Find that truth. Then flip everything else upside down.
Now go find your Clara Peller.
