Dave AlsobrooksThere's a pattern in content work that almost nobody talks about because it moves too fast to catch. A brief arrives with the strategy already baked in. The audience has been defined, the message approved, the tone aligned. What's left for the writer or strategist is execution. Fill in the form.
This isn't inherently wrong. Briefs exist for good reasons. But a brief that arrives pre-concluded has already made a quiet decision: that understanding the subject is less important than reaching it.
The content that follows tends to be recognizable. Fluent. On-brand. It makes sense in the room where it was made. It often performs adequately: clicks, impressions, opens. What it rarely does is move. It doesn't get cited in conversation or carried into contexts nobody planned for. It's received, not felt. And it ages quickly because it was optimized for the moment it landed, not for what it leaves behind.
The trouble isn't the format or the channel or even the timeline. It's the order of operations. When the frame is decided before the subject is felt, the content that follows doesn't express an idea. It establishes or defends a position. And audiences, even when they can't say why, feel the difference between someone who knows something and someone who's making a case.
Content strategy starts with attention—actually sitting with a subject, its contradictions, its texture, what's genuinely interesting about it—produces something harder to replicate and harder to ignore. Not because it's more creative, but because it's more honest. The language earns its place. It isn't shaped to meet a predefined end. It arrives because the understanding drafted it.
Making sense is the floor, not the ceiling. Content that only clears that bar will always need more to move.