It usually goes something like this. A marketing director emails. They need a brand film. Something that tells their story, shows the team, and communicates the values. Maybe they have a rough script. Maybe they have a mood board pulled from Vimeo. They have a budget and a deadline, and they are ready to get started.
A lot of production companies would take that brief and run with it. Book the shoot, confirm the crew, start storyboarding. The client wants a brand film. Give them a brand film.
We do not do that. Not because we are being difficult. Because in our experience, the brief that arrives on Monday morning is rarely the project that should actually be made.
When a client asks for a brand film, they are usually describing a format, not an objective. The format might be right. But it might not be. And without understanding the underlying commercial problem, there is no reliable way to know.
We have been briefed on brand films that, after a proper conversation, turned out to be a sales conversion problem. The client did not need to tell their story. They needed to close trust gaps at the bottom of the funnel. A founder-led testimonial film would have done more work than a cinematic brand piece at twice the budget.
We have been briefed on event recap videos that turned out to be a recruitment challenge in disguise. The company was struggling to attract senior talent. What they actually needed was a culture piece built around the people already there, not a highlights reel from their last conference.
In both cases, producing what was asked for would have generated a decent video. It would not have solved the problem.
Before we produce anything, we run what we call a Truth Hunt. It is a diagnostic process designed to find what is actually worth saying — and what content would actually be worth making.
It is not a briefing template. It is a conversation. Sometimes several. We ask about the business model, the commercial objective, the audience, the competitive landscape, the proof points, and the tension that makes the story worth telling. We ask what success looks like in real terms — not views or likes, but commercial outcomes.
We also ask the questions clients do not always expect. Why now? What happens if you do nothing? Why do some customers choose you and others do not? What do you believe about your market that your competitors would disagree with?
These are not difficult questions for the sake of it. They are the questions that determine whether the content you are about to invest in will do a job or just look good on your website.
In a well-run Truth Hunt session, several things tend to surface that would not have appeared in the original brief.
The real audience. Clients often describe their audience in broad terms — SMEs, fitness enthusiasts, franchise buyers. The Truth Hunt pushes toward the specific decision-maker: who actually signs off the purchase, what they care about, what they are afraid of, and what they need to believe before they act.
The commercial tension. Every good story has stakes. In commercial content, those stakes are usually the gap between where the audience is now and where they want to be. Finding that tension — and building content around it — is what creates material that holds attention rather than content that gets politely skipped.
The proof that matters. Most brands undersell their evidence. They have case studies they are not using, results they have not framed, processes that would genuinely impress their audience if shown clearly. The Truth Hunt drags this into the open and builds the content strategy around it.
The strongest message. Not five messages. One. The clearest, most compelling thing the audience needs to understand. Everything else is supporting material.
The honest answer is that it is easier not to. Taking the brief at face value is faster. The client is ready to go, the budget is confirmed, and asking hard questions can feel like it creates friction in the sales process.
But friction before a project starts is not friction at all. It is how you avoid the much more expensive kind — the kind that happens when the final film lands with the stakeholders and nobody can quite articulate why it does not feel right.
Production companies that skip the diagnostic stage are, in effect, betting that the client already knows exactly what they need. Sometimes they do. More often, the brief reflects what they think is possible rather than what would actually work best. The job of a thinking-led production company is to find that distinction and close the gap.
After a Truth Hunt, we produce a strategic brief. It is not the document the client sent us. It is a sharper, cleaner version of what the project should be — with a defined commercial objective, a specific audience, a clear message, identified proof points, and a recommended content approach.
Sometimes the brief looks very similar to what was requested. The format was right, the thinking was sound, and the process confirms it. More often, something shifts. The focus sharpens, the format changes, or the scope adjusts — almost always in a direction that produces a stronger commercial outcome.
What clients consistently tell us is that the Truth Hunt itself is valuable, independent of the production that follows. The process of being asked the right questions — and having to answer them clearly — forces a clarity of thinking that many marketing teams do not get from internal planning processes.
That is not an accident. We designed it that way.
There is a belief that runs through everything we do at McGill: the client often thinks they need footage when what they really need is clarity.
A beautiful film built on an unclear brief is still built on an unclear brief. It might win an award. It is unlikely to move the commercial needle. The Truth Hunt exists to make sure that what gets made has a reason to exist beyond looking good in a showreel — ours or theirs.
If you are planning a video project and you have not yet had a conversation about the commercial objective — not the format, not the style, not the platform — start there. It will change what you make. And what you make will work harder because of it.
If you want to have that conversation with us, we are ready for the difficult questions.
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