Seven questions. Situation Cards. A brief ready to use Monday morning.
Most briefs start with who the buyer is. This framework starts with when they're in a position to act.
Research at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute shows that 80–90% of B2B buyers have a shortlist before formal evaluation begins. Average three brands. That shortlist doesn't form during the RFP. It forms during the moments you're about to map.
Work through the seven questions below. Each answer gets you closer to a situation sentence: the thing the brief should actually be built around.
Based on the 7W framework developed by Jenni Romaniuk at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. Introduced in Open Folders: Why Nobody Ever Got Fired for Buying IBM →
When does the need for your category typically become urgent?
Think trigger events, calendar moments, business cycles, or a specific question from a CEO they couldn't answer in a meeting.
Where is the buyer when this need surfaces?
Physical location, the workflow they're inside, the platform or channel they're in when it hits them.
What problem or job makes your category relevant in this moment?
What just became urgent that wasn't before? The job, not the feature.
What else is the buyer doing while this need surfaces?
What adjacent task or activity is it interrupting or emerging from?
Who else is in the decision?
Is the buyer alone, or is there a committee, a champion, a CFO they'll need to convince?
What other categories are they evaluating at the same time?
What else is on the table alongside yours? Who are you really competing with in this moment?
What's the emotional state when the need arises?
Time pressure, anxiety, relief that something finally broke so they can fix it, curiosity. What's the register? This shapes creative tone and channel.
Each distinct buying moment becomes a Situation Card. This is the brief.
The full skill file runs this as an interactive audit: seven questions, one at a time, with pushback when answers are still segment-level. Drop it into Claude Code.