The first page of a briefing pack, and why totals wait until page four

A commercial director who opens a pack on a rising total will spend the sitting defending the year. A commercial director who opens on three named movements will spend the sitting on those movements. We design the first page accordingly.

What belongs on page one

The period. The files used. A sentence on what the extract cannot support — shared codes, missing discount fields, a late invoice batch. Then the exception list: stalled accounts, heavy discounting, concentration. Each exception is a line the room can argue with. That is the point.

We do not put a large percentage on page one. Percentages invite a debate about the denominator before anyone has agreed what the page is for.

Why the total waits

Owners will ask for the total. They should have it. They should have it after they have seen the cuts, so the total is a summary of a conversation rather than a substitute for one. In our packs the company total usually arrives on page four, after channel and territory have already been walked.

If the total is genuinely the only question — a bank, a buyer, a family shareholder who will not read further — we prepare a one-page owner version. That version is labelled as such. It is not the briefing pack.

Agenda numbers

Every page in a flagship pack carries the agenda number of the sitting. If we skip a page, the skip is spoken. If the room wants to jump to territory, we jump, and we mark the skipped channel page for the revision. The pack is not a museum. It is a script that can be annotated.

A test before we print

Ana Meladze reads the first page aloud. If it takes more than two minutes, the page is still a report, not an opening. We cut until it can be spoken while people are still sitting down.