FAQs

It works either way. Keeping your brief wide allows for results that may spark ideas and options you hadn’t considered, and you can then use the Refine field to get more specific and hone in on what’s resonating.

But if you want to limit the search from the start, the briefing form is designed to allow for detail and nuance. If the limitations are too restrictive to provide results, you can always relax them through the Refine field.

Yes. Each Refine is a new search.

No. Sorple is a tool designed to assist human judgement. It broadens and makes the research process more efficient, and guides users with their prompts for effective results — but results depend on the user interrogating and defining the brief appropriately and deciding what is worth pursuing from the results.

These categories help steer the questions in the brief but won’t affect your search significantly. If your search falls between these categories, just choose the one that you think is most pertinent.

Yes. If you need to find someone based in a particular location, state this in the Location field. You can list multiple locations here, or give broad instructions such as provide stories from multiple global locations. You can also leave it blank if you’re not sure.

Yes, if you ask it to search certain languages in the Extra Feature field, and it will translate the results into English. By default Sorple is currently set to English.

Describe the subject you are exploring — the overarching themes or tensions the story needs to bring to life.

Describe the personality, life situation, and values of the person you’re looking for. This is about character, not credentials. Describe the lived experience you want to share through their story.

Create separate projects for each character.

Describe the credentials of the person — how they show up in public. Think about job roles, awards, accolades, achievements, social followers, and publications.

No. Don’t leave this blank, as it will likely find well-known people to fulfil the brief and assume this isn’t a criterion to search by. State the limits you wish to impose, such as social followers, or use a generic statement such as find a real person with little public profile.

You could state this in the Public Profile field — must be well-known in their field but not a celebrity.

You could filter by social presence in the Public Profile field — for example, must have 5,000–20,000 followers on social media. If that doesn’t return the right results, adjust that number through the refinement process.

You could share an example of the kind of character you are looking for in the Extra Feature field.

Enter information about the Brand / Organisation / Broadcaster you're working with and key taglines for the campaign. Sorple will review information about that brand, organisation or broadcaster to consider narrative alignment, in order to find and report on relevant connections between the person and the entity, and messaging points where they exist. Sorple is designed to lead with story and narrative and provide evidence for brief fit.

This field is for anything that must not be included in the story.

A useful tip: Sorple may find people who have already worked with the brand whose brief it is (let’s call them Brand A), and think they are a great fit — because they are. If you only want Sorple to find people who haven’t already worked with Brand A, state in the Exclusions field: must not have worked with “Brand A” before.

This is also a useful field if you want to exclude people who have worked for competitor brands.

No. It’s good to leave this blank and leave the search wide, unless there is something you don’t want to see in the results.

No. It’s good to leave this blank and leave the search wide, unless there is something pertinent that hasn’t been covered already in the prompts. Often, it’s good to leave this blank initially and then use the Refine field to hone in on these extra limits.

However, where you have particular considerations you are looking for up front, this is a very useful field to make the search bespoke to your needs. This is where Sorple holds the nuanced elements of your brief.

For example, if you’re looking for someone to have spoken publicly on a particular subject already, state here that you wish to find quotes from the individuals, of them speaking specifically about a subject. Sorple will look across the web including video and audio as long as there is a transcript or subtitles.

Another prompt you may like to add here is if there is a particular tone you want to take and have an inspiration reference, or a particular person in mind who you think is a great fit but you’re trying to find other examples similar. It may limit your search, but if it does then you can always remove this in the refinement process.

Using the Refine field allows you to do an iteration of the specific search already completed. It will take all the information from your original brief and add the new search criteria to it. If anything contradicts between the original brief and the new search criteria, the new criteria will override.

For example, if you have stated the location is UK in the original brief but you now want to do the same search in France, just say find stories in France. Or perhaps the results feel too London-centric and you want them to be more nationwide — state this in the Refine field.

You can include multiple prompts in the Refine field, for example an update on location, a new exclusion, and a limit on social followers.