Good communication is more important than creativity. Even if we had the best ad campaign in the world in our head, but couldn’t visualize it to our exec, then we’re in for a tour of all the negative emotions, including a finale with an ad we didn’t have in mind at all. That’s what a brief is for.
Brief is a short, usually 2-page document presenting the strategy of a creative project. It is a bit like a map that will guide the creative team to achieve the goal of the assigned campaign.
You can – and should – include anything that will help the creative team better understand your brand and product.
Most briefs include the following
There is a long list of reasons why a brief is worth creating. The most important reason is the simplest: it is a standard practice to understand the client’s needs.
It allows the creative team to become familiar with the brand and product. It spurs inspiration and provides an opportunity for the team to start brainstorming. Provides external collaborators with a quick understanding of the brand and its origins. Reduces conflict between the principal and the creative process by making sure they are on the same side of the barricade.
It may surprise you, but the final audience is not the person reaching for your product, but the creative team. So your job is to interpret your brand and product vision in a way that is accessible to the creative team. This means no jargon or “marketing speak”. Write the brief in a way that the designers can understand it.
Seemingly one or two pages, but the effort put into creating this simple document is enormous.
To write a good brief, you need to state the most important aspects of the campaign:
A creative campaign starts and ends with the product. Your goal is to map the current brand perception of the product. After all, that’s what it’s all about. If you don’t present the product well, don’t expect your creative team to figure everything out, much less advertise it well.
Ideally, you should try to answer the following questions in your product description:
That is, a description of the brand’s background, what its competitors are, whether our campaign might have some cultural context. In the era of “activist brands,” companies are increasingly aligning their products with social and cultural movements. Think about how you can use the spirit of the times to create a better brand message.
If we answer the following questions, it may help us create a new idea, something completely different from what the competition is proposing:
Competitors
Brand context
They’re the most important sub-point – a deep understanding of your target audience, their desires and tastes, is crucial to writing a good brief, and further, creating a great campaign.
To do this, start by describing the following:
The goal of all this data is to find a trigger that will motivate potential customers. This trigger should align with your campaign objectives.
Every campaign has a specific goal, message and audience
The creative team’s job is to understand the campaign’s goals and find a way to achieve them. Therefore, you need to define its strategy, simply explain why you actually want to advertise the product.
To do this, answer the following questions:
In conclusion, if you value your time and prefer to avoid nerves and misunderstandings, it is worth taking a moment to write a solid brief. It is very likely that during the writing process you yourself will come up with great ideas that you can suggest to the team. The effort you put into preparing a brief for a creative agency will definitely pay off.
Main article photo: photo by Campaign Creators, source: unsplash.com
