brandknewmag.com
16
From long and winding to short and
crisp
A good brief should be no more than a page, or two.
Supporting information can be provided separately as
documents or as links to the web.
When George Bernard Shaw wrote a longish letter, he began
by writing, “I am writing you a rather long letter as I did not
have the time to make it shorter.”
Stay focused and consistent in your brief and avoid overload.
Imagine Benjamin… He thinks about women a lot. A lot,
lot. But he’s not dreaming of romance, he’s a dirty boy who
can’t stop thinking about sex with extraordinarily welcoming
women. Yet in the real world, women are a completely
different country - it’s somewhere he’s never been, it may be
a while before he gets to go there and you’re guaranteed he
won’t be able to speak the language when he does. Deep
down he wishes he could just be himself around girls and
that it wasn’t so complicated, that he didn’t have to try so
hard. What he wants isn’t a deodorant at all, but a secret
babe magnet.
Which one do you think created the ‘Axe Effect’?
From information to story telling
Don’t dwell on information, instead dive for gems that bring
your strategy to life and help tell a story. Encapsulate your
brief with evocative and powerful nuggets.
When Taj Mahal Tea Bags were being launched the nugget
in the brief was to position them as ‘The Walkman of Teas’ to
encapsulate the mobility, convenience, taste and modernity
of the format.
Similary, when Dabur Honey was being repositioned as a
health food from a home remedy, the brief summed up the
task as moving the brand from ‘the medicine chest to the
dinning table’.
Recently, for Virgin Mobile, a brand targeted at the youth, the
learning was that Indian youth are not out and out rebellious,
but work around problems to get their way.
This was expressed evocatively as, ‘inventive thinking that
breaks the firewall of sanctions’. Or as one teenager aptly
put it ‘Jugaad’ is their mantra.
An ethnic beauty brand that needed to be made more chic,
summed up the brief as ‘from Khadi Bhavan to Fab India’
Such gems are not only insightful, but get the creative juices
flowing.
From target audience to target person
One of the biggest sacrileges in briefs is the vague and rather
generic definition of the target audience. You really can’t
get a handle of who are you talking to, in flesh and blood.
Remember to distinguish your ‘marketing target group’ from
your ‘advertising target person’ and describe him or her in
a manner that helps your brand make powerful connections
(and not about generalities of life).
This is how a bland brief will define the target audience for
AXE Deo:
Young men aged 16-25, who are concerned about their
appearance and how they interact with the opposite sex. They
buy deodorants to smell fresh and feel confident when they’re
in the company of girls; Axe with its masculine fragrance is
the perfect choice when they not only want to look good, but
smell good too.
Here’s a really sexy and inspiring definition of the AXE target
person:
From piece of paper to piece of theatre
A brief i