Results-Driven Marketing Creative:
Efficient Creative Briefing
Cameron Avery
Digital Creative Drives Results
As marketers, we know that the only thing that’s more
important than generating ROI is showing how we did it.
Doing so wins us increased budgets and resource allocations
year after year and demonstrates marketing’s value to our
organization.
Many factors determine the extent of that ROI, but there’s one
that can’t be ignored—the quality of your marketing creative.
Together with placement and execution, creative can make
or break your campaigns.
Throughout this series we will explore the four steps you or
your creative agency should take to achieve better results
from your marketing creative.
Today, we tackle the first.
Efficient Creative Briefing
Experience tells us that when creative content is focused on
a single outcome, it delivers great results. And that process
starts with defining what that outcome will look like.
Creative directors would agree that the creative brief is the
most important document in any creative campaign. Most
would refuse to fire up Photoshop or attend a campaign
meeting without one. So it’s fair to say that you can’t expect
anything useful from your agency or designers unless you
take the time to effectively brief them.
But it’s not all about helping the creatives. Rather, the more
time you spend on getting a concise brief together for your
team, the less time you’ll spend on the phone or in meetings
to clarify your directions. It’s an investment in productivity.
What’s more, you’ll also be able to better gauge the outcome
of the brief, by measuring your goals against actual outcomes.
So if you spend a little more time on briefing at the start of
a campaign, your dividend is in the form of a lot of time
saved and stress headaches avoided throughout the rest of
your campaign timeline—and you will have made it easier to
prove your marketing ROI.
What Is Efficient Creative Briefing?
An efficient brief inspires the creative team with clear,
concise directions, with no fancy marketing language and
no unnecessary information. It clearly outlines the important
background information and the details that creative teams
need to deliver a successful project.
I recommend that all creative briefs include the following
sections:
• Details: General project information. Include who’s in
charge of approvals, budgets, and deadlines.
• Background: What are you selling? Provide details
that must be included in the campaign and the SWOT
analysis.
• Creative drivers: What is the main goal of this
project, and what are the top three objectives? Don’t
just cut and paste sections from a list of marketing
goals. Make the outcomes and objectives specific and
measurable, then challenge the creatives to reach them.
• Audience: Who are you talking to? Here you need
to provide all the details that the creative te am should
know about your audience: What do they think of your
company and the product/solution? Why should they
care?
• Competitors: Who is the competition? Talk about
what differentiates your company and your product/
solution, but don’t forget to include the details on what
your competitors are saying to your audience.
• Tone: How do you communicate with the audience?
This section provides the details that your creative team
needs to determine how messaging and content will be
delivered. What appeals to your target market?
• Message: Exactly what should this project say to
the world at-large? Tell the team what you want your
audience to take away from the creative.
• Designs: Does the project need to stick to corporate
branding guidelines, or can it have its own image and
styles? This is where you need to provide creatives with
restrictions (if there are any) that will guide the look and
feel in the right direction.
Following these basic guidelines helps ensure that your
creative team has the information needed to deliver resultsdriven content that matches your needs.
You may be tempted to fill out a brief quickly so that your
project can get under way. But I would suggest that it’s better
to offer a concise and considered brief. A page of clichés isn’t
going to help anywhere near as much as a simple, single
paragraph that tells the creatives what they need to know.
If you follow the above guidelines and keep your answers
clear and concise, the creative team will be on its way to
delivering a killer concept for your new campaign (something
we’ll go through in the next post).
So it’s OK to spend a little more time on your creative briefs.
Actually, spend a lot more time on creative briefs... As I said
before, it’s an investment that saves time, cuts confusion,
and helps you show that what you can deliver brings better
results across the board.