change  January 26, 2012

Joel Lockwood, Partner, President

Where was SMS advertising five years ago?

How about interactive digital signage? Or social referrals?

And did you ever think you’d be reading QR codes with your smartphone?

Marketing tactics and media never stop changing. But one of the most fundamental principles of marketing communication remains the same: a great idea still has value.

Of course, even the strongest message will only resonate if you articulate it clearly and aim it at the right audience. That’s why nothing is more pivotal to the success of a marketing or advertising campaign than the creative brief.

Give Your Creative Process the Right Foundation
At its best, the creative brief is a clear and focused piece that guides a project from start to finish. It defines every aspect of a creative project’s objectives. It’s the one salient document that all parties agree to, and the foundation of the creative process. Whether you’re using a short assignment brief for a quick-turn project or an all-encompassing brief for a major campaign, your creative brief can save you time and money.

Want to increase your profit margins and protect against budget overruns? Of course you do. That’s why you’ll use well-written creative briefs to run your projects efficiently. Here are seven tips to help you do just that:

1. Start every project with a solid brief – no exceptions. Launching an important project with a tight deadline? That’s all the more reason to take the time to write a good brief. After all, the expression “measure twice, cut once” applies to marketing, too.
2. Use critical thinking to simplify and focus your briefs. Many marketing professionals put too much superfluous content in their briefs. Background material is good – but throwing in “everything and the kitchen sink” will only confuse your entire project team and result in a watered-down creative product.
3. As you’re writing the brief, get signoff from all key decision-makers. Let everyone see, contribute to, and sign off on the brief – but be careful not to let them muddy up the objectives and strategy. It’s especially important to get signoff from anyone who will be present in creative presentations.
4. Let creative directors and senior creatives review the brief before your kickoff meeting. This will help prevent the catastrophe of discovering during the kickoff meeting that the strategy is unworkable, the target is under-defined, or the key message is misguided.
5. At the project kickoff meeting, give everyone involved a copy of the creative brief. By this point, you’ve worked hard to develop the brief. Now, get the most possible benefit from it by passing it out. The brief will serve as everyone’s contract, their reference, and their guide throughout the project.
6. Work to establish consistent, repeatable brief-writing processes. You don’t want to be starting from scratch each time. Learn as you go. Keep track of what works, and what doesn’t. Improve your process by incorporating the lessons of each campaign.
7. Hold brief-writing workshops for your team. Like any other valuable skill, brief-writing is something you learn by doing – and it takes practice. Set aside a couple of afternoons per year for hands-on brief-writing sessions. Strive to keep the atmosphere positive, and stress to everyone that practicing this skill will make their jobs easier.

The Little Document with the Great Bottom Line
If you really want to know the bottom-line value of a good creative brief, think about how many millions of marketing dollars are wasted each year on creative work that doesn’t resonate.

American consumers encounter between 600 and 3,000 commercial messages every day. They’re experienced, savvy, and unequivocally impatient – and in the online environment, their attention span becomes even shorter. That’s why there’s a greater need than ever for agencies and marketing departments to create smart, relevant work.

When you stop and think about the truly great advertising campaigns, engaging interactive websites, or smart lead generation programs, they all tend to have one common trait: a singular message and focus.  This doesn’t happen by accident. A significant amount of work goes into the creative brief to make it possible to produce a simple yet powerful creative product.

Build a Creative Brief Program
All of this begs the question: where do good creative briefs come from?

Naturally, they come from good creative brief programs. Whether your company is a startup with great products but immature processes, or a major corporation with well-developed processes that sometimes stifle creativity, you can benefit from establishing a standardized creative brief program.

The easiest way to do this is to sit down with a cross-section of your marketing stakeholders (including strategists, product managers, project managers, artists, and copywriters) and talk about what’s working and what’s broken in the creative process. Are briefs typically too long and detailed, or too, well, brief? Are key messages clear and concise, or so vague that they elicit scattershot creative? Is your review cycle contributing to missed deadlines and cost overruns?

Let everyone vent. Ask everyone to contribute constructive suggestions. Put your heads together, and make a plan for improving the way your creative briefs are written. Measure your results, and incorporate your learnings into each subsequent campaign.

It’s important to create a culture of constant improvement across your marketing team. Because remember: better briefs mean better creative, higher response rates, and a better bottom line.