Writing a creative brief

GIGO is a computer term meaning ‘garbage in, garbage out’ but it might as well be applied to creative briefing. The resultant advert, direct mail piece, brochure or whatever, depends on the quality of the brief you give the Agency.

It is your responsibility to decide on the objectives of the advertisement, its target audience and its style. It is the Agency’s job to interpret that brief and create a campaign that meets the criteria you have set. Spending time on getting the brief right is time well spent and will reward you with more effective advertising and lower bills.

At The Brandmakers we approach an advertising brief as follows:

First we decide who we want the advert to attract – ‘the ‘target audience’. The more precise you can be in defining this audience the more effectively we can address them through the copy. For example, however you might like it, only some people will be attracted to your product, not all people. If you can appeal directly and convincingly to a sector of the public it will be more effective than putting out a general message to the whole population. An example of this is the work we did for Suzuki Cars. In promoting their four wheel drive off road vehicle we appealed directly to ‘non-establishment’ drivers who saw four wheel drive capability in terms of freedom to express themselves and their individuality rather than a way to blend in with the country Labrador set. The advertisements definitely did not appeal to your traditional Range Rover buyer. Advertisements showing a fox escaping the hounds by getting a lift in a Suzuki struck a chord with many ‘Townies’ bored with hatchbacks yet not possessing a green welly between them. The campaigns helped to make Suzuki the best selling 4x4 after Landrover and probably laid the foundation for all those bigger urban 4x4’s that you encounter in Sainsbury’s car park today (sorry!).

So define your target audience, not just in terms of demographics – age, sex, income, but in terms of attitude. Are they adventurous or conservative, mould-breaking or trend followers, people who want a challenge in life or just an easy life. The more you understand the people you are selling to, the more effectively we can sell to them.

Secondly we ask for a Main Proposition. This is one of the most difficult tasks for most clients. Many do not understand the meaning of ‘a main’ or ‘proposition’. ‘A main’ means just one proposition, not two or three. We understand that your product or service offers the customer many things but we need to decide which is the most important to emphasise in the ad. If you try to say two or three different things to a customer in an ad, the message will be lost. Decide on the ONE thing that’s most important. The word ‘proposition’ means ‘offer’. Thus saying ‘We have branches in every town’ is not a proposition. Saying ‘you will easily find your nearest branch as we have one in every town’ is a proposition. Saying ‘Our new boiler is only 60cms by 30cms’ is not a proposition. ‘Save space in your kitchen with our compact boiler’ is.

We then look for a secondary proposition. This can be included in the body copy of the ad and is probably the second most important benefit. So having chosen convenient branch locations as your main proposition, you might choose ‘friendly, expert staff’ as your secondary. For your boiler you might select economy after space-saving – ‘ it will save you money on your heating bills too.’

Then we need to have substantiation. Oh yes. The days when you could make claims about your product without the evidence to back them have long gone. At best your unsubstantiated claims will not be believed. At worst you’ll end up in court. So provide the substantiation and we’ll weave it into the ad.

The look and feel of the ad is very important as it needs to reflect your brand ‘persona’. Are you a ‘value-for-money’ retailer, or a state-of-the-art manufacturer? Should your advertisement for that boiler look very affordable or very stylish or very scientific? We ask you to consider tone of voice – how you want to talk to your customers – friendly, polite, authorative, and how you want the visual appearance of your advertisement to look – high quality, impactful, fun-loving, serious. With these parameters set we can decide on everything from sentence construction to typeface, from illustration to photography.

If you would like a copy of our typical ad briefing form, you can download one as a pdf by clicking the icon at the foot of the page. If you would like any help filling in this form you can email us: tellmemore@thebrandmakers.co.uk