Stop writing ugly Creative Briefs

THE BRAND LEADER

Stop Writing Ugly Creative Briefs The Creative Brief should help Brand Leaders to control the strategy, yet give freedom on execution. Brand leaders have this backwards, giving freedom on the strategy with various options in the brief, and yet control the execution with a long list of mandatories and direction on style of advertising. But really, you want “creative” options, not strategic options. You should write a very tight brief, based on the strategy you decided on, before you even wrote the brief. Slow down and let your strategic thinking prevail. Brand leaders try to control the outcome of the creative process so they write a long list of mandatories in the brief, they try to steer the type of advertising they want to see, or don’t want

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A good brief should be brief, not long!

to see. You should allow the creative process to unfold, as you always hold the power of decision. Go faster with your instincts to not over-think great ideas.

In my 25 years of marketing, every great Creative Advertising person I met was a problem solving “in-the-box” type thinker, not a blue sky “out-of-the-box” thinker. Never give them a blank slate or blank canvas and ask them to come up with an ad. But never give them a solution. If they are “in the box thinkers” then the role of the Creative Brief is to create the right box for them to solve.

What creative people do not want: • A Blank canvas: They prefer a problem to solve, not a wide open request for options.

• An unclear problem: They need focus in order to deliver great work for you.

• Long list of Mandatories: A tangled weave of mandatories that almost write the ad itself, yet trap the creative team from doing anything breakthrough, surprising or spectacular.

• Your Solutions: They find it demotivating to be asked for their expertise (solving problems) and then not utilized (given the answer)

A creative brief creates the box to play in.

A good brief should be brief, not long! A Creative Brief is a tool that is designed to be on one page. Not for the sake of it, but to force you to make choices of what you put into the brief. If you just ignore that need and write a 5-page brief, you are just failing yourself. The Creative Brief focuses on a slice of the population (target), to inspire creative options (execution) that gets your consumer to take an action (desired response) that will make the brand stronger and wealthier (result).

The brief lays out what to say (main message), how to talk to them to trigger that action (tone) and re-enforces why we can do it and others can’t. (positioning).

Good briefs should have:

• one objective

• one desired consumer response

• one target tightly defined

• one main benefit

• two main reasons to believe


Avoid the “Just in Case” list by taking your pen and stroke a few things off your creative brief! It is always enlightening when you take stuff off your brief. It just gets better.

Brand Communications Plan

At Beloved Brands, we use seven questions as a deep-dive homework that helps to set up a Brand Communications Strategy.

1. Who is in the consumer target?

• Who is the most motivated to buy what you do?

2. What are we are selling?

• What is your main benefit (rational/emotional)?

3. Why should they believe us?

• Support points to back up what you say

4. What is your organizing Big Idea?

• What is the Soul or DNA for the brand?


We make brands stronger. We make brand leaders smarter.

Creative Brief

1. Why are we Advertising?2. What’s the consumer problem we

are addressing?3. Who are you talking to?4. Consumer Insights5. What does our consumer think now?6. What do you want your consumer to

see/think/feel/do?7. What should we tell them?8. Why should they believe us?9. Brand Positioning Statement10.Tone and Manner11.Media Options12.Mandatories

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Transforming your work in to a Creative BriefProcess Graphic

Who is in the consumer target? (Who is the most motivated to buy what you do?)

What are we are selling? (What is your main benefit (rational/emotional)?)

Why should they believe us? (Support points to back up what you say)

What is your organizing Big Idea?(What is the Soul or DNA for the brand?)

What do we need the advertising to do? (Strategic Choices)

What do want people to think, feel or do? (Desired Response)

Where will you deliver the message?(Media Plan)

Brand Communications Strategy

5. What do we need the advertising to do?

• Strategic Choices

6. What do want people to think, feel or do?

• Desired Response

7. Where will you deliver the message?

• Media Plan

All the answers to these 7 questions come from the Brand Positioning (Chapter 2) and the Brand Plan (Chapter 3)

Transforming the Brand Communications Plan into a Creative Brief As we move from the homework you have done above into the briefing stage, here are 12 headlines you can use to help frame your Creative Brief:

1. Why are we Advertising?

2. What’s the consumer problem we are addressing?

3. Who are you talking to?

4. Consumer Insights

5. What does our consumer think now?

6. What do you want your consumer to think/feel/do?

7. What should we tell them?

8. Why should they believe us?

9. Brand Positioning Statement

10. Tone and Manner

11. Media Options

12. Mandatories

When doing your Creative Brief, you should think about the desired response before planning what stimulus you will use. Too many Brand Leaders start with the stimulus and focus on what they want to say. Start with “what do we want our consumer to see, think, do,


feel or influence?” Only after you know what you expect from consumers can you answer “What should we tell them?”

Stop writing ugly Creative Briefs

Here are the smart and ugly examples, showing some of the most common mistakes in writing the Creative Brief.

Why are we Advertising?

Smart briefs have one very clear objective. Ugly briefs try to do too many things in one brief.

• An ugly unfocused Brief: Drive trial of Grays Cookies AND get current users to use Gray’s more often.

• A smart focused objective: Drive trial of Grays Cookies by positioning it as “The good tasting Healthy cookie”

Too many briefs try to do both penetration and usage frequency in one brief. You will just confuse and muddy the creative development process. This means two targets, two objectives, two messages and likely two different media options. It really should be two separate briefs and two separate projects. When you have two objectives your agency will come back with one ad that does penetration and one for frequency. This means the creative then picks the strategy and that’s a weak position for a Brand Leader to take.



Strategic flaw of most creative briefs is trying to drive penetration and

usage frequency at the same time.

Penetration Strategy gets someone with very little

experience with your brand to likely consider dropping their current brand to try you once

and see if they like it.

Usage Frequency Strategy gets someone who knows your brand to change their behavior in relationship to

your brand, either changing their current life routine or

substituting your brand into a higher share of the occasions.

What’s the Consumer Problem we are addressing?

Smart briefs start with the consumer. Ugly briefs start with the product.

• Ugly Product-Driven Brief: Gray’s market share is still relatively small. It is held back by low awareness and trial and the product usage is not on par with the category.

• Smart Consumer-Driven Brief: I’m always watching what I eat. And then BAM, I see a cookie and I’m lost. As much as I look after myself, I still like to sneak a cookie now and then.

We recommend that you start with the consumer’s enemy as the pain point for the consumer. While most products started by solving a problem, every brand should fight off an enemy in the consumers life. Put yourself in the shoes of the consumer and look at how the brand fights off what might be bugging the consumer every day. Just like an insight, it is usually below the surface level.

Who are you talking to?

Good briefs have a highly focused target market. Ugly briefs try to target everyone with a just in case attitude.

• The Ugly “target everyone” Brief: 18-50 year olds, current customers, new customers and employees. They shop at Grocery, Drug and some Mass. They use 24.7 cookies a month.

• The smart highly targeted Brief: “Proactive Preventers”. Suburban working women, 35-40, who are willing to do whatever it takes to stay healthy. They run, workout and eat right. For many, Food can be a bit of a stress-reliever and escape even for people who watch what they eat.

Avoid trying to target everyone. The great Marketing myth is to think that the pathway to getting bigger is to target a bigger audience. Having a 30+ year age gap is far too wide. Your agency will give you one ad for 25-year-olds and one for 50-year-olds. This means that you will be picking your strategy based on which of the two ads you like best. Brand Leaders want CREATIVE options, not STRATEGIC options. We recommend a very tight target market. For instance a maximum 5 year age gap will give your ad tremendous focus. Also, you must decide whether it is current or new users. You can’t do both.

Consumer Insights

Smart briefs use insights to bring the consumer to life. Ugly briefs just jam a bunch of stats into the brief.


• An ugly “stats driven” Brief: Gray’s product taste drives high trial to purchase (50%) compared to other new launches (32%). Consumers only use Gray’s 9.8 cookies per month compared to the Category Leader at 18.3 cookies.

• A smart “insights driven” Brief: “I have tremendous will-power. I work out 3x a week, watch what I eat and maintain my figure. But we all have weaknesses and cookies are mine. I just wish they were less bad for you”

The best ads are rooted in consumer insights as the connection point that enables you to move the consumer in a way that benefits your brand. Bring insights into the brief as ways to tell the story to help inspire the creative team, so they can build stories that connect with your consumer. The best ads are those where you can almost see the insight shining through the work. As we mentioned in the positioning chapter, we recommend that you frame your insight by starting with the word “I” to force yourself into their shoes and put the insight in quotes to force yourself to use their voice.

What do we want consumers to see, think, feel or do? (Desired Response) Smart briefs get the consumer to do one thing. Ugly briefs hope the consumer does a lot of things

• An ugly convoluted Brief wants the advertising to do everything: We want them to THINK that Grays Cookies are unique. We want them to FEEL they can stay in control with Grays and it will keep them feeling successful in living their healthy lifestyle. And we want them to TRY Grays and see if they like the great taste.

• A smart focused Brief tries to just ONE thing: We want them to THINK they can stay in control with Grays.

You should choose only ONE of see, think, feel or act, not a combination of any of the two. We like to say that good advertising can only move one body part at a time—the eyes, mind, heart or feet. Very few ads in history have directly moved two at once. You have to decide on which response you want, or else your agency will show you creative options for each of these strategies and the best ad will decide your brand strategy. If you keep pushing the agency to jam them all into one ad, you have a severe mess on your hands.

What should we tell them? (Main Message) Smart briefs focus on the consumer benefits. Ugly briefs focus on the product features.


• An ugly feature-oriented Brief: Grays Cookies are the perfect modern cookie, only 100 calories and less than 2g of Fat. For those looking to lose weight, the American Dietician Society recommends adding Gray’s to your diet. You can find Gray’s at all leading grocery stores.

• A smart benefit-focused Brief: With Grays Cookies you can still have a great tasting cookie without the guilt.

The ugly example here takes the features and puts them into the main message. They are basically the support points. The best ads speak in terms of benefits, not features. Focus your main message stimulus on what consumers get (rational benefit) or how consumers feel (emotional). Also, narrow down what you TELL consumers to ONE THING, not a laundry list of things. One great Marketing Myth is that if we tell the consumer a lot of things, at least they will hear something. False, if you tell them too much, they will hear NOTHING but a mess and shut you out.

Mandatories Smart briefs have few mandatories. Ugly briefs use mandatories to try to steer creative.

• Ugly briefs use mandatories to try to steer creative: Avoid humor, as a sarcastic tone will not work with our target market. Preference is for real customer testimonials supported by before/after with our 90 day guarantee tagged on. Ensure brand shown in first 7 seconds. Use Snookie, as our spokesperson. Ad setting in pharmacy will add credibility.

• Smart “open minded” brief gives freedom to creative: The line: “best tasting yet guilt-free pleasure” is on our packaging. At least 25% of Print must carry the Whole Foods logo as part of our listing agreement. Include the Legal disclaimer on the taste test and the 12 week study.


Mathematical argument for your brand’s BIG IDEA to

be a single message

The probability of success (P) is directly linked to the inverse of the number of messages (M) you have

in your brand communication.

P = 12m_

If you think the first list is fictional, it’s not. I’ve seen every one of those mandatories in creative briefs. With the second list, you’ll notice that none of them steer the creative advertising ideas. I have seen Brand Leaders write long mandatories lists, that makes it so prescriptive that the creative agency ends up backed into a creative corner. To tick off each mandatory, it creates a messy, ugly “frankenstein” ad that pieces everything together.

Simple rules for writing a smart Creative Brief:

1. Make sure you have a tight target: Spreading your resources against a target so broad, everyone will think your message is for someone else. Make it feel specific and personal. Target the people most motivated by what you do best. Don’t just randomly target competitive users that are most desirable to us, without knowing if we can actually win them over.

2. Benefits not features: Consumers don’t care what you do, they selfishly and rightfully so care about what they get. Always talk about what they get or how they will feel. Don’t just tell what we do, so that it makes us appear the best in the category.

3. Drive one objective at a time: Focus on getting consumers to do only one thing at a time: see, think, feel or do. Make a choice instead of trying to get new users to buy and getting current users to use more at the same time.

4. Drive one main message at a time: With so many messages, people won’t know what you stand for, and you’ll never get a reputation for anything. Use your big idea to organize everything.

5. Connect with our target where they are most likely to engage with our brand story: While efficient media is important, focusing solely on efficiency and ROI might lead us to staying beneath the consumer’s radar. Consumers hear 7,000 efficiently placed messages a day, and quickly



• Target competitive users most desirable to us, while maintaining our base

• Tell what we do, so that it makes us appear the best in the category

• Get new users to buy and current users to use more at the same time.

• Make sure we get all our key messages into the creative

• Use efficient media options that provides us with the highest ROI

What looks like a smarter Creative Brief to you?

• Target the people most motivated by what you do best

• Use what we stand for to show consumers what they get from us

• Focus on getting consumers to do only one thing at a time: think, feel or do

• Use the creative work to tell the brand story in a way we love and believe in

• Connect with our target where they are most likely to engage with our brand story

• Make sure you have a tight target: Spreading your resources against a target so broad, everyone will think your message is for someone else. Make it feel specific and personal.

• Feed the benefit: Consumers don’t care what you do, they selfishly and rightfully so care about what they get. Always talk about what they get or how they will feel.

• Drive one objective at a time: To drive trial and usage at the same time will leave consumers confused as to what to see, think, do or feel.

• Drive one main message at a time: With so many messages, people won’t know what you stand for, and you’ll never get a reputation for anything. Use your big idea to organize everything.

Trying to be everything to anyone, makes you nothing to everyone

A B

Smart Consumer Centric Brief Ugly Product Centric Brief

reject boring messages all day long. They likely will connect and engage with 5 messages a day. Will it be yours?

Trying to be everything to anyone, makes you nothing to everyone

The Mini Brief: Going too fast sometimes takes too Long

With so many small media projects for the modern brands, there are too many “phone call briefs” happening. Sometimes when you try to go too fast, and cut corners, it can end up taking even longer. Without a brief, there are things that could go wrong. When you see the creative options, you have to rely 100% on your instincts. And when you try to present it to your boss, there is nothing to guide them. You will now be relying on shared instincts. One round of rejection and you will be wondering why you didn’t just take the 30 minutes to write things down. If your brand has a solid brand communications plan and overall creative brief, you should be able to take that information and create a Mini Brief, with a clear objective, desired response and main message.

Keep it smart, keep it focused and most of all, keep it brief.



When you don’t have much time, it doesn’t mean you should avoid writing a brief. It just means using The Mini Brief

The Mini Brief Objective Launch new Facebook page to drive trial among a younger audience.

Target “Proactive Preventers”, women 35-40, live a healthy lifestyle but still cheat once in a while.

Consumer Insights “Cookies are my weakness, the enemy of my diet, but I love them”

Desired Response We want consumers to try Grays and experience the unbelievable taste. What We’ll Tell Them Grays Cookies are the best tasting yet guilt-free pleasure so you can stay in control of your health. You have to try it to believe it.

Never do the “phone call brief” because when you try to cut

corners and go too fast, it actually takes longer.

Beloved Brands: Who are we?At Beloved Brands, we will make your brand stronger and your brand leaders smarter. We lead workshops to define your brand, helping you uncover a unique, own-able Brand Positioning Statement and an organizing Big Idea that transforms your brand’s DNA into a consumer-centric and winning brand reputation. We lead workshops to build a strategic Brand Plan that will optimize your resources and motivates everyone that touches the brand to follow the plan. We coach on Marketing execution, helping build programs that create a bond with your consumers, to ensure your investment drives growth on your brand. We will build a Brand Management Training Program, so you can unleash the full potential of your Marketing team, enabling them to contribute smart and exceptional Marketing work that drives brand growth. We cover strategic thinking, analytics, brand planning, brand positioning, creative briefs, customer marketing and marketing execution.


Beloved Brands Training program At Beloved Brands, we can build a Brand Management Training Program, to unleash the full potential of your Marketing team

1. How to think strategically: We believe that Strategic Thinking is an essential foundation, to help Marketers ask big questions that challenge and focus brand decisions. We teach brand leaders to think strategically. We show them how to ask the right questions before seeing solutions, how to map out a range of decision trees that intersect and connect by imagining how events will play out. We take them through the 7 elements of good strategy: vision, opportunity, focus, speed, early win, leverage and gateway. We use forced choice in each model to help the Marketers make focused decisions. We teach the value of asking good questions, using four interruptive questions to help frame your brand’s strategy, looking at your competitive position, your brand’s core strength, the connectivity with your consumer and the internal situation your brand faces.

2. Write smarter Brand Plans: A good Brand Plan provides a road map for everyone in the organization to follow: Sales, R&D, Agencies and future Marketers on the brand. We demonstrate how to write each component of the Brand Plan, looking at brand vision, purpose, values, goals, key Issues, strategies and tactics. We provide definitions and examples to inspire Marketers on how to write each component. We provide a full mock brand plan, with a framework for you to use on your own brand. We offer a workshop that allows Marketers to try out the concept on their own brand with hands on coaching with feedback to challenge them. At each step, we provide the ideal format presentation to management. We offer unique formats for a Plan on a Page and long-range Strategic Road Maps. We show how to build Marketing Execution plans as part of the overall brand plan, looking at a Brand Communications Plan, Innovation Plan, In-store plan and Experiential plan. This gives the strategic direction to everyone in the organization.

3. Create winning Brand Positioning Statements: A winning brand positioning statement sets up the brand’s external communication and internally with employees who deliver that promise. We show how to write a classic Brand Positioning statement with four key elements: target market, competitive set, main benefit and reason to believe (RTBs). We introduce the Consumer Benefit ladder, that starts with the consumer target, with insights and enemies. We layer in the brand features. Then get in the consumers shoes and ask “what do I get” to find the functional benefits and ask “how does this make me feel” to find the emotional benefits. We introduce a unique tool that provide the top 50 potential functional and top 40 emotional benefits to help Marketers stretch their minds yet narrow in on those that are most motivating and own-able for the brand. We then show how to build an Organizing Big Idea that leads every aspect of your brand, including promise, story, innovation, purchase moment and experience.

4. Write smarter Creative Briefs: The Creative Brief frames the strategy and positioning so your Agency can creatively express the brand promise through communication. Marketing Execution must impact the brand’s consumers in a way that puts your brand in a stronger business position. The Creative Brief is the bridge between the brand strategy and the execution. Through our Brand Positioning workshop, you will have all the homework on the brand needed to set up the transformation into a succinct 1-page Creative Brief that will focus, inspire and challenge a creative team to make great work. The hands-on Creative Brief workshop explores best in class methods for writing the brief’s objective, target market, consumer insights, main message


stimulus and the desired consumer response. Brand Leaders walk away from the session with a ready-to-execute Creative Brief.

5. Be smarter at Brand Analytics: We show how to build a deep-dive business review on the brand, looking at the category, consumers, competitors, channels and brand. We start with the smart analytical principles that will challenge your thinking and help you gain more support by telling analytical stories through data. We teach you the steps to complete a deep-dive Business Review that will help assess the health and wealth of the brand, looking at the category, consumer, competitors, channels and brand. We show key formulas you need to know for financial analysis. We teach how to turn your analysis into a presentation for management, showing the ideal presentation slide format. We provide a full mock business review, with a framework and examples of every type of analysis, for you to use on your own brand. We show you how to turn your analytical thinking into making projections by extrapolating data into the future.

6. Get better Marketing Execution: Brand Leaders to judge and decide on execution options that break through to consumers and motivates them to take action. We provide Brand Leaders with tools and techniques for judging communication concepts from your agencies, as well as processes for making decisions and providing effective feedback. We talk about the crucial role of the brand leader in getting amazing marketing execution for your brand. We teach how to make marketing decisions with the ABC’S, so you can choose great ads and reject bad ads looking at tools such as Attention (A), Branding (B), Communication (C) and Stickiness (S). We teach how to provide copy direction that inspires and challenges the agency to deliver great execution. We also talk about how to be a better client to motivate and inspire your agency.

7. How to build Media Plans: We look at media as an investment and as a brand growth strategy, exploring various media options—both traditional and on-line. We provide Brand Leaders with new ways to think about media to be able to drive long term growth and profits for your brand. We bring a more consumer centric approach to media, aligning the media choices to where your consumer will be most likely to engage with your brand message. Media must change the consumer’s behavior so they think, feel or act in a way that tightens the brand’s bond with consumers and gives the brand to have more power and profit. We show where media fits into creative process. We look at all the types of Media through the lens of the Brand Leader, with advice on how to use traditional media options, such as TV, radio, newspaper, out-of-home and Modern media options such as digital, social and search.

8. Winning the Purchase Moment: Brand Leaders need to know how to move consumers on the path to purchase, helping consumers to test, decide and then experience the brand so that they try, repeat and become loyal brand fans. We provide brand leaders with analytics, planning and decision making tools to help their instincts and judgement for moving consumers to purchase. Complete in-store business review, looking at categories, consumer shopping behavior, competitors, customers and the overall brand performance. We teach the basics of customer marketing planning, identifying the target consumer, in-store messages, strategies, tactics and project management. We look at the available tools for customer marketing including pricing, promotions, retail shelf management, merchandising and operational execution.


Stop writing ugly Creative Briefs

Marketing

Transcript of Stop writing ugly Creative Briefs