Top tips on writing a killer creative brief
In the creative world, we all want to create that winning piece of work that has impact, gets recognised and delivers on the objectives. As the leading foodservice agency, here at Jellybean we strive to do this for our clients every day. However, to deliver outstanding creative you have to start with a killer brief – one that drills down to the fundamental proposition and steers the transformation of your thinking and your business.
To stay on top of new briefing techniques and to enable us to hone the best possible brief to work with (be it agency, client or supplier side), we recently attended a refresher course at the MAA, to see how they approach writing that killer brief. Here are 5 simple take outs from our day:
1. Ensure you have included the key ingredients: What is the problem? Who (exactly) is the audience? What insight into the audience do you have? What is the promise? Combine precision and detail, with intuition and emotion to create a clear picture.
2. Communicate the barriers: The external barriers could be your competitors, consumer beliefs, the environment and even your brand image. The internal barriers would include company resources and culture. For example, think about how the insurance company, Direct Line, handled the battle of cost via all the price comparison companies. How they overcame the noise by analysing and identifying the time when people most needed insurance – when the going gets tough and built the campaign around them being a ‘life saver’.
3. Always ask why: Drill down and ask questions to find the root/essence of the problem/issue. Only when the problem is understood, can it be resolved.
4. Never assume: Find out exactly who your audience is and what makes them tick – we are all individuals with common denominating factors or behaviours. No one if asked would say they were a 25-45 C1 or C2 adventurous experimenter. We all have different needs, pressures, preferred channels of communication and therefore will respond differently. Create pen portraits to focus thinking, ask colleagues, use contacts – do some further digging before you assume.
5. Use emotion: Always find the emotional truth. People remember the emotional more than the concrete truth. For example, British Airways’ product truth is that they carry 12 million people every year. But the emotional truth communicated to consumers is that they bring together more people than any other airline.
Duly refreshed we look forward to receiving your killer briefs!