How to write a brief for marketing that sells

“If you don’t say what you want, you won’t want what you get”.

There’s a skill to writing a marketing brief. If you get it right your supplier will deliver first time – no surprises. If you get it wrong (or worse still don’t provide one at all), it costs time and money to put it right.

At Clear Thought we love writing briefs. It’s an integral part of our service. And we take extra care to make them engaging, relevant and factual, because a boring brief makes for an unmotivated supplier. And, ultimately a disappointing end result.

Even when a customer provides us with a good brief, we talk it through with them and make sure we all agree with the requirements. And if we disagree with an objective or output, we don’t mind adding our penneth and making specific recommendations to help get it spot-on. We can also work with you to re-write it if necessary.

TOP TIPS: When preparing a brief avoid jargon, lingo and acronyms. Include facts (no assumptions or embellishments). Use plain speaking English and include as much detail as possible. It’s easier and quicker for your supplier to cut out the superfluous rather than have to fill in some gaps. Whether you need a creative brief, web brief, copy brief or even an event brief – here’s a useful checklist to help make sure nothing gets missed:

1. YOUR PRODUCT/BACKGROUND: Include a brief summary about your company, its products and its services. Set the scene a little and try and include something about your brand, its personality and philosophy. Pricing and sales processes should also be mentioned. Will there need to be any initial research, or do you already have some research that findings that will help?

2. COMPETITION: Talk about competitor products and services. What marketing activity are they doing and are they doing it better? Include examples and/or weblinks.

3. WHAT: What is your required output? I.E. what type of activity are you looking for (an ad, a DM campaign a new website, a conference)? Think about how the deliverable will be used – in print, on a website, in a salesperson’s briefcase, etc.

4. WHY: Why are you doing this activity? What objectives are you trying to achieve (raise awareness, collect data, increase sales, get someone to do something…)?

5. WHO: Describe your target audience – who you want to talk to. Are they businesses or consumers? Describe why you think they need your product or service, and why you think they might not be buying (barriers). Try and describe the role of this person in their organisation, or what type of consumer they are. What do they read? What do they listen to?

6. WHEN: Is there as seasonal reason for undertaking this piece of activity? Are there any key milestones or deadlines that need to be met?

7. HOW: How are you going to measure the effectiveness of this activity? What will success look like? Can it be piloted or tested first?

8. LIKES & DISLIKES: It’s always useful to list some activities or brands that you have already seen and liked. Even if just website (competitor or otherwise).

9. MANDATORIES: It’s essential to provide a ‘call to action’ plus any brand/tone of voice guidelines, or list any assets that must be used or avoided. Ts & Cs or legal requirements too.

10. BUDGET: It’s much easier for a supplier to respond to a brief if they know how much you would like to spend.

There are some simple equations you can use to work out how much you should invest, but saying there is ‘no budget’ either means you expect it for free, or the sky’s the limit! Wouldn’t that be great?

If you are not 100% comfortable in briefing marketing suppliers, we can help. Clear Thought has hands-on experience both sides of the desk and can help both parties work together for a great result. We’re experienced in talking their language, and we have a number of briefing templates that mean you’re never starting from a blank sheet of paper.

Alternatively, if you already have a brief you would like us to look at, we’d be happy to come along and talk to you face-to-face. A bit of clear thinking usually improves the results you get.

There’s nothing worse than paying for a piece of work that just doesn’t do the trick. Agencies want to meet the brief… so if you get the brief right there should never be a wasted penny spent with marketing suppliers. And, in small business marketing, every penny counts.

By Cheryl Crichton | Associate Clear Thinker | Clear Thought Consulting Ltd | www.clear-thought.co.uk

Ads I’m loving at the moment

I’m loving www.comparethemeerkat.com – comparison sites are all much of a muchness, so coming up with something really distinctive will have been a creative challenge indeed. I can’t for the life of me work out what the creative brief said to elicit such a leftfield and engaging response.

I’m also really enjoying the Audi Q5 ad with cardboard car… I’d love to think someone lovingly sculpted the car we see, but I have a sneaky suspicion a computer or two might have been involved. Still loving it though – it has a childlike joy to it… bit of a rip off of the Skoda cake ad, but hey, it made me smile, which has made a contribution to my brand feel-good in relation to Audi… tho’ not rushing out to buy one just yet.

Really good design should go completely un-noticed

I spent six hours this weekend clearing junk from my house. It felt great. I sorted through piles of boxes, threw out unwanted clothes and re-organised a load of storage. Then, my Dad came to visit and commented on what a lovely home we have. Now, he didn’t say ‘Wow, isn’t it tidy’ – in fact he didn’t notice that I’d been tidying, but by clearing away the distractions he was able to notice the lovely touches we have around the place – like art and photos.

A room that is clear of clutter and that is well laid out to enable you to move around freely, is a joy to be in. Good literature design (on and off-line) is the same. There are various design conventions in regard to leaving white space, to aligning and anchoring headings and sub-headings, etc. – and whilst most people picking up a brochure (except those of us who work in the business) won’t consciously see these rules being applied, they will enjoy a well designed piece much more. This is most evident when you see something that hasn’t been well designed – you don’t know why, it just doesn’t look right. Just like when you walk into a room that has been freshly vacuumed, you don’t actively notice the carpet pile all running in the same direction – it just looks better.

Whilst there are, of course, examples of anti-design where rules are actively broken to create a jarring and clashing visual impact – most marketing literature, particularly in B2B, requires the sort of design that allows the message to take centre stage, that gently gives a sense of the corporate culture, and that silently guides the eye to the key points.

So, take care if you’re tempted to prioritise content over design in times of budgetary squeeze – if the two aren’t balanced, you’re missing a trick.

What’s more important to marketing success – science or creativity?

Marketing is increasingly viewed as a science, where sophisticated modelling and data-driven decision-making are taking centre stage. Against this backdrop, has creativity become a less important marketing skill? It has certainly been argued that marketers come in two shapes – the scientist and the artist. My contention is that significant marketing success requires a careful balancing of both, and that neither is the superior marketing skill.

In a previous article, What to say when, 29 Oct 2008, I outlined the key steps in an effective sales funnel, and the role of marketing at each stage. So, working on the assumption that a decision to buy starts at awareness, let’s also start here in reviewing the relative roles of science and creativity on marketing success.

In my first major agency role with Mason Zimbler (www.mzl.com), our MD used a simple equation to set the scene which has stayed with me ever since:

Frequency x Impact = Awareness

The premise is that if either element is out of balance, your chances of success are limited. It is a simple concept. In regard to frequency, think ‘it takes more than one drip of water to get wet’. The Chartered Institute of Marketing in the UK suggest that it takes three sightings of an ad to really notice it. When we talk about impact, the most important element is relevance – did your ad, email, banner, blog, etc strike a chord with the recipient, if not they won’t notice you. (There’s also more on this in my article ‘what to say when’). So, if your piece is dull and irrelevant, your audience will not see it. Or, if your piece is stunningly relevant, but they only see it briefly, you’re unlikely to really get the message across. Taking these two elements as our bases for comparison, we’ll review the contribution of science and creativity to each.

The scientific approach to communication frequency:

The scientific approach to managing the frequency of your marketing messaging is to model an ideal contact density for each segment or, in highly sophisticated set-ups, for each individual. That is the number of touches that person, or group of people, typically require in order to respond. This enables the marketer to develop a communications plan that ensures the optimum number of touches. Large consumer organisations, like banks, also use this technique to ensure that their customers aren’t over-communicated – having observed that over-communication can trigger complaints or defections, smart technology-driven rules are applied to ensure that this risk is minimised.

The creative approach to communication frequency:

A creative approach to communications frequency is to think laterally. The best example of a really creative approach to this is the innovative use of ambient media. By putting themselves in the shoes of the audience, a creative team will dream up highly creative media placements to ensure that the message gets to people regularly. For example, the National Union of Students in the UK ran a highly successful campaign highlighting the risks of sexually transmitted infections by stickering ten pence pieces and dropping them in student union bars. This is creative thinking on many levels – firstly the location, then the assumption that a student would pick up a stray coin, and the association of the money having passed through many hands linking directly to the message itself. Another example of this is the use that Amplex deodorants made of placing their ads on the hanging hold bars on underground trains and busses – we all know how unpleasant it is to be on crowded public transport where someone nearby has a body odour issue. Creatively tapping into this gave Amplex a highly creative media placement opportunity – putting the message right in front of their audience every time they travelled through London. By mapping out a buyer’s journey and thinking about how to get your message across creatively at each point, you can vastly increase your opportunity-to-see.

The scientific approach to communication relevance:

Scientific marketing has increased the likely relevance of marketing messages exponentially in recent years. The ability to analyse and overlay various data sources to build up a rich picture of your audience, and indeed each individual in that audience, is immensely powerful. Sophisticated optimisation techniques can tell you what to say, when to say it and even which medium is most appropriate for a particular segment or person. The various data strategy awards are littered with excellent examples of this approach.

The creative approach to communication relevance:

When it comes to creativity and relevance, we need only look to viral marketing for lessons in why creativity is essential. The Cadbury Gorilla ad would never have come about by virtue of scientific messaging development. Marketers need to remember that they are talking to people, with feelings and a sense of humour. We also all know that a recommendation from a friend is vastly superior in terms of our likelihood to listen than an official piece of marketing. As such, tapping into word of mouth is essential and creativity is king in the ‘click to forward’ world. The earlier examples of creative media placement also show how creativity can increase relevance by being appropriately positioned to amplify your message.

Balancing and fostering a healthy mix of marketing skills:

Having merely scratched the surface on these subjects, it is clear to see that marketers need to balance their skills at both ends of the scientific-artistic continuum.

Ten key points to fostering and balancing both skill sets:

1. Ensure your marketing team is trained in understanding and briefing scientific and creative suppliers
2. Facilitate creative thinking – I’d suggest that marketers need about one day per quarter of facilitated creative thinking
3. Start with science to build the profile of your audience, but always get a creative team to contribute ideas about how to reach them
4. Test various creative executions against the same audience to demonstrate, in hard commercial terms, the impact of the creative element of your campaigns
5. Don’t sacrifice creativity to buy more frequency – if your message makes no impact every time you pay for space, you’re wasting money
6. Don’t let beauty distract you – something can be beautiful but irrelevant
7. Make sure you track people through the sales funnel to allow you to see how you’ve generated your best leads
8. Look for ideas everywhere – you don’t have to have ‘creative’ in your job title to have a good idea
9. Never let the numbers speak for themselves – when it comes to reviewing marketing, you do need to look at what the audience saw to really understand it
10. Read the marketing awards booklets – there’s no such thing as a new idea. Most marketing awards these days look at science and creativity, you will find great examples if you look for them.

Marketing is one of the most exciting jobs in the world – you are a scientist, a psychologist, an artist and so much more. If you recognise, hone and balance these skills you’ll achieve success for your business and great satisfaction for yourself.

By Bryony Thomas, Director at Clear Thought Consulting | www.clear-thought.co.uk

Necessity, the mother of invention?

Will an economic downturn curb the enthusiasm of companies to spend on decent creative, or will it force people to be more inventive?

The recent Honda live ad, where they booked the entire ad break for a live parachute jump was pretty innovative. You could argue that this is sign of a company splashing the cash… or was it only possible because prices are on the down and a stunt like that becomes affordable? It is certainly true that in an increasingly saturated media landscape, people need to work harder for standout – but chucking money at it is not always the answer.

In the socially networked world, creativity is king. The Cadbury Gorilla is case in point. Though I’m sure Cadbury spent a pretty penny, the many hundreds of spoofs that really made the campaign a success were made in homes with dodgy webcams or even camera phones. It is the idea that shines through – really capturing imagination.

So, will a downturn lead to a mass of truly awful ads… possibly on TV, but in the ‘click to forward’ world, the dross simply doesn’t make it through the judging panel that is the self-selecting audience.

By Bryony Thomas, Director at Clear Thought Consulting | www.clear-thought.co.uk