When I worked in brand management for Unilever, many years ago, I learnt the importance of a great creative advertising brief. I was taught that there is no such thing as a bad creative agency (my creative contacts will be pleased to hear this), only a bad brief. That if you are not getting the creative campaign you want chances are the fault lies with you and how you have communicated what you want. So as a consequence you learn that writing briefs for any form of communication - be that advertising, web development, PR - takes time, a lot of time.
Indeed when you spend as much on advertising as Unilever does you would be foolish not to invest oodles of time in perfecting the advertising brief, in making sure that you know what you are trying to communicate and to whom. Otherwise you may be throwing a good deal of money behind a good deal of bad advertising.
Regardless of the size of your budget, the discipline of really thinking about what you are trying to achieve; how you want to be perceived; what message you want to give; and importantly putting it down on paper, will improve the impact of your marketing communication immeasurably. It will also make the job of your agency 100% easier so that they can spend time focusing on developing a great campaign for you rather than trying to work out what you want.
So we are sharing our creative briefing template, from our business toolkit, which we use with our clients to help them get the most out of their creative agencies. If you have a budget and a set timing, remember to include this in the briefing process. Download here.
Specification is one of the hardest skills for human beings to master. I was promised a recommendation by a former client, now a friend. I had to take him out to lunch and talk him through it to get anything. You only have to look at the user requirements for a typical IT solution to know why they disappoint so often.
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