5 Tips for Writing a Good Creative Project Brief
One of the worst nightmares for agencies is to get a brief that says everything and nothing. Briefs like that leave the agencies with lots of information, but no focus. The clients, who originate the briefs on the other hand, think that they have done a great job by providing all that agencies could ever want. And they can now look forward to being presented with the best ideas in two weeks’ time. Make a guess — do you think they will be blown away with the proposals that come back?
Make no mistake. While two weeks seem like a reasonable amount of time for agencies to come back with ideas, when a brief is vague, it is not unusual for agencies to be spending more than half that time looking around aimlessly for inspiration to strike. Eventually, if they are lucky — inspiration will strike. But by then, they are left with insufficient time to fully actualise the idea. Not surprisingly, whatever that is finally presented to the client is a fraction of the idea’s full potential. Other times when inspiration is just not forthcoming, for the sake of not wanting to disappoint the client and a slim hope of winning the business, agencies push ahead with ideas even they are not convinced of.
Despite best intentions from both clients and agencies, the pitch just did not rise up to the occasion for anyone. It is a classic lose-lose situation. What had gone wrong? And more importantly, how can we stop the same from happening again and again?
Tip 1: Share the Project Objectives
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It seems obvious. Nobody goes through the whole pitching process if they are not serious in wanting to get work done and meet a bigger goal. However, these same motivations which are crystal clear to clients are sometimes not made explicit to agencies. Is the campaign supposed to increase sales? How much sales are we talking about, and where does the sales of this product stand now? Agencies need to know these so as to know how they can achieve the numbers. This is the same theory that applies to how you manage your own salespeople.
In other instances, the project objectives may be less measurable — for example, to build brand awareness — and it is hard to link the effort to any numbers. That is alright. Simply knowing what the end line is already makes it easier for agencies to channel their ideas towards meeting that aim.
Still, there are projects which are either done in response to governance requirements such as annual and sustainability reports or annual initiatives like the annual dinner and dance event; as a result, it feels obvious what the objectives are — to complete the project on time and to make it different from previous years. Let’s get it right. These are not project objectives. These are deliverables. The objectives will have looked more like — ensure everyone have fun at the dinner or inspire stakeholders’ confidence in our sustainability practices.
Tip 2: Outline Brand Positioning
This is hard. Every brand or organisation claims to offer value. And truly, in our highly competitive world today, if your organisation does not offer real value — you will be out of the game soon. And the least of your problems will be worrying about writing a good creative project brief.
Therefore, rather than stating the obvious that your brand’s positioning is “value for money”, explain how your brand delivers value. Granted that it is easier for established and mass market brands to articulate their value proposition, but this is an equally important exercise for even the most technical industrial product or service. If agencies know the value of your product/service, the onus will be on them to help you communicate that positioning strongly as a primary message or subtly as a secondary visual/copy element.
To help agencies better understand the value proposition of your brand, take it a step further by sharing how customers perceive your brand. What do your loyal customers say about you? What do new customers like about you? Sometimes, by going through this exercise of aligning what your customers think about your brand and how you would like your brand to be positioned, you will spot a brand perception gap that you have never realised exist, eventually enabling your tightening of other aspects of your product/service delivery.
Tip 3: Identify One Key Message for the Target Audience
“Who is your target audience?” sounds like an innocent enough question. In response, clients will typically provide a laundry list of the people that they want to reach out to — which is helpful and confusing to agencies all at once. Chances are, these are all people who are likely to see the website, report, or social media post, but only one or two of these people are the ones that are central to the success or failure of your campaign. Hence, it will be worth your effort to clearly separate out who your primary and secondary audiences are, For example, if you are hoping to push up sales, prospective and existing customers should be the primary target audience. Conversely, if it is a branding campaign, your primary target audience base could be wider. It could include your partners and even employees.
However, perhaps more significant than knowing who are your targets is to decide on one key message that your primary audience should have as a takeaway. No matter how inclusive your creative project is in terms of its targets, there should only be one message that you want to convey. Any additional points should be developed to support that message. Similarly, the brand positioning we spoke about earlier? It should also work in tandem with the message.
It is tempting to want to reach out to everyone in your campaign and tell them a thousand great things about your brand. But let’s face it. When you say too many things all at once, nobody truly gets your point. So why not focus on one strong message and build your communication around it — so that everyone gets it. Less is more.
Tip 4: Set Project and Pitch Deliverables
It is common for clients to feel that they might be limiting the agencies’ creative process by dictating the deliverables that they are expecting. Actually for practical reasons, it is in your favour to spell out your expectations so that agencies can come back with the things you want to see. There are bound to be agencies under-delivering on the expectations as well as others who pull out all stops to go the extra mile. Whichever the case, it gives you a sense of who will be a better creative partner for you.
And in the event that everyone is on par in meeting the expectations, you can also better weigh idea for idea and conduct a fairer comparison on the preferred creative direction to proceed with. In the event where agencies imagine there is another superior way to get things done, most agencies — unless they are not passionate about the project — would come back with counter proposals of the “could be”.
Therefore, do not for a moment think that you are limiting agencies’ creativity by telling them the expected deliverables. Rather, it ensures that they come back with things you want to see, and minimises time and resource wastage for both parties.
Tip 5: Provide a Budget
Questions about budget almost never fail to come up from agencies. On the other hand, clients always make it seem like a taboo subject. And it is not unusual to hear replies like “we are not at liberty to disclose the budget” or “we don’t have a budget for this project”. This conflict arises because the two parties attach different meaning to the word “budget”. The client thinks this is the agencies’ way of trying to size up the worthiness of the project and/or judge the depth of their pockets. And of course, there are indeed agencies who are trying to use budget as a means to decide on the amount of effort they should expend.
But for most others, when a creative project is set to tick many boxes — including idea quality, value for money execution, timely delivery and generate positive results — knowing the budget helps them to decide what to prioritise and where they should invest most of their efforts in. Is it to focus on proposing an amazing market activation activity? Or an awesome idea that is scalable and have a lasting impact?
By being upfront about the budget, agencies stay rooted in making sure that the idea they return with do not burn a hole in your pocket en route to meeting that bigger objective. At the same time, it ensures that the ideas that you are impressed with are also the ones you can afford. Because, ideas that start big only to get trimmed later because of budget usually inspires no one — not the agency, not you, and definitely not your target audiences.
Rounding Up
While the five tips above may not solve all the challenges of putting together a good brief, we are hopeful that if they are actively employed, chances of the pitching process becoming more fruitful and enjoyable for both clients and agencies are likely to be higher.
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