Integrating a Campaign from the start: a guide
How many times have we gotten to a fifth round creative review only to discover that the rub is actually in the strategic foundation, not creative execution? It’s not easy to backtrack at that point, and sometimes we feel compelled to completely start from scratch. But what if there was a better, more efficient way to get agencies and clients in lockstep as they get into creative and tactical planning?
The solution is a cohesive, co-created strategic foundation from which each team can work and feel collective ownership. Together with brand team, behavioral planners and even partner agencies if possible (i.e. media, PR, experiential), Communications Planners can organize and lead a session that gets everyone in the same room to collectively hash out/align on an integrated campaign strategy.
The Components of a Campaign Collective
Pre-Planning
- Audience research (Behavioral + Communications + Media Planning)
- Strategic Storyline based on objectives and research (Behavioral Planning)
- Audience barriers for the business objectives set out in client brief (Comms Planning)
- Consumer Journey/Media Behaviors (Media Planning)
Campaign Collective Agenda
1. Establish Objectives — what’s the ambition of the campaign, beyond business objectives outlined in the client brief
2. Present and align on audience insights and their barriers to achieving objectives
3. Together, translate the objectives into communications task that can overcome each barrier
4. Distill communications tasks into digestible, actionable tasks with thought starter channel assignments for illustrative purposes
5. Discuss KPIs for each communications task and identify reporting/measurement needs — which agency partner is responsible for each data point and cadence/timeline for each report
Output: Communications Architecture
Problem > Objective > Strategic Platform > Communications Tasks > KPIs > Role of Channels
Establishing this strategic framework before creative ideas are shared ensures that work is evaluated with a collective vision in mind. This means fewer rounds of creative reviews, no back tracking and a single foundation for each agency to build from as they go into tactical planning.
