The Power of Well Written Digital Brief
Have you ever been involved in digital campaign or any kind of project?
Well if you have, you certainly got to the point when bad brief caused waste of yours and clients time. Not every client gets the importance of brief for project development. Therefore, here we are, “digitals” from agencies to build clients awareness on an obtrusive manner.
Yes, there are many resources of how to write a god or creative brief — tips and tricks. Still, we get a lot of briefs that are useless, too short, missing brand background and make us wonder whether the other side even knows what should be accomplished by these ventures.
Whether you are working on a shot term campaign that considers new objective for a brand, making an annual strategy or developing app, you need information from your client to know how to start, plan, develop, deliver and maintain. There comes the Brief — holy word of a great help.
What is Brief (for digital teams)?
Digital project happens in collaboration between the client and the agency, the brief is usually the first step towards the beginning of the project. Brief is a structured document that represents the form of “precontract” between the two sides. The briefing structure should be aligned between the client and the agency in order to successfully comprehend clients’ business expectations and to fully understand the project task of the agency. Also, it contains all the key information about project and client that are needed to the project team to evaluate the scope of the work and start with project development.
“The best digital marketing briefs provide clear objectives and success metrics. ‘Brand awareness’ is certainly a nice objective, but the more specific clients can be about desired calls to action (sales or lead generation, website traffic, engagement, evangelist/influencer behaviours, etc.), the better defined our strategy, tactics, and success metrics will be.
I’d also add that providing a clear audience definition matters because different customers turn to different digital sources for information and influence. When we know who you want to reach and what you want them to think or do, we can develop a precise plan that delivers on those goals.”– Jennifer Jones-Mitchell, President at Brandware
What is not brief?
Real life example: “Also, a small update for Tonka — along with this we will have another small FB contest for the go2digital citylight where there will be need 4 FB promo posts (dark posts) TARGETED in only four cities/counties, the citylights will be: Zagreb, Osijek, Rijeka, Split. When I get info about medias creatives that the citylights were set up, I sent you the creative.” — please, at least, tell me what you want to accomplish, what is the target, from which PO can I take budget… UGH!!! (dear client if you ever read this, I love you, but situations like this does not make me happy J)
Also, Brief MUST NOT:
· be generic and without usable concrete details
· be like essays with lots of unnecessary information
· to provide creative solutions
· be incomplete
· abusive and inhumane: “until tomorrow we have to ….”
· have one-way communication (often by a client)
· be ambiguous
Structure of the digital Brief?
1. Brand values
✔ Brand is your biggest asset
✔ The danger of off-brand projects
✔ Brand promise
✔(!)Do not suppose partners know who you are
2. Target group
✔ Demography is just the beginning
✔ Worldview is more important than the generation
✔ What does our customer do every day, what he likes, what is he fearing,
✔ where to find him — digital channels
3. Project Goals
✔ The projects are designed in order to benefit business
✔ The results must be clearly communicated at start
✔ “Increasing sales” or “improving perception” are not goals
✔ Goals are not solutions
Set a goal like — increasing sales for 7% or be perceived by consumers like premium brand…
4. Deadlines and budgets
✔ Be fair to everyone and tell clearly how much you have the money(at the beginning, not after they spent too many time to think out ideas you can not afford)
✔ Divide deadlines into milestones.
5. …
Structure of brief can oscillate; client or agency have the option to add anything they find of great importance.
What kind of Briefs are there?
Shortly, the project brief might be described as the bird’s-eye view of the IT project. It should be focused on the “big picture”, while ensuring all the details of the challenge are clear and understood.
The Creative brief is a document created through meetings, interviews, readings, and discussions between the client and creative team before any work begins. The creative brief defines how to best connect with the target audience by clarifying their needs and motivations. (-David Felfoldi)
Keep in mind!
Finally, be creative while writing brief, think about people who will read them. Insert gifs! Gifs are always a great idea. After making the Brief read it once again, let your grandma or daughter read it and ask them to paraphrase what they have read.
Do not give up on Brief!
