We wrap up our crash-course in creative brief composition, while experiencing the joys and sorrows, highs and lows of self-editing.
This week, we continued to compose creative briefs for our assigned and personal brands. Just in case you didn’t read last week’s blog, a Creative Brief is:
The creative brief is a summary of the campaign's objectives and goals, which becomes the framework through which the campaign ideas will be defined and tested.
For your assigned brands, the goal is to show you how advertising campaigns are born—from equal parts brand history, market research and creativity—while your personal brand is an opportunity to examine who you are and the person you aspire to be, creatively, professionally and socially (is it apparent how much I like groups of three yet?)
10 students presented their creative briefs in class, after which, we tried to summarize their presentations using bullet points and simple phrases; one thing we’re going to start working on in class is learning how to present using bullet points, rather than reading word-for-word from a script. For example, consider the following paragraph:
"The Losers" is a classical action movie based on a comic strip. It does just enough nodding toward the graphics of drawn superheroes, and then gets that out of the way and settles down into a clean, efficient and entertaining thriller. It's a reminder of how exhausting this kind of material can be when it's brought to a manic level by overwrought directors. But "The Losers" looks, feels and plays like a real movie. There is another reason to be grateful: It's not in 3-D. You have to treasure movies like this before they're entirely eaten away by the marketing gimmicks.
If we had to summarize this paragraph using 4-5 bullet points in order to capture its key points, how would you do it? Personally, I would choose the following points:
“The Losers”
-- classical action movie, based on a comic strip
-- clean, efficient and entertaining thriller
-- looks, feels and plays like a real movie
-- would have been exhausting in the hands of an overwrought director
-- not in 3D
Once you have your points, run them through the following test: 1) will I be able to present the paragraph in class using these points, and 2) will the audience be able to read these points a few days later and remember the key points of the paragraph?
If your points met this criteria, you’re golden.
After working our in class-editing exercise, we continued developing our creative briefs, by introducing the following content:
Audience
Marketing Challenges
Marketing Goals
Single Minded Message
With brands, it’s important to identify your audience so you can determine the most effective way to communicate with them, both through messaging and communication channel (i.e., print, web, broadcast).
Continue reading below for a summary of the new creative brief topics as well as a summary of this week’s assignment.
ASSIGNMENTS
Along with a field adventure of your choice, continue creative brief development for one of your assigned brands (choose one) as well as your personal brand.
Note the following:
1) Your final assignment should be in the form of two class presentations (one for assigned brand, one for personal brand), which summarizes your content with bullet points and/or images on slides presented to class.
2) Your presentations should include only one slide (eight total) for each creative brief topic: Company Background, Competitive Landscape, Competitive Analysis, Attitudes, Audience, Marketing Challenges, Marketing Goals, and Single-Minded Message.
3) Your presentation should be output as a PDF so that it can be easily copied to the class computer—do not bring in to class in Keynote or PowerPoint format.
I’ve attached a PDF of my presentation for The New Decadence to use for reference.
Audience
Who is your company’s audience? Create three personas... consider the following questions: what are their names? Where do they live? How old are they? What do they do for fun? Do they prefer to read magazines or spend time online? Where do they shop? Your personas should represent three different customer segments (meaning, they should be part of unique social circles.) How does each audience feel about your brand? Understanding your audience is key to coming up your marketing challenges.
For Your Personal Brand, describe the following personas:
Employers
Acquaintances/Friends
Classmates
What are the marketing challenges for your company?
Based on the three audience segments described above, what are the marketing challenges that drive their feelings/attitudes? Each audience segment should be paired with at least one marketing challenge (but feel free to come up with a handful of ideas).
For your personal brand, describe some of the challenges that you face (i.e, being shy, underestimated, misunderstood, etc.)? Describe at least one challenge for each of your audience segments.
What is the goal of your marketing campaign? (Come up with three ideas.)
Now that you’ve identified your company’s marketing challenges, what are the overall goals of your marketing campaign? Come up with goals for each of the audience segments (three total).
For your personal brand, what are your personal/social/professional goals? Describe at least one goal for each audience segment. (Who do you want to be/aspire to be—think of it as YOU 2.0)
Single-Minded Message
What is the message you want to communicate through your marketing campaign? Does it address your marketing goals? Your single-minded message is the most important element of your creative brief, as the success or failure of your campaign will be judged against this idea.
If you could come up with a single sentence to describe how you want people to see you, what would it be? (If it makes it easier, come up with a tag line.)
Ideas First Recap #3 (4/20): Creative Briefs, Part Two.
We wrap up our crash-course in creative brief composition, while experiencing the joys and sorrows, highs and lows of self-editing.
This week, we continued to compose creative briefs for our assigned and personal brands. Just in case you didn’t read last week’s blog, a Creative Brief is:
The creative brief is a summary of the campaign's objectives and goals, which becomes the framework through which the campaign ideas will be defined and tested.
For your assigned brands, the goal is to show you how advertising campaigns are born—from equal parts brand history, market research and creativity—while your personal brand is an opportunity to examine who you are and the person you aspire to be, creatively, professionally and socially (is it apparent how much I like groups of three yet?)
10 students presented their creative briefs in class, after which, we tried to summarize their presentations using bullet points and simple phrases; one thing we’re going to start working on in class is learning how to present using bullet points, rather than reading word-for-word from a script. For example, consider the following paragraph:
"The Losers" is a classical action movie based on a comic strip. It does just enough nodding toward the graphics of drawn superheroes, and then gets that out of the way and settles down into a clean, efficient and entertaining thriller. It's a reminder of how exhausting this kind of material can be when it's brought to a manic level by overwrought directors. But "The Losers" looks, feels and plays like a real movie. There is another reason to be grateful: It's not in 3-D. You have to treasure movies like this before they're entirely eaten away by the marketing gimmicks.
If we had to summarize this paragraph using 4-5 bullet points in order to capture its key points, how would you do it? Personally, I would choose the following points:
“The Losers”
-- classical action movie, based on a comic strip
-- clean, efficient and entertaining thriller
-- looks, feels and plays like a real movie
-- would have been exhausting in the hands of an overwrought director
-- not in 3D
Once you have your points, run them through the following test: 1) will I be able to present the paragraph in class using these points, and 2) will the audience be able to read these points a few days later and remember the key points of the paragraph?
If your points met this criteria, you’re golden.
After working our in class-editing exercise, we continued developing our creative briefs, by introducing the following content:
With brands, it’s important to identify your audience so you can determine the most effective way to communicate with them, both through messaging and communication channel (i.e., print, web, broadcast).
Continue reading below for a summary of the new creative brief topics as well as a summary of this week’s assignment.
ASSIGNMENTS
Along with a field adventure of your choice, continue creative brief development for one of your assigned brands (choose one) as well as your personal brand.
Note the following:
1) Your final assignment should be in the form of two class presentations (one for assigned brand, one for personal brand), which summarizes your content with bullet points and/or images on slides presented to class.
2) Your presentations should include only one slide (eight total) for each creative brief topic: Company Background, Competitive Landscape, Competitive Analysis, Attitudes, Audience, Marketing Challenges, Marketing Goals, and Single-Minded Message.
3) Your presentation should be output as a PDF so that it can be easily copied to the class computer—do not bring in to class in Keynote or PowerPoint format.
I’ve attached a PDF of my presentation for The New Decadence to use for reference.
Download The New Decadence Presentation > >
Audience
Who is your company’s audience? Create three personas... consider the following questions: what are their names? Where do they live? How old are they? What do they do for fun? Do they prefer to read magazines or spend time online? Where do they shop? Your personas should represent three different customer segments (meaning, they should be part of unique social circles.) How does each audience feel about your brand? Understanding your audience is key to coming up your marketing challenges.
For Your Personal Brand, describe the following personas:
Employers
Acquaintances/Friends
Classmates
What are the marketing challenges for your company?
Based on the three audience segments described above, what are the marketing challenges that drive their feelings/attitudes? Each audience segment should be paired with at least one marketing challenge (but feel free to come up with a handful of ideas).
For your personal brand, describe some of the challenges that you face (i.e, being shy, underestimated, misunderstood, etc.)? Describe at least one challenge for each of your audience segments.
What is the goal of your marketing campaign? (Come up with three ideas.)
Now that you’ve identified your company’s marketing challenges, what are the overall goals of your marketing campaign? Come up with goals for each of the audience segments (three total).
For your personal brand, what are your personal/social/professional goals? Describe at least one goal for each audience segment. (Who do you want to be/aspire to be—think of it as YOU 2.0)
Single-Minded Message
What is the message you want to communicate through your marketing campaign? Does it address your marketing goals? Your single-minded message is the most important element of your creative brief, as the success or failure of your campaign will be judged against this idea.
If you could come up with a single sentence to describe how you want people to see you, what would it be? (If it makes it easier, come up with a tag line.)
Please let me know if you have any questions.
The photo is of Broken Social Scene, who will be performing at The Fillmore on Saturday, May 1.