45 Creative Brief Development

Introduction

The design portion of any IMC campaign is critically important. It’s the visual representation of the extensive background work and research done to put together a cohesive and complete campaign. The most important sections can be broken down into the creative brief, branding, and marketing. Each of these sections also contains several sub-sections that go into further detail.

The creative brief is the first step towards determining what your goals for the campaign are and what you hope to achieve overall. These goals should explain the intended impact you hope to have on your target audience but also your own internal objectives that you hope to accomplish.

Once you’re satisfied with the overall structure of the creative brief the next stage is the branding portion of the IMC. Before you can market your campaign, you need to establish your organization’s brand. This is accomplished by establishing a brand vision, logo, brand personality, tagline, brand colours, typography, and other supporting brand assets. Branding is important for an organization because it helps with recognition from the audience.

After the branding has been taken care of the next step is marketing. As an organization, it’s good to know about the different tools for content creation, development of a website as well as tips for online marketing. Effective marketing tools are helpful as they will allow your organization to reach the most amount of people possible. Several tactics are available including social media or email marketing. All put together, a strong creative brief, great branding, and effective marketing will help lead to a successful IMC campaign.

A creative brief is a document for the in-house creative team or external designers, and the overseeing NPO director, that provides a clear objective and explains the overall concept of the campaign in question. In other words, the creative brief is like a game plan—without it, the campaign may not be successful. Of note, a creative brief does not require the use of a particular writing style, such as AP style. However, grammar, spelling, punctuation, and concise writing are still very important. Here are several broad categories to consider when completing a creative brief.

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Effective briefs are:

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A creative brief should be brief, inspire those that read it, and be visually engaging. The following creative briefs created by Abby for Townsite Brewing Co displays all the characteristics of an effective creative brief.

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Make sure your creative brief is complete, descriptive and thorough with convincing information. It should also include:

• A compelling offer for the creative team to work on or provides them with guidelines so they can develop a solution to your problem
• A focus on your audiences’ needs instead of your own

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Depending on the project, your creative brief may include:

• Executive Summary
• Marketing Communication Goals
• Marketing Objectives
• Target Audience Profile
• Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
• User Value Proposition (UVP)
• Brand Personality
• Marketing Strategy
• Marketing Materials

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