THE CREATIVE BRIEF

Advertising Storyboard

The term brief is used to mean that a client for an advertising project (such as a brand management team) is
informing, or briefing, an advertising agency of the client’s expectations for a proposed advertising campaign. A
creative brief is an informal pact between client and agency that represents agreement on what an advertising
campaign is intended to accomplish. Although creative briefs vary in terms of their degree of specificity, most briefs
would minimally include following sections:

I. Background
The initial question that must be addressed is: What is the background to this job? The answer requires a brief
explanation regarding why the advertising agency is being asked to perform a certain advertising job. What is it that
the client wishes to achieve with the campaign? For example, the purpose may be to launch a new brand, gain back
lost sales from a competitor, or introduce a new version of an established product. Part of the background
explanation would include analyses of the competitive environment and cultural dynamics related to the product
category that could influence the brand’s success potential.

II. Target Audience

Whom do we need to reach with the ad campaign? This is a precise description of the exemplary target market. With
knowledge of the behavior-graphic, psychographic, demographic, or geodemographic characteristics of the intended
customer, creatives have a specific target at which to direct their efforts. This is as essential in advertising as it is in
certain athletic events. For example, the late golf sage Harvey Penick offered the following advice to pupils trying to
improve their golf games: “Once you address the golf ball, hitting it has got to be the most important thing in your
life at that moment. Shut out all thoughts other than picking out a target and taking dead aim at it.” His point to
golfers about taking “dead aim” is also applicable to advertising creatives: You can’t hit a target unless you know
where to aim!

III. Thoughts and Feelings

What do members of the target audience currently think and feel about our brand? Here is where research and
account planning are needed as the foundation for the advertising job. The advice here is to perform research prior to
developing creative advertisements, ad creatives are then prepared to design research-based advertising that speaks
to the target audience in terms of their known thoughts and feelings about the brand rather than relying on mere
suppositions.

IV. Objectives and Measures

What do we want the target audience to think or feel about the brand, and what measurable effects is the advertising
designed to accomplish? This guideline simply reminds everyone what the client wants the advertising to
accomplish. It calls for a short statement about the crucial feelings or thoughts that the advertisement should evoke
in its intended audience. For example, the ad might be designed to move the audience emotionally, to make them
feel deserving of a better lifestyle, or to get them to feel anxious about a currently unsafe course of behavior. Is there
a current perception that needs to be changed? For example, if a large number of consumers in the target market
consider the brand overpriced, how can we change that perception and convince them that the brand actually is a
good value due to its superior quality? Knowing this, creatives can then design appropriate advertisements to
achieve that objective. Given multiple objectives, it is desirable to prioritize them from most to least important and
to focus on the most important objective.

V. Behavioral Outcome
What do we want the target audience to do? Beyond thoughts and feelings, this guideline focuses on the specific
action that the advertising campaign is designed to
motivate in the target audience. The advertising might be intended to get prospects to request further information, to
go online, to contact a salesperson, or to go to a retail outlet within the next week to take advantage of a limited-time
sales opportunity.

VI. Positioning
What is the brand positioning? The brand management team must clearly articulate the brand’s meaning, or what it
is to stand for in the audience’s collective mind. In this context, the creative brief might suggest to the advertising
agency a slogan the client wants to use for the brand or request ideas from the agency for alternative slogans that
might be used. The IMC Focus presents a number of well-known ad slogans and also provides information about
consumers’ ability to identify brand slogans correctly.

VII. Message and Medium

What general message is to be created, and what medium is most appropriate for reaching the target audience? This
guideline identifies the most differentiating and motivating message about the brand that can be delivered to the
target audience. It should focus on brand benefits rather than product features. Because credibility and believability
are key to getting the audience to accept the message proposition, this section of the creative brief supports the
proposition with evidence about product features that back up the claimed benefits. With respect to the appropriate
medium, it is the client’s job in concert with the ad agency to identify what medium (or media) is (are) best for
reaching the target audience - perhaps a series of TV commercials along with sup- porting magazine ads.

VIII. Strategy
What is the strategy? The response to this question articulates a specific advertising strategy to accomplish the job.
This strategy statement gives an understanding of how their creative work must fit into an overall marcom strategy
that includes elements other than advertising. For example, the strategy statement may indicate that in addition to
advertising, a new brand will be launched with a series of major events, an aggressive buzz-building campaign, and
online promotions to encourage consumer trial.

IX. Nitty-Gritty Details

When and how much? This section of a creative brief identifies the deadline for when the advertising job is to be
presented to the client for approval and specifies the budget for production of creative deliverables such as finished
TV commercials. A truly valuable creative brief requires that the document be developed with a full understanding
of the client’s advertising needs. It also necessitates the acquisition of market research data that inform the agency
about the competitive environment and about consumers’ current perceptions of the to-be-advertised brand and its
competition.