The Campaign Brief (or advertising brief) is the second in a four part series on developing creative briefs . The briefs are designed to work in concert with the Bracco HPF brand development tools, yet are straightforward enough to be used as stand alone guides.

So, why is this called a “campaign brief” rather than an “advertising brief”? So that we think bigger. It’s easy to come up with a one-off ad but it’s more difficult to develop a concept that is “campaign-able”, a concept that leads to multiple ads, events and activities. By developing a strong campaign idea we accomplish two very important things:

1. We create a communication platform that is replicable and builds a strong brand voice over time.
2. We save ourselves money and effort down the line by not having to continuously come up with unique ad concepts (we have only to develop new executions of the existing concept - which is far easier).

One thing to note is that this brief has a section for “Measurement Tools”. It is imperative that we monitor our communications to determine if they were indeed successful - did they generate positive ROI? By baking measurement tools into our campaign planning we help ensure that we are able to quantify our success.

The Bracco HPF Campaign Concept brief

What are we doing?

• [ Statement of what this initiative is about. ]  Describe whether this is a broad campaign concept such as “we need to find a way to launch our product” or is it more specific such as “we need a theme for our trade show and pre trade show marketing.”

Market context

• [ What is happening in the market in general terms?  Plus, what one specific thing are we facing? ]  This should be a short description of what is happening in the market. It is not a report, just a very quick statement of market context and should include the key competitive issue.

Concise company description

• [ What the company does,  what they sell, and their personality. This can be taken directly from “The elevator speech” ]  Put the campaign in context. Who is the company, what are their goals and what do they do. Oftentimes this can be pulled directly from the Messaging Brief’s “Company Description.”

The marketing goals

• [ Specifically, what are we trying to accomplish and how will we measure our success? ] What do we hope to accomplish for the marketing team. What are their sales or conversion objectives?

Target audience that we can motivate

• [ Who are we talking to and what is it that they want that we can address? ]  Who is this person? What drives them? What is it about them that gets them excited or motivated about this product or service?

Our strategy to motivate

• [ Specifically, how are we going to engage them to act? What elements can we play with and capitalize on? ]  How are we going to leverage what our product does against what the prospect needs. What sorts of things will our communications illustrate? How do we capitalize on this match of prospect needs and company offering?

The call to action

• [ This initiative’s message boiled down as far as it can go ]  Be clear. What behavior do we want the prospect to take. What is the next step in the process (or buying cycle) that we want to encourage?

Measurement Tools

• [ What tools do we have at our disposal, or will we need to gauge our success? ]  Measurement metrics are essential to gauging campaign success. Because we are still at the campaign concepting stage we may not know what tools will be appropriate, but we must make sure that we can measure any initiative we propose.

Key dates

• [ Review and deliverable dates ]  List internal review dates, client review dates, final deliverable dates. Be sure to agree them with everyone internally before committing to them with the client.

Like the messaging brief, the challenge is to strip out all unnecessary information. Keep it to a page, or two at most.

• If you want to get right to work you can download the word version.
• If you would like a brief customized to the way you work, contact us.