Well hi, we're going to get a little creative today
and kind of do something like I would do in a classroom
very naturally to talk a little bit about how you all can
fluff up, plump up your creative briefs.
From looking at some of those on,
your assignments on D2L I just wanted to share some thoughts with you about that.
I feel like I should have my briefcase,
but I have left it at the office, darn,
because I still have some interesting things in that briefcase.
But the things that I'm going to pull out of my briefcase today,
my mental briefcase are just some tips on maybe how you can
enrich your creative briefs
so that they can form a stronger
strategy for
whoever the writer is or the designer is who will get
that brief. Now, I know that in this class
you're going to be the one who is going to be doing the writing
and at least thinking about the visuals,
but in a typical office as we talked about before you'd be handing that to
someone else perhaps
to do at least a part of the project so, you have to
put as much as you can into a
creative brief so that whoever receives it
next, after you, can
without doing extra research,
extra work themselves actually go ahead and start writing or designing.
Most of the briefs that I've seen thus far,
and yes I've been looking at your briefs;
have been pretty sketchy,
barely scratching the surface
rather than getting underneath the surface and finding out what's down
there.
So, I want to give you an analogy.
The briefs that I've been looking at so far
have not been terribly creative, but I know we're just getting started which is
why I am
I'm wanting to encourage you with these tips,
but my analogy is: think about building this gorgeous house let's say you've got
a million dollars
to build a gorgeous house, and so you plan on having a house that has all this
beautiful
stone work and
turret's and gorgeous huge windows
that are open to a beautiful view
and beautiful rooms with
exquisite wood floors and
marble counter-tops in the kitchen; you build this beautiful house
and you're really excited about it, and
it's just a work of art, but
you failed to build the foundation
for it. So, you set the house
on dirt, and or on a hole
with no foundation underneath it,
and what's going to happen to the gorgeous stone and wood floors and
countertops and beautiful windows
and turret's? And what's going to happen, its going to go (sinking sound)
in the hole and fall in upon itself.
It's going to get cracks in it and fall apart
because it doesn't have a strong foundation.
What your building in a creative brief
is a strong foundation
on which you can build
your advertising. So this foundation needs to be there.
When I ask you, to whom are we talking?
I not only want to know
what the target audience is,
and most times I will give you your target audience specifically;
maybe it's adults 55 and over,
maybe its Hispanic women
who are 25 to 40, maybe
it's Millennials, maybe it's
baby boomers who are
seeking an automobile and are
of an income that's above a hundred thousand dollars a year;
I'll probably tell you those things, but
in that section we need to know more than that;
it's not just your target audience but tell me about that target audience.
So get on the Internet, I know you're there anyway
go Google
or Bing or however you search;
go search for information on this particular target audience
on and what they think of
these particular kinds of projects, products excuse me.
So for instance if you're talking about your water
brand
Google: Millennial's and bottled water,
and you're gonna get some pretty interesting information.
If you are just talking about Millennials
and food, type in: Millennial's and food.
What do they like to eat, what will they spend their money on,
what appeals to them, are environmental factors
and recycling important to them; course it is,
are they looking at more healthy foods;
of course they are. But, these are things that you can find
by doing your thorough research
and building that solid foundation
to create a really
creative brief. It's very difficult to be creative
when you don't have the information, the data,
that you need to create. So,
that's what a creative brief is for. It's to be that strong foundation,
and one of the things that builds that strong foundation
is your research that you need to do,
and other people would be helping you probably in an agency perhaps
maybe not, maybe you're the research guru, that's a job.
People need good researchers so be one of those,
and it's going to benefit you as you are designing or
writing ads, but also as others are too, and
and that could end up being your neach, your little
spot in the world is doing good research.
So, find out
what it is that this particular
target audience is interested in
what they respond
to as far as appeals, what kind of appeals
engage them, in gender their interest.
You can find that if you use your search words properly.
To find out what do they think now
about the product? Some of that is intuition certainly;
ask yourself, what you think of the product right now,
but you're going to have to extrapolate,
you're going to have to think, okay what
do they think about this product, and you can probably find some of those
things online as well in your research.
What do people think about
this particular product, is it tootsie rolls
or is it texting and driving?
Whatever it is you can probably type in: what do people think
about and blank,
and then find find some information there.
So, don't shortchange
that particular section. You can actually
find some data on what people
are spending their money on, which products are they spending their money
on,
and why or why not?
So fluff up, build that foundation
that's important. What do we want them to think?
Try not to fill that section of your creative brief
with "BS" or the obvious.
Of course we want them to think well of our brand;
of course we want them to use our brand, but let's be specific
what exactly do we want this
target audience to do after they have seen
this advertisement? What is it that we want to encourage them
or call them to action about?
And then, once you get into the section that
includes your key messages and your advertising
strategy under strategy; strategy is not just
oh, let's get those people to buy our product;
that's not a strategy,
that's kind of an obvious thing.
So what you want to do instead is determine what kind of ads
are going to attract this
particular target audience. Now, on some of your assignments, or a lot of your
assignments I'm going to tell you exactly what kind of ad you need to create,
but in some of them, the early ones especially,
you need to determine what kind of appeals are going to attract
this particular audience, and
is its social media or is it a younger group
like a millennial group that is very engaged in social media.
Are we going to put a lot of our money into social media?
Maybe Facebook ads? Although, Facebook ads aren't
necessarily something that Millennials are looking at nowadays
thats
that's what the old folks such as I are looking at.
Are you going to put your money into billboards or into television
advertising?
What does your target audience pay attention to?
And then,
what color palette is appealing to them; younger people like brighter colors;
older folks like more subdued colors
think about color palettes,
think about how you're branding yourself for your differing target audiences.
These things need to go into strategy, and then also
using the research that you've found
on this target audience and what they respond to,
and what they think of your product, and how people are using the product
now then,
you can actually build a strategy
to respond to those situations.
So, I'd just like to
see a little more research
I guess, and a little more strategic thinking,
and I think that's going to come to you more and more naturally as you get a
little practice at it.
I'm not expecting ya' know, the
Taj Mahal kind of idea
from the very first; you don't have to
build Biltmore Estates on that foundation quite yet,
but I just wanted to share with you some of my thoughts about how you can
pump up your
creative briefs so that
they'll actually give you and whoever else might be using them
the fodder, the information that you all need
to actually create some
good solid advertising that's based
on research and on
how well you know that product; that's another thing that I need to mention to
you.
When you are creating a creative brief,
I just love to use the word create,
you need to know your product. So, you're
product research section of your creative brief needs to be
very thorough, and you can do that how?
We talked about that early on in the semester
in several different venues, in some of my lecture notes
in a video; you need to find out as much as you can about that product if
you can access brochures,
if you can access their annual report,
if you can go to their website and find out information,
if you can
of course in real life you would talk with people who work there.
You need to know the company; you need to know
the brand very well, and you need to know
the product that you're trying to promote. If you do not know these things
it's definitely going to show in your work; its going to show in your creative brief
first, and then you're going to find it difficult to actually write advertising
for a product that you don't understand. So
that said, you need to do your research
on your product, on the company,
on the brand; include that in the creative brief so
anyone who gets it will not have to go back and do that research themselves and
they'll understand
and have a wealth of information on which to build
their writing or their design work then you also want to research
the target audience our target audiences
and what they're interested in and how they
relate to this kind of a product.
And fluff up that
creative brief; build a nice solid foundation to set that gorgeous
advertising house on, and then
you're going to be much more creative, and your briefs
are gonna look really good, and your ads
are going to appeal to people and be successful,
and that's what it's all about cause I'm going to tell you that in
advertising and marketing results
are what matter. It could be the most gorgeous
stone advertising house on the best foundation ever,
but what matters in the end is results,
and that's what we've got to do; we've got to get results for our clients;
we've got to build it on a strong foundation. So,
you can go ahead and work on those creative briefs; fluff up your briefs
folks,
but fluff them up on a good foundation of research.
Thanks, I know you can do well.