brand brief

    What Does A Brand Brief Cost?

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    At What’s The Idea? a brand brief costs $17,500. List price. The people willing to spend that type of money know it’s s steal. Having an “organizing principle for product, experience and messaging” makes every act of marketing easier. Compare $17,500 to the cost of a newspaper ad, website take-over, or a radio flight. It’s peanuts. Sadly, the word brief, in advertising and marketing has been reduced to an instructive piece of paper telling creative people what not to do. Ish.  They are often poorly written, almost all interchangeable, and not given much heed. But brand briefs – they are different story.

    For a robust brand brief I need weeks. A month actually. A good brand brief requires interviews, fieldwork, research and brain steep. If we’re talking about a brand brief for a billion dollar company there may be lots of qualitative and quantitative testing as well. Up goes the price. And money well spent.

    Done well, a brand brief informs all areas of business. If CRM is marketing template, the brand brief is its architecture. If PR is a communication template, a brand brief is its measure of success. If customer journey is a template, the brand brief is the bread crumb trail.

    If you are in the business of selling things, raise your hand. If you don’t have a brand brief you are a simple fisherman.

    For examples of brand briefs, showing claim and proof (brand tangibles), please write me at Steve at whatstheidea.

    Peace.

     

     

    A long in the tooth brand brief.

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    I wrote a brand brief 12 years ago for an organization that helps developmentally disabled adults.  The organization wanted a logo, so I wrote a brief.

    A couple of weeks ago I read about this same group in the newspaper and decided to reach out to see how they were doing.  I sent an email over the transom to the new head of development, along with the brief.  My hope with all brand briefs is that they will live on and on. They are crafted to do so. Each brand strategy (1 idea, 3 planks) is meant to hold the value proposition together and motivate action and loyalty over time.  Even through agency changes and campaign changes.

    The women responded this morning with a lovely long missive. It seems the brand idea is still relevant. Though the organization’s mission has changed thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act of 2008, most of the brief elements are still valid, especially the idea or brand strategy. 12 years ago housing was the key goal, today it is employment. The target was broader in the original brief, while today it is focused on donors.  I’m proud of my 12 year old brief. She has grown well and strong.

    This little exercise, checking in on briefs and brands of yesteryear, is worth pursuing. In this case it proves “Campaigns come and go…a powerful brand idea is indelible.” Peace.

     

    The Brand Brief.

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    When a creative person looks at a blank screen or page, and tryies to come up with an idea for a piece of marketing, there’s often an uneasy feeling. Because creativity and selling are dissimilar activities.

    That’s why God invented the brief. Often called the creative brief: a project doc that outlines the business problem, target, and hopefully some stimulating insight that can act as a catalyst for the idea. If the creative brief is too proscriptive, the creative person finds it limiting. An idea buzz kill.

    That’s why brand briefs are better for creative people. A brand brief provides a macro view of the selling premise. It introduces the environment, the language of the consumer and his/her perceptions and attitudes toward the category. It’s broad enough so as to make a creative person feel less confined. And done well a brand brief provides a fecund field in which to plant and cultivate ideas.

    The brand brief is the operative strategy and stimulus doc a creative person needs before beginning work. Each content assignment should also include a short project description outlining the chore and goal.

    Stimulate your creative team, don’t scare them off.

    For a look at a some actual brand briefs, write Steve@WhatsTheIdea.com

    Peace.

     

     

    Re-Massification.

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    On a recent assignment my client and I spent a good deal of time on the target. The What’s The Idea? brand brief refers to the target as follows:

    Living, Breathing Target (Define the largest grouping of consumers, bound by a single shared attitude or belief, that will be most motivated to buy/consider the product? Provide a description of the target, not title or demographic.)

    Peter Kim a long-ago mentor used to refer to the target as a large group of various targets, with many different buying motivations.  But he then suggested “re-massifying” them back into a single group, with one shared care-about. I loved the word re-massify. Out of many one kind of a thing. Peter’s knew this was how you built a brand – reach as many people as you can, with a hopefully compelling value proposition.  That said, when re-massifying the target, trying to find a single shared care-about, one can water down the principle value. It’s hard work.  (And sometimes, you just have to eject part of the target, so as to keep your key claim compelling.)

    Well, on the recent assignment, my client added great value by not simply approving the presented LB Target, he pushed. And yes, we did lose some people when re-massifying. But it made for a more compelling brand brief and brand story. This additional targeting work made the creative process easier for the creative teams. An important result to be sure.

    I’m convinced the target description is one of the most important parts of the brand brief. Even more so than the “Core Desire” which is a distillation of the LB Target’s most important need.

    Get the Living Breathing Target right and most other pieces should more easily fall into place.

    Peace.

     

     

    Chicken or egg?

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    Over the course of developing a brand strategy business I’ve been lucky enough to work with quite a number of clients. Some work has been pro-bono. Other full blown. I’ve been employed to develop master brand strategy, write marketing plans and even hired to write complicated positioning brochures and websites. My rigor doesn’t really change but the output does.

    In some cases, when hewing to the budget I hack my way to efficient use of time employing short cuts.

    The brand brief is a key tool I use for most all projects. It’s a document that, when written properly, tells a story using a smart sales logic. When it is tight, I’m able to create more comfortably and sleep better at night. When it includes bumps in the road, that road is less comfortable, and my work takes longer. Some of those hacks, ways to get to the brand claim and proof planks more quickly, don’t use the brief.  Rather, I collect my inputs, classify them into key care-abouts and good-ats, and boil away to my brand strategy answer.

    It has created a bit of a chicken and egg dilemma. Brief first? Or brief last?  

    Hacks are great to save time.  In my business though storytelling is where my clients light up. Nod their heads. Say I “get” them.  So brief first is preferred.

    Peace be upon you.

     

    Long Brief/Short Brief.

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    The Gettysburg Address, arguably one of the most important speeches in America-dom, was 272 words long. (I read that on the internet.)

    As someone who writes strategy for a living, I’m a fan of the brand brief. Smart people in the advertising business will tell you a short brief is the best brief.  And when I say smart people, I mean high-powered, highly-paid creatives and strategists like Mark Pollard.

    Well, as a contrarian by nature I am going to take issue with the whole short brief thing. Just like a great piece of long form copy or other well-written pieces one cannot put down, I want a brief that gives creative people and marketers thoughtful inspiration. A spark.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve written my fair share of shitty briefs. And I’ve read my fair share of other people’s shitty briefs. Most were elongated by repetition. Some were just boring. Many lacked a thread that storified the brand.  But those were the result of improper research, lazy construction and brand craft.

    Briefs can always be briefer. They can always be better. But as stimulus to marketers and creatives they need to inspire. They need to open doors to exciting creative ideation and energetic consumer response.

    Back in the 80s there was a direct mail letter written by someone at Ogilvy Direct for American Express that out-pulled every other direct mail letter for years and years.  It was the absolute best. It was long. It delivered. It sparked consumer action.  That’s what a brand brief should do. Yes, the Gettysburg Address was short — about the length of this post. But length isn’t on trial here. Creative conviction is.

    Peace.