The Brief
There’s a good reason why a brief is called a brief… by nature it should be short concise and very much to the point.
What is it?
A brief is a document that helps you get your thoughts together when considering the different elements of an advertising campaign including the audience and the message. It’s a working document that can be handed on to advertising creatives in order for them to put together campaigns that meet your objectives.
The brief covers three specific elements. The Who, The What and The Why.
The Who
This is the ideal customer profile. The segment of the population you are targeting. Who are they? What are their likes and their pastimes. What is their gender and how affluent are they? What TV programmes, magazines or blogs to they consume? The more information you can give on the ideal customer, the better the ad can be targeted. If there are several target audiences, rather than clutter a commercial with too much information, create new customer profiles and target each with a separate ad.
The What
This is the call to action. What do we want the audience to do. This can be anything from visiting a web page to taking advantage of a money-off offer or taking out finance on a new car. Again, if you have several offers, rather than clutter the ad, make different commercials for each.
The Why
This is the compelling reasons why the Who should take advantage of the What. Why does the customer need your product or service? What has happened in their lives to trigger that need. What are the consequences of not taking advantage of the offer?
Differentiation
The reason we differentiate the audience and the offer is to make the advertisement more relevant. If an advert is relevant, the target audience is far more likely to receive the message and respond. We are bombarded with so many advertising messages each day that our brains are highly adept at filtering out the non-relevant to the point we ignore it.
Consider a stationery shop with a wide range of pens for sale. At one end of the range they have a pack of five ballpoint pens for £2.00 and at the other extreme they have a gold plated fountain pen that sells for £250.00.
There is no point in advertising the gold plated pen to children or students when all they want is something to write with as cheaply as possible. Likewise there is no point in advertising cheap ballpoint pens to an affluent businessman who wishes to impress their clients.
By differentiating the target market and offers, the advertising can be made more relevant and will therefore work harder and deliver a higher return on investment.