The Benefits of a Good Creative Brief

Make sure to obtain sign-off of the document from everyone in the chain of approval before starting your project.

At a recent meeting of marketing professionals, we were surprised to hear about the number of corporate marketing department staffers who don’t, can’t or aren’t allowed to execute creative briefs with their internal customers. We found that very surprising and thought we would offer up some of the benefits of using a creative brief.

A creative brief is a document used by marketing firms and advertising agencies to detail project goals and other essential details prior to starting a project. At BroadBased, we consider it an essential document that defines guiding principles for each project. The document is shared with all strategists, writers and designers working on a project so everyone has the same understanding and goals in mind. We believe a client-approved creative brief facilitates the smooth execution of a marketing project and greatly helps to limit change in direction mid-way through a project.

Some of the questions on the BroadBased creative brief include:

• What is your marketing/advertising objective?
• Who are your audiences?
• What are the benefits/features to the customers?
• What is your key selling point?
• What action do you want your prospect to take?
• How will we evaluate success?
• Who is the competition?

Creative brief templates are available on the Internet, or you can create your own. Whatever format you choose, be sure to obtain sign-off of the document from everyone in the chain of approval before starting your project.