The proverbial creative brief.

Creative briefs can make or break a single campaign ad, or integrated ad campaign. The creative brief serves as a important tool for agencies. All advertising shops use creative briefs (and if not they should) when conceptualizing any campaign, whether it's print, out-door, social media, guerrilla or viral. Creative teams rely on the brief to give a clear and concise enough vision in which to communicate an idea. So with those things in place let's look at what makes an creative brief.

Most creative briefs start with a client and the Account Planner. The AP is the link between what a client wants to portray, and what the ad agency has planned to solve it's client's problem. The account planner will gather as much info in the client's brand, and determine what's the best solution in which to communicate it's brand message to the consumer market. This person will then compose a strategic creative brief to execute this goal.

An effective creative brief consist of these elements, Who, Why, What, Where, When. These questions will be answered with very specific answers. Who are we looking to reach with our campaign? Why are looking to reach these consumers? What are we offering to these consumers? And where and when would we reach out to consumers.

This enables the creative team to create concepts both visually and with copy. This is a big process that I will not go in-depth about now. But it's a very big process. But I digress. From this brief, all information will be condensed down to it's most simplistic element. Also the creative brief shouldn't be more than one page but on certain occasions you might end up with more, of concise strategy. Any brief that has more than one strategy will only cause confusion among the entire creation of the campaign, because it will lack targeting power.

Here are a few examples of effective creative briefs, from some of the best known shops

Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CP+B)

http://www.ygaward.com/pdf/2009CreativeBrief.pdf

Batten Barton Durstine Osborn (BBDO)

http://www.unc.edu/~cachi/j171-roudybush.pdf.pdf

Saatchi & Saatchi

http://dungtym.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/brief-mc-satchi-agency.pdf

There you have it my friend, the creative brief in all of it's splendor. Now go and create an inspiring, powerful and thought provoking creative brief. Until next time.

Wieden + Kennedy New Old Spice Spot

Hello once again,

In today's industry there are some agency's that are distinguishing themselves from the pack. That's exactly what Wieden + Kennedy is doing, creating fresh spots that are engaging and edgy some examples include Nike, Coca Cola, EA Games, Dodge, Levis and Target to name a few. W+K has taken an established brand in Old Spice and re-birthed it. With the the acquisition of the talented Isaiah Mustafa playing the lead role.

This campaign has targeted a specific audience group to reconnect with the brand, And I for one feel that it's working. I find myself feeling a curiosity that I didn't have for the product before, and that's success measured. If a campaign can move a consumer to take action and become emotionally involved with the brand, then that is a successful campaign well strategically played out.

W+K campaign Smell like a man, man: http://www.wk.com/campaign/questions

W+K is known for taken chances where other agencies won't and for being fearless with it's approach, Dan Wieden and David Kennedy are doing something right with their shop, based out of Portland OR. What's also so fascinating with this shop is that W+K is not part of a big global network, they are independently owned. I whole heartily agree with their philosophy of embracing failure in order to learn and grown within your respective career paths. And it seems that this philosophy is working to the T. I really look up to this shop for it's work, creativity and culture.

And look forward to one day walking through there door to embracing failure and welcoming optimism.