How to develop a good advertising brief

The term ‘advertising brief’ refers to the statement of the goals of an advertising campaign. Another term which is used to refer to this document is ‘agency brief’. This document is agreed to between an advertising agency as well as a client. In the advertising brief, there is a brief history of the product (such as idea and organisation) that is to be advertised. The advertising brief is the beginning point of the work that the agency’s account management group undertakes. Without a good brief, misunderstandings as well as confusion may result.

Step one of developing a good advertising brief

In order to develop a good advertising brief, you need to understand the following concepts as well as how to apply them:

Purpose

The purpose of an advertising brief is to promote a product or service to a consumer

Strategy

This is your ‘roadmap’ or plan to achieve the purpose

Intention

What exactly do you expect to get out of the assignment, i.e. what is the desired outcome.

Most advertising briefs have standard components to ensure that all the required information is supplied to the service provider. Some briefs may also include non-standard components if additional information or requirements must be included in the brief to ensure that all the necessary information is included in the brief.

Your first step in developing a brief is gathering all of the information which is required. You would normally be given a specification for the assignment and you will use the specification requirements to determine what information is needed for briefs.

Step two of developing a good advertising brief

Once you have collected all your information you need to organise it into workable structure. Typically information can be identified and organised a number of categories. Some of these are listed below:

Background Overview

All information that provides information about the company, service or product:

• How would the client describe their business?
• What background information is pertinent? This include prior marketing
• What do you need to know regarding their product or service for the current project? Include links to their website as well as any other background material which might be helpful.

Objectives

This is perhaps the most vital part of the brief. It is essential that you have sufficient information to clearly define objectives:

• What should the strategy be to achieve these objectives?
• What is the purpose of the project, why is it needed and what are you hoping to achieve with it?
• How will you measure success?

For example, if you are developing a brief to promote a book, you might measure success by the number of books sold just after the promotion was run. These details will assist the designer with understanding your goals as well as come up with solutions that address them.

Target audience

Determine who is the buyer or intended audience. The answer to this may include demographic information like age, gender, education, or income level as well as information on how often they make use of the client’s product or service. Knowing your audience will shape the style as well as  messaging of your campaign.

Having a thorough knowledge of how to put together an advertising brief will facilitate you having a fantastic campaign.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

For more information about this as well as other aspects of marketing you should really do our National Certificate of Advertising. Follow this link for more information.!