Transcripts
1. Introduction: Creative briefs offer direction for internal
stakeholder teams to ensure that the team reaches success with
the creative project. Hello, I'm Liz, a brand
strategist and designer. This class is all about writing the perfect brief for
creative stakeholders. A lot of the work
that I get to do, is working with internal teams
of corporate companies to help them with branding and
marketing best practices. Today, most business
practices and the business purpose and process is being
driven by brand. I've been working in the
corporate world since 2012. In 2018, I started
Ostara Studio, a consultancy that helps clients bold voice and
amplify their brand stories. The reason I wanted to
share this class on brief writing with you is that I see a lot of stakeholders battle to execute
projects effectively. It's often because the
creative brief is lacking, there is no foundation. This class will go over the sacred elements that
make up the creative brief. Elements like goals,
deliverables, budget and timing,
and key messages, and a lot more will be
covered in this class. My great hope for this class
is that by the end of it, you feel prepared and
confident in writing strong briefs that inform
any creative project. This class is ideal for creative project managers or teams that are part of
marketing and branding, as well as general creatives
who want to empower themselves by having a strong
foundation form of a brief. See you in the lessons.
2. The Purpose of a Creative Brief: In this lesson, we will look at the purpose of
a creative brief. The purpose of a creative
brief is simple. It is to ensure that the creative project is
structured and flowing. It ensures that the expectations
are met and also it gives the team that
will be executing the project a roadmap for it. The brief is really
there to give enough information to be able to execute the project
effectively and successfully. It explores the whats, the whys, the hows, the whens and
the whos of the project. In the lessons going forward, to ensure that the
class is actionable, you'll be following along to the example that's also
your class project. For now, the important
tactics are to ensure that everyone in the team has access to the brief, and that ideally
there's an in-person or a virtual meeting briefing
session where everyone involved will be part of the brief and understand
what it's all about. You can think of the
creative brief as a supporting document that will be used throughout
the implementation, execution of the project. What I would recommend
you do as a student right now is to go over all the briefs and really
look at whether the whats, the hows, the whens, the whos, and the whys were covered
in all the briefs of yours.
3. What to Include in a Creative Brief : In this lesson, we will
go over what should be briefly included in
the creative brief. It is important to understand the separate elements that
make up the brief as it will help you to fill in the brief extensively with
enough information that is clear and relevant. The separate elements
of the creative brief are defining the problem
and context to the problem, offering goals and
objectives as well as deliverables and a way to measure success of the project, information on the
target audience and information on
the stakeholders, information on the
brand's key messages and tone of communication
and then lastly, offering information on
platforms, budget, and timing. Now is the time for you to access your template as part of the class project and to
follow along with the lessons. You will see there that all the separate
elements are listed. A tactic for stakeholders
to take right now is to familiarize themselves with the
separate elements to ensure that the elements are understood and clear
to everyone involved. As a student, the
action that you can take right now is to consider all the briefs or
current briefs and see whether all of these elements were
included in those briefs.
4. Defining the Problem: In this lesson, we will go over defining the problem and
background information. Every creative project at it's core has a problem
that needs solving. It is why the stakeholder team is tasked with the
creative project. Describing what the problem is, is essential for
the internal team to take the project forward. A good problem statement
explains what the problem is and it provides
background information that provides insight
into the problem. The background information
provides contexts and you can think of it as the
influences on the problem. You can consider external
and internal influences. External influences
are influences that are beyond the brand
or the company's control. Internal influences
are those influences that the company and
brand can control. I'll be using the examples of a fictional brand
called YumYumz, a baby food company. Consider the following
problem statement. YumYumz is a baby food
company that is experiencing low engagement on social media even though the brand is
posting consistently. This leaves the company to speculate that
YumYumz's content on social media or brand messaging is not making an
impact on audiences. Background information
on this problem is that YumYumz post regularly, specifically on
Facebook and on TikTok. The type of content
that they post is professional
product photography. The target audience, are mothers between the age of 25 and 43. It seems that the
primary audience are mostly on Instagram,
Facebook, and YouTube. Relevance to the
stakeholder team on the specific problem and
background for the YumYumz is that the team will
be tasked at looking at why there's possible low
social media engagement, whether it's a platform issue, a content issue, and then they'll
also be tasked at creating social media strategy and tactics that will boost engagement on social
media platforms. As you can see from
the YumYumz's example, the problem statement
is clear and thorough. It offers information for the stakeholder team to be
able to execute the project. It also offers a bit of
background information in terms of internal and
external influences. The team might realize that just from what they've
written in the brief here, that YumYumz might possibly
be using the wrong platforms. Those are internal influences. They have a control over the platforms and content
that they were using. Externally, there is information
on the target audience, the mothers that is the
primary target audience. The problem statement and the background
information provides relevance for the team. Why is it relevant for
the stakeholder team? It's relevant
because they will be tasked at boosting
social media engagement. I will now encourage you to take out your template
and write out a problem statement that offers background information
and relevance to your specific project. You can either use a real life project that you're currently
busy with or you can create a fictional
project that you can use to practice writing
a creative brief.
5. Providing Context for Media Platforms: In this lesson, we will explore providing context
for media platforms. Media platforms are way the
project will be happening. It is important to
provide information on these platforms
because you would need to evaluate whether
the platforms provided are actually the best for the success of the creative project and whether other platforms need
to be considered. In the YumYumz example, this is specifically
relevant because YumYumz might be using
the wrong platforms. YumYumz is using TikTok
and TikTok is intended for a younger audience that are predominantly interested
in entertainment. For this platform section, what the stakeholder
team can do, is to form the
brief in a way that shows the current platforms
and already possibly make suggestions to alternative possibilities that would be better to solving the problem. As a student, what I
would recommend you do, is to look at different media platforms and see what they're
generally used for, what types of audiences
are on those platforms, and keep this at hand for future briefs and
creative projects.
6. Identifying Goals & Deliverables: In this lesson, we will
explore identifying goals, deliverables and
measuring success. In this part of the process
of writing up the brief, we're looking at clearly stating expectations of the
brief and the project. It will help the
stakeholder team to know what they
are working towards. Generally, when
expectations are met, it means the success
of a creative project. The first step of this process is to write out a SMART goal. SMART is an acronym
for specific, measurable, achievable,
relevant, and time-specific. Writing the goal in
the SMART format allows the goal to be
specific rather than vague. The second step is to write out the deliverables
of the project. In other words, the end
results of the project, what is expected in
terms of the end result. The third step as part
of the deliverables is to write out how success of
the project will be measured. This helps the stakeholder team to know what they should aim for so that they understand what the success
of the project is. Using the examples of YumYumz, an example of a smart goal is the creative objective
is to increase YumYumz's social
media engagement by creating a new content strategy and executing the strategy over a period of six months on appropriate social
media platforms. The success of the goal will be measured by evaluating
engagement on these platforms after six months of implementing
the new strategy. Engagement should ideally
increase by 30 percent. The YumYumz deliverable for this creative project would be a new social media
content strategy that's executed on
appropriate platforms. Additionally, this social media strategy needs to be implemented easily. The way this project
will be measured for success would be through
social media engagement. Looking at platform
analytics to see if there is a 30 percent increase in social media engagement
after the six months. I like to add an incentive when I write out
a creative brief, so I like to add to the measurement of
success that if there is a 30 percent increase
then each member of the team will get a bonus. However, this part
is not necessary, it's just something
that I like to do when I'm working
with my team. Often you might be repeating yourself when you're writing
out your SMART goal, your deliverable, and your
measurement of success. But it is important to separate
those elements so that it can be easily referred to
by the stakeholder team. What you specifically can
do now in your template, write out a SMART goal and the deliverable and the
measurement of success.
7. Describing Audience & Stakeholders: In this lesson, we
will explore the who of the creative project. The first step is to explore who the project is intended for. In other words, describing
and offering information on the target audience so
that the stakeholder team knows who they are
doing this project for. The second step is to
identify who will be executing different elements
of the creative project. This is the way the internal
team will be identified where specific roles and
skills will be described. This helps the stakeholder
team to ensure that the right people with the right skills are
placed on the project. In the case of the
Yum Yumz example, when we're writing the brief, we are talking about fleshing out to the target
audience of mothers. Writing out demographics and psychographics and
stuff like that. The template does indicate
and have guidelines on what type of elements to be included for the
target audience. I'd also recommend that
as part of the brief, a user profile of the target audience to be
attached to the brief. In the example of Yum Yumz, when we're identifying the roles and putting it
down in the brief, we're looking at roles
that will help with social media engagement
increasement. We're looking at a strategist, social media community manager. We're looking for a copywriter. We're potentially looking for
a digital content creator like a designer and
an account manager. This is the part in the
brief where you would be writing out information about the target audience
and the roles required for this project. What you can do now for
your class project, use your template and go and write out some
information of your target audience
and the roles that will be needed for this
creative project.
8. Understanding Tone & Messages: In this lesson, we explore
understanding the tone of communications and key
messages of a brand. It is important to understand
the brands tone of communication style and the key brand messages
because it will help the stakeholder
team to align the creative project to the brand's tone of
communication and key messages. In the example of Yumyumz, Yumyumz follows the brand
archetype of the caregiver. They want mothers to know that Yumyumz is the best choice, it's convenient and
it's nutritional. Personality traits then follow that of the caregiver
archetypes, so it's traits of
being nurturing, caring, accessible,
and friendly. The key messages are good for your baby and your baby will
love the taste of Yumyumz. In writing these parts of
the creative brief art, when you're looking at
tone of communication, you're really looking
at personality traits. These are traits that really inform how the brand operates. When we're looking at writing
art, the key messages, these could be
taglines or copy that a brand uses often and it's important to include these for the stakeholder team
because it helps the stakeholder
team either to use those same taglines in
their creative project, or to create
messages that follow a similar flow to those
brand key messages, the most important
things to say. Your student action for
this lesson is to go out and write out personality traits under tone of communication, and then also to write key
messages of your example.
9. Approaching Budget & Timing: In this lesson we will look at approaching budget and timing. It is important to
write out expectations clearly when it comes to timing and budget
within the brief. It helps the internal
stakeholder team to work with a set of boundaries so that they don't
go over the budget or take too long to
execute the project. It is important for expectations around budget and timing
to also be reasonable. It needs to align firstly with your goals
and deliverables. Again, think of the
words specific, measurable, achievable,
relevant, and time-specific. Something is only
relevant and achievable if the timing and the
budget is reasonable. What you can do then is to go back to your goals
and deliverables, and make sure that
the timing and budget is aligned to those. To emphasize this helps the stakeholder team to know how long they
have to work on a project as well
what resources in terms of funds they have
available for the project. In the example of YumYumz, they have a budget of 3
and 1/2 1,000 for setup and 2 and 1/2 1,000 per
month for social media, content, and strategy
implementation. This means that the
stakeholder team had 3 and 1/2 1,000 to start off
with to setup strategy, to do some brainstorming around that and then they
also have $2 and 1/2 1,000 per month to actually execute the social media
strategy and content. It is quite reasonable. It's quite a nice
working budget. It might be small, but it's a nice
working budget to implement content for
social media engagement. YumYumz is also giving the team six months to do it as per
the goals and deliverables. The steps for this part of the process to take is to go out and full the budget and timing section of
the creative brief. In the next video, I will be going over my final
thoughts for this class.
10. Final Thoughts: Thank you for attending
this class with me on writing the perfect brief. Did you enjoy it
as much as I did? Please consider writing
a review as this helps me to reach more
students on Skillshare. If you'd like to
join more classes on branding and marketing by me, I'd love to have
you on the join. I have another class that's available for internal
stakeholders specifically, called Tips for Internal
Stakeholders to Adopt and Embrace Their
Company's Brand Voice. You're welcome to engage
with me and leave any questions in the discussion
section of this class, and please feel free to leave your class project linked in the project gallery
for feedback. If you'd like to
connect with me, you can visit my profile page on Skillshare which will also be linked in the above section. Thank you so much
for joining me. Now go and confidently write
your perfect creative brief. All the best for it. Bye.
Liz Creates, Brand Strategist & Designer@OstaraStudio
