TIPSHEET. How to Brief Your Agency

Transcription

1 TIPSHEET How to Brief Your Agency

2 HOW TO BRIEF YOUR AGENCY Briefing your agency is a critical part of any campaign: the better the brief, the better the work that the agency delivers. So why then do clients fail to write great briefs? Poor briefs are one of the most common reasons for campaigns failing to deliver the desired results: four out of five clients and agencies agree that it s difficult to produce good creative work without a good brief. Additionally, it shouldn t be forgotten that good briefs lead to better, more effective and measurable work, as well as saving time and money, and finally resulting in fairer remuneration because defining clear business objectives and campaign success criteria makes it easier to judge whether the campaign achieved its goals. There are a number of principle that ensure the brief is clear and effective, and this tip sheet explains how exactly you can brief your agency to get the best possible campaigns.

3 THE BRIEF SHOULD BE WRITTEN This not only ensures that everyone involved in the project has the same information, but also forces considered thinking. You should also discuss the brief verbally with your agency, but if you really don t have the time to write the brief, ask your agency to write up the verbal briefing as part of the project. It will ensure they understood what you want, and pay dividends in better results! BRIEFS SHOULD BE CLEAR, OBJECTIVE AND CONCISE Briefs are called briefs because they are meant to be brief! Good briefs leave you with a clear understanding of what you are trying to do. Bad briefs drown you in contradictory information and objectives. BRIEFS SHOULD CLEARLY DEFINE YOUR OBJECTIVES The aim of a brief is to get your agency to do things. Who needs to do them? What needs to be done? Define the business problem and use concrete business objectives rather than vague wishes, to explain the improvement that the campaign should deliver. Where are you starting from? Where will you be at the end of the campaign? The aim should be to state clearly the business reason for investing the fee for the achievement of a particular objective. THE ELEMENTS OF A GOOD BRIEF Although there are different ways to structure a brief, the following sections would form the structure of a good brief: Project Management It s important to clarify the basis of the project management. Document who will be working on the project, the budget, timescales, approval process and the other practical information. Current Situation Include the background and a description of the current situation. The Objective - State what you want the campaign to achieve.the objective must be

4 measurable, and should take the budget into account. The best briefs have a single, clear objective: B2B campaigns typically aim to improve metrics such as usage, awareness, leads, image, reputation, profitability, customer profile, shareholder value, sales or response levels. Campaign Strategy Provide a high-level view of how the campaign will achieve the objective. This section should provide direction for your agency to creatively develop the campaign. The Audience Explain who needs to be reached for the campaign to be successful. Some campaigns may involve further research to define the target audience more precisely, but the brief should always provide direction. Success Criteria State how the campaign will be measured, and how you will know if it has achieved the objectives. PRODUCT LAUNCH BRIEFS In B2B technology, many campaigns are driven by product and less frequently service launches. Writing a brief for a campaign to launch your new product is incredibly hard: almost every company over-estimates the importance of their new product to the industry and potential customers. You need to look beyond the months, or years, of work the company has put into development and the internal excitement to provide an impartial view. Is the product really new? Is there something similar available from competitors? Is it really revolutionary, or is it a logical development that could have been predicted? Will it really excite the whole market, or just a specific segment? Honest answers to these questions produce good briefs and better campaigns. Claiming a product is going to change an industry when it is really an evolutionary development will just result in the rolling of eyes and cynicism from your potential customers: you d be much better highlighting specific features and explaining their unique benefits than trying to build hype around delusions of grandeur. PAYMENT-BY-RESULTS AND GOOD BRIEFS Some agencies, such as Napier, offer clients the option to work on a payment-by-results (PBR) basis. In the best case, this approach ensures that the agency will deliver whatever is needed to achieve the objective, because they take the view that putting in the additional work is a better option than receiving a reduced fee. PBR, however, is only effective if the brief is clear, and the success criteria are well defined and objectively measurable. At Napier we like PBR because it focusses the collective minds of within the client and the agency, helping to

5 ensure that the brief is clear and well written. This not only results in a fair assessment of the results of the campaign, but the higher quality brief also helps the agency to deliver a better and more effective campaign.

6 t: +44 (0) f: +44 (0) e: w: Donnington Park Birdham Road Chichester West Sussex PO20 7DU United Kingdom Launched in 1984, Napier was one of the first agencies in Europe to specialise in the electronics market, subsequently expanding to help clients in a range of B2B technology sectors. Initially a PR agency, Napier responded to the clients need to manage information across every element of the marketing mix by bringing together a team of multi-talented and multi-lingual engineers, linguists and technical journalists as well as PR and marketing professionals.