How to brief a creative agency?

How to brief a creative agency remains a challenge for any advertising manager irrespective of the number of times we may have done it before. The creative agency brief might be to onboard a new creative ad agency or to brief the existing agency for a new requirement.

Advertising agencies are driven by the passion and ideas of their creative teams. Unless there is a brief that harnesses this passion in the right direction, chances are high that creative output goes awry. The best way to ensure that there is an alignment between the brand objective and the creative agency’s passion is to ensure that the requirement is shared in a written brief. The creative brief is a summary of goals, strategy, target audience, and key execution details. You can download a sample creative brief from this post.

Now let’s look at the few mandatory elements of any agency brief:

1. Product – A good understanding of the product should be shared for the creative agency team to understand. Details on pricing, sales channel, differentiation, and usage provide clarity
2. Target Group – Try to define the users in terms of core and extended. Sharper this definition is, better you can expect the output to be. As marketers, we might get swayed to keep the TG definition broader, so as include more and more people. But the broader the TG gets, the higher are the chances of you getting a work that you will not like
3. Objective – Clarity of what do you expect the campaign to deliver and how? I have seen marketers leaving the brief at a level of seeking an “increase in sales”. Please remember that the increase in sales is an outcome. Look at the levers that the marketing campaign is expected to move which in turn increases the sale. Define clearly the route that the agency should take instead of leaving at them to figure. Increase in awareness, likeability, top of mind recall, increase in preference are few ways through which sales can get delivered. The objective can be any part of the funnel. Please refer to the marketing funnel below for choosing an objective. (Credit: Coschedule)
4. Deliverable – Specify clearly what do you expect the team to come back with. The expectation can range from sharing a concept to sharing a few creative routes or the final campaign. A timeline on shorter milestones helps the creative agency to channelize their energy and time more fruitfully.

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