Make Haste Slowly

Effective Communications Briefs

Once you've developed a differentiated value proposition, you've got to communicate it to the target audience, using powerful language and visuals. You've got to find out where that audience “hangs out” – what television programs they watch, what magazines they read, what radio stations they listen to, what social media they follow and where they spend their time online.

Creating a winning (and by winning, I mean winning in the marketplace, not winning awards) marketing communications program requires a team of specialists: communications strategists, copy writers, graphics and layout artists, media buyers and, increasingly, social media specialists, often found in marketing or communications agencies.

How well your awareness-building initiatives succeed depends on your ability to harness the full power of these talented individuals. A good agency won’t start work without a good brief, which ensures that their team stays focused on your objectives. But developing a good brief takes time and hard work, and if you leave most of the effort to the agency, not only will you receive a hefty bill, but you and your internal non-marketing clients may become frustrated with the process. Plus, leaving it to the agency risks that they will only work with the marketing department, losing you an opportunity to engage with key business stakeholders.

The solution: create your own brief, which gives you the opportunity to harness the best thinking of your organization’s talent, and not just the marketing team. Here are some guidelines:

1. Start with your market insights. What's the big picture? What's going on in the market? What are the opportunities or problems in the market?
2. Who is the campaign talking to? The more precise and detailed the better. Describe demographics, firmographics and psychographics. Explain how the audience currently thinks, feels and behaves in relation to the product category, your brand, and your specific product or service.
3. What is the objective, the purpose of the campaign? A concise statement of the effect the communication should have on customers. Typically expressed as an action, focused on what the communications should make them think, feel, or do.
4. What's the most important thing to say? What's the single most compelling statement we can make to achieve the objective? This should be a simple sentence and certainly no more than a few sentences if absolutely necessary. Avoid generalities.
5. What are the supporting rational and emotional reasons to believe and buy? Explain why the customer should believe what we say, and why they should buy. Include all the major copy points, in order of relative importance to the customer. It is also helpful to include other information the agency might need, such as a description of the brand personality, positioning tag lines, creative thought starters, terms of direct response offers, result expectations, and mandatory elements such as the logo and Web address. 
6. What do we need from the agency team? And when do we need it?

Finally, make haste slowly. While it takes an effort to collaborate across internal functions who don’t speak marketing, engaging them in the process as trusted advisors (with marketing doing the heavy lifting) will increase both understanding and buy-in.

Don't squander this opportunity.