Writing a good brief for a copywriter or creative (e.g. graphic designer, logo designer)

Published on May 07, 2010 Writing a good brief for a copywriter or creative (e.g. graphic designer, logo designer)

The old adage of “garbage-in, garbage-out” definitely applies to any form of creative exercise. Even the most talented designer or writer in the world, can’t work with no relevant or useful information. A good brief is essential to getting the results that you want.

Here are some tips on writing a good brief for anyone doing creative work for you – a logo designer, advertising creative, graphic designer, web designer or copywriter.

What makes a good brief?

For the creative person doing the work for you they need to understand the following well in order for you to get a result you are satisified with:

• Who are the target audience? (Who are the people you are selling this idea to?)
• What is the one, most important thing you want to get across to these people (the single minded proposition)
• What are your actual, measurable goals of your business or campaign?
• What is the background to the thing you are asking the creative to do. If you’re setting up an ecommerce shop, why are you doing it? Who are the competition? What is the gap in the market you are filling? How are you filling it? What are the benefits compared to others in the market? Why should people buy from you and not others? What are the industry stats on sales?
• What are the must dos, what are the must-not dos for your business? For example if the industry has been marred by a well known fraudulent competitor with a red star as their logo, a red star is not something you would want to use as a creative device in your logo – even if your business name is “Scarlet Stars”.

A good brief gets to the point without waffle, contains useful information that gives the creative an insight into the mindset of the audience you are trying to capture and the most important idea you want to get across. Sure you’ll need the substantiating facts, but the best creative ideas are a single thought. For example, Australia tourism’s new campaign thought  is “Australia Unlimited”, not “Australia: a country of almost endless potential where you can see a multitude of different attractions, number of great things, meet a wide variety of people and experience things that you never even expected possible in a holiday or permanent relocation”!

Sample Creative brief structure

For those of you who want to cut to the chase, we’ve developed some basic headings that you can use as a creative brief template.

Introduction

• Summarise the whole brief at-a-glance: your business name (or your brand name), what the brief is about, the project name, the output and the single minded proposition.

Background

• Why are you advertising?
• Why do you need a logo/new logo/creative writing piece?
• What business are you in? What is the gap in the market that your business is filling?

Audience

• Summarise what you know from your own market research: Who exactly are you talking to? How old are your typical customers? How do they feel about products and services in the market? How do they feel about competitors? What are their income levels?
• What do you know about their buyer psychology? Is the buying process an involved one that they need to think about or is it a one click “no-brainer” buy? Are they repeat buyers or one off buyers? Are they likely to try an online product easily or are they entrenched in offline views? Are they parents with children or likely to be single? Do they drive expensive cars or not? Do you have any customer quotes or feedback you can draw on?
• Whatever you can tell the creative that is relevant to your product or service offering can make the difference. Don’t over load them with detail, stick to the relevant factors in your market.

Objectives

• What is the long term aim of your business, brand or product line?
• What is the specific (measurable) target of your campaign? e.g. Get 10% of new customers to sign up in 3 months, create an appealing logo that will help increase online sales by 1% in 6 weeks etc

Single Minded Proposition

• What is the one main thing you want to say. This is kind of like your slogan but doesn’t have to sound catchy – it just needs to describe what you want people in your target audience to think. The creative will come up with the slogan if it’s advertising, or write words to describe that thought if they are a copywriter. With a logo, it’s the main thing you want people to immediately think when they see your logo.

Supporting facts

• This is where you can say the things that support the proposition you want to get across:
• What are the rational benefits of your product that support the statement? What are the key statistics that suppport it?
• What are the emotional reasons why they should buy the product?
• Give enough detail so the creative can believe in the product like you, but not so much that they lose sight of the objectives.

Dos and don’ts

• If there are any things that must be in the ad/logo/article include them here
• If its a logo or design, what colour scheme or imagery do you expect to see. Must it be plain or colourful, lots of white space or dense? etc
• If it’s a copywriting piece you might have a keyword density level you would like to stick to, if so state that here
• If there’s any must-stay-away-from areas or things you do not want to see back, state that here too.

Outputs

• What are the deliverables? Number of words, output format
• What is the time frame? Are you working to any specific deadline?