Creative Brief: The Key to Getting What You Want

Creative brief effectively communicate your objectives to creative talents – and make them work their magic for you.

 

Some Creative Brief look like term papers. Others just look incomplete.

Put simply, the Creative Brief is a mini vision statement. It’s where you break it all down into measurable steps for you and your team to reach your business objectives with regards to your marketing efforts.

There’s a reason why the Creative Brief is called a brief – it’s not an essay. Rather, it’s an account containing everything the designers need to know to do the job you’re asking them to do. Even though you are to create a comprehensive overview and include complete information about your expectations, you should keep it clear and concise.

 

It’s a win-win situation: The Creative Brief allows designers to better understand your corporate identity and philosophy, which then will help them create works that helps you achieve those goals.

Note that this is a document addressed to a team of problem-solvers – you want them to produce creative deliverables. Without a Creative Brief, you will only get results that are completely different from what you expect. Consequently, both you and your designers must pay the price for heavy revisions.

Let us offer some simple guidelines to help you minimize your budget and wave a magical wand with your Creative Brief:

Provide Background Information

Give an overview of what you do: What’s your brand culture and personality? Provide a contact information or a website to refer to so that the designers know who you are and what your business does.

Clarify Your Business Objectives

Take a moment to contemplate on your brand purpose: What’s the depth of its message?  Look at your business and see where it stands with others similar like yours: How do you compare? What’s your competitive advantage?

Elaborate your answers and highlight the major qualifiers of your product or service.

For example, compare and contrast these descriptions:

It’s a non-profit organization. The NGO will provide a web-based platform for organizations looking for volunteers in Indonesia to post their volunteering opportunities e.g. blood donation, environmental protection. Volunteers will be able to search for the best fit opportunities through the website using multiple filters.

Beyond the website, our organization will also conduct activities with volunteer seeking organizations and volunteers to make sure organizations will post their volunteering opportunities and more people will participates.

The vision of the organization is for having more volunteers in Indonesia. Indonesians will go help each other. While doing volunteer work the volunteers will also be a better person. Thus the whole society will be better.

Designers are able to picture where the business is going. The objective was defined upfront and explained articulately.

In contrast, what do you think the designers can make out of this description?

We sell handphone in outlets.

Most people think that ambiguity opens up to massive possibilities, so it’s bound to bring about many more “out of the box” ideas.

The reality, however, is that very little of these entries will end up fitting to your design needs, whereas the most suitable ones for your business will still leave a big room for improvement.

It’s a major hassle for both you and your designers.

State Your Design Goals

Once you get on the Internet, you’re dealing with a wide range of audience. You want to make sure your designers understand the target audience you want to attract – what colors appeal to them? What’s the tone of your voice? What kind of image do you want your business to project?

Before explaining your target audience to designers, it’s your job to assess your demographic first: What’s the age range? Which gender? Where do they live? Do you understand their lifestyles?

This contest holds one great example of how you can specify your target market, but still sound flexible in your description:

For volunteers our target market are mainly Indonesians although still open for expats. We mainly want to get young professionals and students (high school and universities)

For organizations our target market are all organizations based in Indonesia

International organizations e.g. World Bank, UN,

National organizations e.g. Indonesia Mengajar, PMI

Local organizations e.g. sekolah, universitas

Now you know the organization’s main audience are Indonesians. Accordingly, you can also see that the design goals they’ve stated below align with the demographic they’re trying to attract:

Red: brave like the Indonesian flag

White: pure like the Indonesian flag

Gold yellow:

Grey

Black

Logo needs to be in white background.

Don’t have to use all the color for the logo please look at color palette (attachment) for reference.

Make it as a Point of Reference

Along with frequent feedback for your designers, the Creative Brief serves as a reference tool that both you and them can always go back to whenever new problems surface during the creative process.

Now look back at what you’ve written down. Here are the telltale signs that you’ve created an awesome brief:

  • Simple
  • Clear
  • Focused

It’s strategic, it’s articulate, and without hesitation, your designers should get a good enough idea of what you’re going for, but still have room for their own creativity.

On the flips side, this is the kind of brief that makes them all the more confused:

  • Not enough information
  • Not brief
  • Boring

In a way, your Creative Brief is like a treasure map for your designers to follow, to tap into their creative reservoirs, and dig the gold out of their system to produce the very best outcome for your needs. If you sound indifferent in your Creative Brief, you make your designers equally indifferent about starting their projects in the first place. If they’re not inspired by how you deliver your project, it’s going to be a lot tougher for them to yield great work for you.

See how your Creative Brief becomes the blueprint for success?

As nothing magical can come out without you pointing the wand, it always helps designers when you, the project manager, follow-up often and frequently provide constructive feedback for their work.

 

Ready to get started? Pick a category of your design project on Sribu and tell us exactly what you need (your creative brief) – our designers will take care of the details.

Ryan Gondokusumo
Ryan adalah CEO dan Founder dari Sribu.com. 11 tahun pengalaman di management, product development, strategic dan digital marketing