Part One: An Effective Creative Brief
For many marketers, attending creative presentations is one of the best parts of their job. But, let’s face it, while seeing the marketing strategy for a new product launch come to life in words and images can be exciting–it can also be stressful.
You’re giving birth to this launch, and after a gestation period that rivals the African Elephant, you’re finally going to get to get a sense of what this baby will look like. Ideally, your healthcare marketing and branding agency will show you ideas that are so creative you’ll say “I never thought of that,” and in the next breath you’ll say “but, now that I see it, I can’t think of it any other way.” You fall in love at first sight.
But, what about when you can’t recognize your strategy in anything they present? This is not your baby. It’s just off. There are few things more disappointing to a marketer than when the agency misses the mark. Especially when your boss is in the room.
How do you make sure your agency will be on target and deliver a beautiful baby?
- Prepare an effective creative brief
- Stage a comprehensive kick-off meeting
- Select an B2B agency that understands your industry, your buyer, and organizations with your corporate culture
This post covers the first of these points and provides a Creative Brief Template designed for healthcare product launches. It’s easily modifiable for other industries. Future posts will address the latter two points.
| "Without a written brief, the work can be creatively brilliant and extremely effective in working against your objectives." Briefing an Agency* |
Writing a Creative Brief: An Investment That Pays Dividends
Don’t fall into the trap that you don’t have time to write a brief, or kid yourself that you can cover it all in your verbal briefing. You’ll pay for it later–in more ways than one. Skip the brief and risk:
- An inefficient process that takes more of your time and your agency’s in follow up meetings for additional verbal briefing,
- Inaccurate bidding due to lack of clear direction and incorrect assumptions on both sides, and
- Frustration and lost time when you have to ask your agency to regroup and present a second round of concepts.
| According to Bryan Nielson, CMO of AtTask, a leading developer of work management solutions for marketing teams, an average of 30-35% of project time is wasted on revisions and rework–much of it avoidable with a thorough creative brief. |
Principles of Effective Briefing: Clear, Comprehensive, Inspirational
Several of Britain’s marketing associations collaborated on a best practices guide that’s worth reading–and adhering to when you're considering how to brief an agency. They identify three principals for a good brief:
- Be clear about what is needed
- Provide the critical information necessary to complete the task
- Inspire or motivate people to do their best.
The first two points are somewhat obvious, but the third is less evident, but perhaps is the most powerful. Their contention, with which I agree strongly, is that clients who go beyond just filling out a form and really put thought into the brief provide a better springboard for great creative work and they signal that they are in the market for a great creative response.
Avoiding a Disconnect: Marrying Strategy With Creative
Inspiring great creative is a laudable goal, but, what makes the creative great is that it brings your marketing strategy to life. Make sure you do more than just “check the boxes” when outlining your positioning, competitive landscape, and buyer personae. Otherwise, if you force your agency to interpret what your strategy is, you’re likely to get creative that is way off the mark. Going back to the birth analogy: if you give them the wrong or incomplete DNA, the baby they bring to life wont be recognizable to you as yours.
The downloadable Healthcare Product Launch Creative Brief Template is intended for healthcare and biotechnology organizations that craft positioning and marketing strategies in house. If you work with a marketing and branding agency like ours that has a role in strategy and message development, you will want to modify the template a bit.
You may also consider hosting a kick-off meeting with both the agency and internal cross-functional teams attending. Your agency may have the resources to develop this into a full-blown brand launch workshop, which is a highly effective way to gain insight and align your team before diving in to the launch. Ah, but that's the subject of the next blog post in this series, so I'll end it there. If you're interested in following the series, subscribe to our blog.
Do you have great tips about how to write a creative brief for a medical product launch? Share your comments below.
Julia Darden is the Branding Strategist for DardenLentz, a B2B Marketing and Branding Agency focused on healthcare and technology, and she is the firm's managing partner. Julia is passionate about building memorable brands that connect emotionally with customers. She has successfully managed major creative and branding projects for leaders in the technology, diagnostics, medical device and medical informatics industries.
* Briefing an Agency, A Best Practices Guide to Briefing Communications Agencies, A publication of IPA, ISBA, MAA, and PRCA.