Creative Brief Insights

2 14

Portfolio Development

Edward Boches
Portfolio Development
Boston University
College of Communication

Friday, September 14, 12

Part One: Strategy


What is strategy?
What is the brief?
Why is it important to the creative development?
Where can the strategy come from?
What are the elements that comprise the brief?
What questions do we have to answer?
What are the biggest mistakes?


Briefs should be
creative, too


BUPDA / Creative Brief
Problem/Challenge Snapshot:

What is the problem you are trying to solve or the challenge you need to overcome. Describe in a few sentences. Need to
introduce a new product and get attention. Want to leverage a new feature to drive trial. Want to reposition a product so
that a new user will consider it. Want to get current users to consume more. Etc.

Role of communication:

Is it awareness, trial, to drive traffic? Is it to connect at the moment of purchase? Is it to earn market share, change
opinion, or capture data? What action are you striving to inspire?

Target audience/community:

With whom are you engaging? Demographic – age, sex, income, marital status. Psychographic – interests, aspirations,
lifestyle, habits, tech-savvy, other.

*Current beliefs:

What do they think about our brand now? For example, business travelers may think Jet Blue is only for casual traveler.
We need them to think it’s for them.

Desired beliefs (or outcome or action):

What do you want them to believe or to do?

*Insight that reveals how we can motivate them:

What insight do we have that you believe will motivate them to take the action we desire? Business traveler frustrated with
airline treatment.

*What category conventions can we challenge:

How can you use category style, language, standard approaches against them to garner attention and provoke?

*Driving brand idea (or catalytic idea):

What can you say or do that will achieve our objectives and affectively drive action?

*What is the context:

Where will you engage and why is it the ideal place/media to connect with your audience/community?

*What is the press release that describes the outcome?

If you were to write a press release describing what happens after this advertising is seen and engaged with by our
target/community, what would it say?

!


Where can we
inspire creativity?


Who are we talking to?
What are we saying and doing?
Where or when do we engage?
How or is there an insight?
Challenge what makes it hard?
Participation how can we leverage users?


Mini Van


Toyota Sienna


In-Sync Traditionalists


Meet Mr. & Mrs. We’re-so-awesome

Proud and happy to be parents and they subscribe to
traditional family values, but they were professionals prior to
becoming parents.
They transferred their professional skills – especially their use of
technology and new media – into their new roles as Mom and
Dad.
These young parents are hip, smart and totally in sync with
today’s techno media hub.
The parents that other folks write off as being put-upon sad-
sacks know that this perception is a joke, perpetrated by
people who don’t have the guts to drive a minivan.


Where is the creative
idea in the brief?


Creative Strategy: Who


Tissues


Kleenex


“If you think about how tissues are normally portrayed, they’re
about controlling snot, controlling spills, controlling germs. if
tissues can be a catalyst for releasing emotions, can we make
this something which is about release, not control?

“Being part of these moments and building that into the brand
sets Kleenex out from its competitors. No one else could
even think about doing that.”
JWT Planning Director Kathryn Robinson


Make Kleenex stand not for
control, but for the release of
human emotions.


Creative Strategy: What


Mayonnaise


Hellmann’s


Used on sandwiches


Diversify usage


Start with customer


Solution / When Hellmann's was detected as
a purchase it printed recipe suggestions on
the receipt incorporating other purchases.


Creative Strategy: Where


Shower Gel


Axe


VS Bar Soap


Insight
When it comes to functional cleaning power, AXE’s main competitor isn’t another shower gel, it’s bar soap. It’s
cheap, it’s easy and for many guys it’s the only thing they deem to be powerful enough to cut through the daily
accumulation of man-stink. To combat it, our first instinct was to try and point out its inherent deficiencies (e.g. it gets
“mushy,” it collects your roommate’s “short and curlies,” you use the same bar of soap “upstairs” as you do
“downstairs.”) In groups, however, this approach was consistently met with, “True, but what makes shower gel so
special?” It was clear that the way to sell shower gel’s cleaning power wasn’t to put down bar soap, it was to one up
it. Without a new formulation or functional claim to stand on, this was going to be much easier said than done.
The breakthrough came when looking through the data around the 2008 launch of the the AXE Detailer – the first
shower tool designed for men. Turns out the solution we had been looking for had been under our noses the entire
time. In fact:
• 12% of households with an AXE Detailer stopped buying the bar soap category altogether. Quite an
accomplishment when you consider that we were now asking guys to not only buy a shower tool, but shower gel to
go along with it.
• Also, this was at a time when the general market bar soap category had grown by 11%.
Bringing in the AXE Detailer allowed us to demonstrate that AXE, not just AXE Shower Gel, could get you truly clean.
Now all we needed to do was prove it.
Again, messages like “functional clean” are foreign territory for AXE. If we were going to be successful, we would need
to find a way to talk about clean that didn't force us to sacrifice the classic AXE wit or sexual tension.
Drawing on time spent with college guys in their natural habitat, one thing was clear – no demographic on earth gets
physically dirtier than ours. They party too hard, they sweat too much and they share bathrooms with disgusting
roommates. And all this is happening when they’re most active with the most girls. Leaving many self-conscious
about the state of their “man-zone.” And so, our big idea became the ultimate torture test.


Takes on the nastiest
man parts.


Creative Strategy: Insight


Camera


Olympus Digital SLR


iPhone obstacle


Features that have to
be experienced


Let consumers demo
the product virtually


Creative Strategy: Challenge


Ice Tea


Honest Tea


People on the go,
out of home


Brand awareness,
earn attention and
media, create buzz


Inspire customers to
participate and
generate content


Create a live
interactive honesty
index


Creative Strategy: Leverage users


Briefs
Present and discuss


Briefs
Can we help each other make them better to
inspire more interesting work?


Creative Brief Insights

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