brandarticles marketing Giving an effective brief
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Designers and Agencies
Strong foundations allow you to build and reflect who you really are, rather than what an agency thinks you are!
This involves stepping back from the day-to-day running of the business and spending a bit of time to define a strategy that will underpin all your corporate identity and marketing challenges into the future.
For example, if you desire to be the best around (whatever that may be), then everyone in your business has to believe they are the best team; they have the best service or product, and act accordingly, day-in, day-out. Everything about the business must reflect the best, and that includes the visual approach of the business. The colours you use, the typefaces, the images, all play a vital part in attracting or repelling the type of customers you are trying to reach.
Or similarly, if you want to move from ‘back street garage’ to ‘franchised dealer’ level, then all your processes, the way you answer the phones, as well as your corporate style will have to move in that direction as one. You cannot simply change your logo and expect customers to get a ‘franchised dealer’ experience (always supposing that franchised dealers are perceived as ‘better’). If your team still has a ‘back street garage’ mentality, it will simply provide customers with a poor experience. Nor can you try to act like the ‘big boys’ if your logo screams ‘small and cheap’ but you give great service.
So before you try briefing a designer for anything, be clear in who you are, where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. If you haven’t spent time doing that, then we suggest you look at our practical ‘How to’ guide ‘Define your brand’, to get you started. This will repay you in spadefuls.
If you have done this already, you will now have a clear strategy to build on. This in itself will be hugely helpful in creating your marketing strategy and for briefing designers or agencies from that. Re-designing or re-vamping the company identity is also a sure-fire way to motivate staff that things are changing (as long as you include them in the change process) and signals your intentions to both existing and potential customers.
Basics for briefings
- Know who you are
Refer back to your cultural Manifesto. Know your values, your principles, and brief in line with where you want to get to in the future. - Know your target audience
Consumer or business to business? Predominantly male or female? Young or old? At what level do you sell in at – board level or managerial level? - Know your competitors
Where are you now in their ‘league table’ Top, Middle or playing catch up?’ Discover their strengths and weaknesses (in service provision as well as product knowledge). - Know your products and services
Be clear on your strengths AND weaknesses against competition. Don’t claim something you can’t deliver every time, or something that is subjective (e.g. what is ‘quality’ service to one company, maybe seen as rubbish by another). - Be clear
Write down your requirements as a brief. Be specific – ensure you include everything required. Then convey that verbally as well to the designer or agency. - Leave it to the experts
You would not expect to be told how to design your product by a designer or agency, so don’t tell them how to design your brochures. Don’t adapt or change their designs to fit the way you like it. Be open-minded. Remember it is the audience that you are targeting that is vitally important, not what you like personally. This applies particularly to colours and typefaces, which evoke different responses out of different audiences (think engineering v cosmetics, financial services v tool hire). Colours and typefaces can also go in and out of fashion just like anything else.
Two different marketing areas that need to cross-relate:
Web site briefs
Be clear on what you may require in the future and what can be done now (eg you may need e-commerce later). You can save wasted costs by agreeing a site map before work commences. Don’t be tempted to vary from the agreed site map unless absolutely necessary – costs escalate.
If you want to update content regularly, assess realistically if you or your team have the time to do it. There’s nothing worse that out-of-date news except for bad English and bad spelling! If you do think you can handle it, then request a CMS system (there are freeware CMS like Joomla that work well). Ask your supplier to give you a demo to show you what’s involved before deciding. We know of many companies that requested a CMS system (which involves time and therefore costs) and then never update anything, but soon return to the supplier to do it as it’s ‘easier’.
Be realistic in your expectations. You can’t have a major brand’s site functionality without major costs. Do what you can afford, but do it well. Understand the difference between Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
Remember that page ‘content’ and ‘relevance’ are both important, so write text with care. Include sentences and words that you think will be relevant to your audience. Ask the whole team to come up with search terms to include – not everyone types search terms in the same way, or use the same words as you do. Check out programmes that assist you for Keyword terms.
Print and advertising
Ensure your designers can rationalise the process they went through to get to the result they propose. Those reasons should reflect your brief, so there should also be a logical conclusion as to how they got to the end result. Why did they choose that colour? Did they check out the colours of the competition? Are the proposed colours similar, or totally different, and why? If male or female audiences are primarily targeted, do the typefaces work for that audience?
How creative is the approach? Some audiences don’t need or appreciate ‘cleverness’, others do. Remember that a sale is much more emotional than rational. Yes they may check out one product or service against another, but in the end, all things being equal, they will always choose a name they know, like and trust.
Finally
You know your business better that any outside supplier. Be in control of your reputation. Any marketing or advertising is merely part of the experience and perception cycle.
Great experiences make great reputations, and marketing, advertising, web sites or any other form of promotion never generates these. They are generated by your delivery culture.
Bad experiences at this level, either by staff to customers, or staff to staff, undermine your marketing, however good or creative it is.
And that’s a waste of your marketing budget!
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Unlocking Your Potential