7 Sins of the Creative Brief

One insidious cause of poor advertising: “Seven Sins of the Creative Brief.” Brands that lead with a bad creative brief-or no brief at all-can often cause campaigns to unwind before they’ve even begun. Here are seven insidious causes that can sink an advertising campaign.

Sin #1: No Brief

The cardinal sin is the failure to develop a creative brief

• Internally, the brief-development process forces marketers to understand what they need to accomplish and the strategic path to that end
• Externally, the creative team is flying blind without any guidance
• Paradoxically, the lack of a brief frequently leads to longer development times as teams debate what’s “right”

Sin #2: Poor Objectives

Objectives such as “make a digital campaign” or “increase sales” are poor and impoverished objectives because they do not convey what specific advertising is meant to do.

• Increased sales can be a desirable outcome, but understand what metrics need to be moved and by how much to accomplish that business goal.

Shiny-Object Syndrome

As new opportunities emerge, we see brands chasing the “shiny object” as opposed to starting with the strategy.

• New media channels can present exciting opportunities, to be sure, but don’t get caught chasing tactics. Chase your customer.

Sin #3: Targeting Everyone

The idea that we should target everyone is neither realistic nor sensible for most brands in most categories.

• Consumers are different-they have distinct functional and psychological needs-and this means you have to talk to them differently to be persuasive.
• Targeting everyone requires a nearly inexhaustible media budget, which is out of reach for many brands.

Sin #7: Bad Measurement

In an age where digital channels allow more measurement-exposure, click-through, and even purchase rates-brands routinely fail at measurement.

• How does this happen?
• They fail to plan, and thus the results they get from measurement have little utility

Sin #4: The Lack of Insight

The best advertising connects with the target customers because it shows understanding of their needs and pain points.

Sin #5: Overpacking Positioning

Why should people buy your product?

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