What is a brief? 7 elements of a solid marketing brief

A brief is the marketing document that helps you plan performance and measure results. In content projects especially, it decides more than half of the outcome. To learn more about what a brief is, how to write a professional brief read the article below from MONA Media .

What is a brief?

Brief is a short, focused document in which a client sends an agency the work it needs done. Its purpose is to help the agency understand the client's requirements as clearly as possible.

A brief sets the common ground for an advertising campaign or activity. It lets the team carry out the client's requirements, keeps the campaign on schedule, and gives everyone a basis for judging the results.

Why does a brief matter in marketing?

Besides asking what a brief means, many people also wonder why it matters so much in Marketing. A brief is a summary that holds a central place in marketing strategy. With a good one, marketers can promote their projects more easily and gain plenty of other practical benefits.

For example, when you write a marketing brief you will:

• Set goals for your marketing strategy more easily, based on the research and information gathered in the brief.
• Set clear milestones to track and analyze changes and results while the marketing work is under way.
• Assign tasks flexibly and keep track of what team members and other stakeholders are doing.
• Describe your marketing strategy in a professional way.
• Analyze and judge how well the marketing strategy is working with less effort.
• Research and analyze the audience your strategy targets more easily.

With a professional marketing brief, a business knows its goals, strategy and direction for each campaign, which raises the chances of success.

Two types of brief TV commercial production, a common ad format today

A brief has to cover everything in a few words. Above all, it should give fresh creative inspiration to agencies. Briefs today fall into 2 main types: Communication Brief (a short summary of the content) and Creative Brief (a summary of the creative direction).

Creative Brief

What is a Creative Brief? This type of brief is written and used inside the agency. Its purpose is to pass information to the Creative Team and motivate them to do more creative work.

A Creative Brief usually includes:

• Job Description: Specific details of the job.
• Target Audience: Direction on the content the target customers need.
• SMP (Single – Minded – Proposition): The key effects the product or service has on customers.
• Key Response: The end goal the client's activities are aimed at.
• Finally, the budget: The budget needed for the Creative Brief strategy.

Communication Brief

So what is a Communication Brief? This is the detailed version of the brief that agencies write for clients. A Communication Brief is usually drafted as a set of questions 5W1H (What, Where, Why, Who, When, How). Information about the brand, products and services is organized around 5W1H to make the goals clear.

A complete Communication Brief usually covers:

• Project: The purpose of the project
• Client: Clients
• Brand: information about the brand, products and so on.
• Project description: The work that needs to be done
• Brand background: Information about competitors and the platforms they use in the market.
• Objectives: The project's marketing goals.
• Target Audience: Information about the target customers.
• Coverage: The geographic area to cover.
• Budget: The budget for the Communication Brief
• Timing: A suitable time schedule.

Typically, A Communication Brief matters more than a Creative Brief. It needs professional, detailed work to inspire the people carrying it out. To write the best brief you can, follow the 7 criteria MONA shares below.

7 elements of a professional brief

To get how to write a complete brief the person writing it needs to pay attention to 7 basic elements below.

1. Keep the brief short and cover the key points

Stuffing too much information into a brief is unprofessional. It confuses the people who receive it and makes the requirements and goals hard to meet. Keep the content and structure short and concise, with clear key points and goals.

Guiding the content of the brief is important. So build it around the problem to solve, the goal, and the issues tied to the brand, products and services.

2. Define the goals in the brief clearly

Once you know what a brief is, how do you set its goals? Before writing the brief, you need to do your research and phân tích thị trường. Make sure the goals are clearly defined so you can set targets and a concrete plan.

The brief should say what the project's goal is and what result you want. It should also answer what the brief is for and how success will be measured. With clear goals, the people doing the work can follow the plan and deliver the best results.

3. Give full information on all stakeholders

The brief must list the main stakeholders completely and accurately. That gives the team better direction and makes it easier to find the information they need along the way. In particular, information should be clear for both the agency side and the client side. When it is, the project stays on course, is easier to run, and problems are easier to control.

• On the agency side: Give full details of every department involved. Note clearly who is responsible for content and who handles visuals or communications. That way the project manager knows who manages and who delivers.
• On the Clientside: The brief must name who is responsible for the project, and who will step in to resolve any problems that come up.

4. Analyze competitors in detail

Many people focus on preparing the content and the quality of the product and visuals, and forget their competitors. For a campaign to succeed, you need to beat them. So you should analyzing competitors in your field to understand their strategy, then analyze it to build a better one.

5. Set a suitable timeline

A timeline that is too short or too long makes for a weak brief. A professional brief writer knows how to plan and spread the time sensibly. This affects the pace of work and the results, and helps finish the project in the best possible time.

6. Set aside a budget reserve

Budget matters in every strategy when you write a marketing brief. To prepare for surprises, the person writing the brief should also allow for budget lines that may come up. Then, when something goes wrong, you can respond quickly without delaying the work.

7. Use briefing apps

What is Briefing?

What is the Briefing app? It is an app built to give users the fastest access to new information. In the past Briefing was not widely known because it supported only the languages of a few countries.

Today Briefing is more popular and many young people in Vietnam know it. Most Samsung phones now come with Briefing built in, and it supports Vietnamese so Vietnamese users can use it flexibly. On iOS, the equivalent app is Flipboard.

How to turn the Briefing app on or off:

• If you don't want to use Briefing, touch and hold any empty space on your Android home screen until the editing view appears.
• Then swipe right to find the Briefing app.
• When you see it, tick the box above Flipboard Briefing and switch the app off.

How clients and agencies use a brief

What is the process for using a brief? Usually a client needs a brief to work with an agency. How a client's brief is carried out with an agency usually takes these steps.

Step 1: Provide the brief

Once you know what a brief is, the first step is for the client to give the agency a complete, detailed brief that contains the following:

• The business's current situation.
• The business's target customers.
• Information and images about the products and services.
• The messages and slogan to communicate about the products and services to spread the brand.
• The project's goals
• The problems the business faces and who its competitors are.
• Information on the project budget, supporting activities and so on.

Step 2: Pitching

After receiving the client's brief, agencies take part in a pitch. The Account and Planner teams draw up an overall plan for the campaign, called a Proposal, and present it. The client then chooses the agency best suited to run the marketing campaign.

Step 3: Planning

From the brief above, the next step is to plan how to carry it out. The plan needs to cover the important items below:

• The big idea and budget, to make sure the idea, the budget and the chances of success fit together.
• A detailed plan for carrying out the project. It is split by department and task, and can be divided into shorter or longer phases (by phase, week, month and so on).

Step 4: Production

Once the detailed brief is clear and approved, the agency starts work as planned: building content, designing banners, photo editing, shooting and editing video, and more. These are finished and then published on the channels set out in the earlier plan.

Step 5: Advertising

Run the Media according to plan to reach more of the target customers and get the best advertising results.

You can also choose to include a TV commercial in your advertising strategy. In that case, based on the client's brief, the agency comes up with ideas, builds the script, picks the setting and actors, and shoots the TV commercial so the content fits the campaign goals.

Buying TV commercial production does more than help you reach your target customers. It also improves ad performance with professional video and engaging content that works on every media platform.

Step 6: Report & Payment

• The report measures campaign performance and tracks progress so the results can be reviewed and analyzed. From there, better proposals and campaigns are developed to improve advertising results.
• Payment is the last stage before the campaign ends. Both sides settle the advertising costs agreed in the earlier contracts.

Sample briefs

Now that you know what a brief is, marketers use different sample brief formats depending on the service and industry. Here are some brief templates that many people use.

Creative Brief template

• Campaign Requirement.
• Background of the product or service: the content and timing of the strategy, plus more detail about the product or service.
• Research on the market and competitors.
• Target customers, and the communication and marketing goals.
• The message to deliver and the related data.
• Mandatories for the project, such as product images, slogan, campaign name and so on.
• Timing, and the channels where posts will be published,
• Additional requirements (if any)
• Contact person and timeline for raising and resolving issues.

A detailed Creative Brief template for your reference

A Colgate Creative Brief template for your reference

A sample PayPal Creative Brief for reference

Communication Brief template

• Define the advertising goals in detail in the brief.
• Identify who the project's customers are, and study their profile to understand what they need.
• Things to keep in mind while carrying out the project.
• What will make the ad more convincing, so the campaign beats its competitors.
• Which elements the ad must include, and which details need to go into it.
• What sets the product or service apart, and where it stands out from competitors.
• Who is carrying out this project?

A Red Bull Communication Brief template for reference

Project Brief template

A Brand Project Brief template from an agency, for reference

There are many Design Brief templates shared online, such as event brief samples, chat briefs, study briefs, marketing brief samples, creative brief samples, design briefs, and more. Look at these, then combine them with the specifics of your product or service, your business, your budget and the timing of your ads, and you will write better briefs.

That is all the information about what a brief is and the step-by-step guide to writing the best brief for you. It is one of the key strategies for success in any field. We hope what MONA has shared makes it easy to apply Brief Marketing in your communication campaigns.