5 Tips for a Great Agency Briefing

Tuesday 25th October 2011

You will get so much more from your communications with an inspirational approach to briefing your agency; here are our 5 top tips.

Whether it is a new website, advert, brochure or new PR campaign we are paid by our clients to use our marketing skills to solve brand problems and exploit brand opportunities.

In the development of our ideas or any agency's ideas, the client briefing is the most important step in that process. After all it is the point at which the commercial requirement of the task and the strategic understanding of the issues are translated into an inspirational and directional meeting for the creative team.

We think that best approach is simple and straight forward (like most good communication!); hence the reason we have put together these 5 top tips.

1. What must the communication say?

This question is not always straightforward as the temptation to answer 'everything!' is overwhelming. Often a simple step is to go back to your businesses 'elevator pitch', or to answer the question "How would you sell this to your mum?". Above all keep this simple and focused, as the main object is to get your point across quickly and clearly.

2. Who is your audience?

I know you know that!  However, can we get a deeper and better understanding of who your audience is.  In a business to business brief we often need to define multiple audiences so we can really get a deep understanding. For one of our clients we defined the audience not as the principle budget holder, but their wife - the principle influencer.  The result was that we produced a coffee table style brochures rather than a more factual piece - the impressive results supported this approach.

3. Why should your audience believe it?

A simple fact, a quote from a satisfied customer or sometimes a picture.  Whatever it is -  it needs to be simple, honest and compelling. 

4. Tone of voice?

Now here is when it gets really interesting. It is often an overlooked point and yet it can make the difference between brilliant and awful work.  A great friend and excellent planner developed a system of looking at brands and business as well know characters from stories and films.  For example, Virgin Atlantic during their battle against BA would have been described as a Robin Hood brand, or Roberts Radios could be described as 'good' Pied Piper.  Whether you agree with these or not, the point is that suddenly tone of voice takes on a much bigger role in the communication and can really stand your business apart from the competition.  After all - Innocent drinks created such a different tone of voice that a whole sector rushed to follow!

5. Is there anything that must be included?

Many times it is assumed that this is understood, however it is better to get it all in now rather than later.  That way your website or advert will be designed with that in mind rather than shoe horned in at the end. You will find that the end result is always better if everything has been considered from that start; added to which, it will save you massive amounts of time and money, as you will not be going back to the drawing board to fit in those details.

So happy briefing and we hope that this helps. As a P.S. it is always worth getting your agency to share their interpretation of the brief back to you, that way you can be sure that everything you are trying to achieve has been understood.