Strategic Foundation
Define the problem, audience, and what success looks like
Project Details
Strategic Questions
These are the core questions that shape great briefs
What is the main business/product/service end goal? How can we sell more?
This is the most important question on the brief. It forces you to articulate the business problem, not the communications problem. As Mark Ritson would say: "Strategy is diagnosis before prescription." Don't leap to what the advertising should do. First, explain what's going on in the business. What's the commercial challenge? Why now? Think like Richard Rumelt: a good strategy starts with an honest diagnosis of the situation. Keep it tight. One paragraph, one core challenge.
Which customer or market segment offers the best opportunity for sales growth? Bring these people to life in a way that leads creatives to understand and like them.
Forget demographics alone. As Julian Cole would remind you, the best target audience descriptions are built on tensions, behaviours, and mindsets, not just age and income. Bring these people to life. What do they currently do? What do they believe? What frustrates them? Think of the JWT Planning Guide's wisdom: the best target group description explains how the advertising is intended to work. Describe humans, not data points.
'Do' means 'do': what change in actual behaviour are we looking to bring about? (Don't just write 'Buy more'!) Be specific: think about what an individual actually does now when buying and what we need them to do in future.
This is about behaviour change, not attitude change. Les Binet would insist on specificity here. What does an actual person physically do differently? "Buy more" is not a behavioural outcome, it's a wish. Think about the moment of decision: in the shop, online, at the point of choice. What specific action do you want someone to take that they don't take today?
List any insights here. What core thought will lead to a highly creative solution?
This is your single-minded proposition. Mark Pollard calls this the "one thing": the most provocative, interesting, true thing you can say about the brand that will unlock creative magic. Not a tagline. Not a feature list. An insight or truth that makes someone lean in. As the JWT guide says: "We try to say everything that is potentially relevant, and end up saying nothing that is positively interesting." Be brave. Be single-minded.
More buyers, or more frequent buying, or brand switching, or higher spend per buyer, or what?
As Les Binet would say, you need to know whether you're fishing for penetration or loyalty. These require very different strategies. Be specific about the metric and the timeframe. And ideally, distinguish between short-term activation metrics and long-term brand-building measures. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it, and you certainly can't learn from it.
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