Advertising – How To Develop A Creative Brief
If you create advertising or brief it, you’ll appreciate that every advertising and marketing professional needs a straightforward, quick method to pick out the relevant content for a creative brief. But because of time pressures it’s hard to find the time to do this properly. This four question procedure will help you generate content rich, comprehensive creative briefings in minutes.
This practice is based on Cartesian Logic, which is attributed to the French philosopher, Rene Descartes. Think of it as a technique that enables you deliver the best solution to a problem by considering all the possibilities associated with that problem.
The basic principle of Cartesian Logic involves four questions. By using these four questions in sequence it is possible to cover all of the possible viewpoints needed to brief or create forceful, persuasive advertising.
If you use these four questions to provide a structure, you are more likely to come up with rounded, inspiring arguments for whatever you’re selling. The resulting advertising is naturally more engaging, motivating and convincing.
Question One: Why is buying your product a good idea?
This first question should give you all of the audience benefits. Use it to come up with as many reasons why buying your product or connecting with your service or Brand is, for your market, a good idea.
Question Two: Why is NOT buying your product a good idea?
This question provides the key objections. Come up with all the reasons people wouldn’t buy your product then spin them and answer them to your benefit. Remember potential customers already know what these are, if you can overcome them you’ll be more persuasive because answering objections increases sales.
Question Three: Why is buying your product NOT a good idea?
This question, although similar is different from question two because it should help you identify the flaws in your product (rather than the customer objections) and it may highlight those for whom the product is NOT suitable.
Question Four: Why is NOT buying your product NOT a good idea?
Or, put another way, Why is NOT buying your product a BAD idea? The answer to this question is the consequence of not buying what you’re selling. It identifies the downside if the audience do not take action now.
The ideal way to use these questions is to rewrite you own version of them. You can do this by removing the word PRODUCT and insert the name of your product or service. Then remove the words GOOD IDEA and replace it with your major benefit(s). Then take some time to fully answer these questions, capture as many ideas as you can and if necessary repeat the process again changing the keywords. This technique will leave you with the content that makes briefing or creating persuasive marketing so much easier and much more profitable.
More marketing tips are featured in a free booklet on market research uk available to all marketing professionals who wish to improve their response rates. Courtesy of espconsultancy.com the marketing research specialists.
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