CREATING INSPIRING
COMMUNICATION
CAMPAIGNS
THE CREATIVE BRIEF METHOD TO SUCCESS
Jacqueline Lambiase, Ph.D.
Chair and Professor
Department of Strategic Communication
TCU Bob Schieffer College of Communication
Co-director, Certified Public Communicator Program at TCU
[email protected] | @lambiase
Certifiedpubliccommunicator.org
Goals for this session
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•
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What is a campaign?
What is a creative
brief?
How does the brief
inform a campaign?
Examples of everyday
use of creative brief
thinking
Discussion/Q&A
What is a campaign?
It’s a planned, strategic and sustained effort over months and years. It takes
persistence, grit, consistency and coordination. You have to keep your eye on the goal.
Modern advertising campaign
A planned, strategic and sustained effort to promote a product or service over
months or years, using a theme or set patterns of messages in a variety of
channels. It’s often based on a creative brief. It is coordinated to ensure consistency
of tone and purpose across many channels.
Attributes of the best campaigns
• Nike: Started with emphasis on the everyday athlete; flexible enough to
include professional and amateur athletes today; many sports, many
nations; global positioning; tagline stays the same for 29 years.
• Got Milk: Uses a variety of celebrity endorsers, even someone who is
lactose intolerant; tagline stays the same for 23 years.
• Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty: Launched in 2004, created after a threeyear research effort. Focuses on everyday women, not models.
• Absolut: The Abolut ______________ campaign started in 1980, blending
art + commerce. It was the long-running ad campaign in history, just one
idea with 2,000 faces. Now using #AbsolutNights, which still features the
bottle shape prominently.
The big
idea
If you want to find the big
idea, then you have to use the
creative brief. And that “brief”
takes time, contemplation,
and lots of research.
Nike’s Just Do It Campaign (Jerome Conlon)
• Three circles of influence:
• Understanding an underlying tension that desperately requires
resolving (obesity and procrastination)
• Core brand truth that expresses reasons for a brand’s very existence
(the great and uplifting experience of sports and fitness)
• A specific unmet consumer need that brand can legitimately address
(including women and all baby boomer fitness enthusiasts who have
potential to be everyday athletes)
One page creative brief (Scott Bedbury)
• “Nike is about to become a significant network television advertiser. We will
spend nearly three times what we spent on the ‘Revolution’ campaign in the fall
of 1988. (Despite the high visibility of ‘Revolution,’ Nike had spent less than $5
million on TV that year.) This is a turning point for a company that not long ago
spoke to its customers at track meets from the tailgate of a station wagon. This
just cannot be a narrow look back at where we have been. We should be proud of
our heritage, but we must also realize that the appeal of ‘Hayward Field’ (an Ad
set at the University of Oregon’s Track & Field Stadium) is narrow and potentially
alienating to those who are not great athletes. We need to grow this brand
beyond its purest core…we have to stop talking just to ourselves. It’s time to
widen the access point. We need to capture a more complete spectrum of the
rewards of sports and fitness. We achieved this with ‘Revolution.’ Now we need
to take the next step.”
• State of the brand + core brand values + organization purpose
THE CREATIVE
BRIEF LEADS TO
A BRAND
MANIFESTO,
WHICH LEADS TO
TAGLINES AND
CAMPAIGN
LANGUAGE. IT
ALSO LEADS TO
BOTH TONE AND
FRAMEWORK
FOR THE ENTIRE
CAMPAIGN.
A creative brief …
… is a gathering of facts, research, needs of the organization, and needs of the publics it is
serving. It is the confluence of the state of the brand + core brand values + organization
purpose.
A creative brief is a heuristic!
• It’s an invention machine
• Sort of like the Who, What, Where, When, Why, How for journalists
• Like the rhetorical situation you learned as an eighth-grader
• Like a situation analysis
• Basic parts of a creative brief are: background/history (state of the
brand); goals of campaign/needs of the organization (including core
values); needs and attributes of your audience (core purpose of your
organization); focus for the big idea that will be generated; other
information as needed.
How do we do this for places?
Let’s look at an armchair case, then behind the scenes and for evidence elsewhere.
Armchair case: West, Texas
A fertilizer explosion occurred in 2013, killing 15, injuring more than
150, and destroying or damaging more than 200 structures.
Brainstorm
Write the creative brief
• Background/history: West is an old Czech community, with a strong
identity and cultural activities involving dancing, kolaches, and fests.
Fewer than 3,000 people live in the town, which was literally rocked
by an enormous explosion at a fertilizer plant, killing 12 firstresponders, two volunteers, and others. A large portion of the city
and two schools were rubble; many families were displaced, and the
fate of the town was in the balance. Popular stop for travelers on I-35.
• Goals of campaign: Four months after the blast, to let residents and
others return to normalcy and to let travelers know the city is open
for business. Core values include service to and caring for residents,
plus history, culture and hospitality for visitors.
More on West, Texas, creative brief
• Needs and attributes of audience: For residents of West, they are still
experiencing trauma and in recovery, but need uplift; for travelers,
need to see it again as a fun stop along I-35, rather than a site for
rubber-necking at the blast site or tragedy tourism. The city of West
can continue to care for its residents in many ways, among them
helping in the return to normalcy through yearly fests, which can now
be fundraisers to help survivors of the blasts, plus hospitality for
tourists.
• Focus: Helping others, still open for business, Czech heritage.
• Other information: Sensitivity needed. Core tourism message will be
seen by residents and vice versa.
Insight:
Five real cases
with big ideas
and insights
•
•
•
•
Two library cases
Bond-election case
Road construction
Overall city branding
Library outreach (Topeka/Shawnee, KS)
• Insight: Reading as a survival skill
• Tagline: Libraries transform (it involved a culture shift within libraries)
Library support (Troy, MI)
• Troy, MI, library faced closure; city requested small tax increase
• Tea Party attacked; guerilla marketing campaign used reverse
psychology to gain support for tax increase
• Insight: Without a library, you might as well be burning books
Bond election (Kennewick, WA, schools)
• Insight: overcrowding, feelings + facts
• Won awards; however, the district forgot to “buy” required election
notification ads, even though it conducted a successful campaign
Road construction and closures (Madison, WI)
• Insight: partnerships with affected businesses using survival guide
• Taglines: Monona Drive’s Alive; Willy Lives.
Overall campaign: Arlington, TX
Overall campaign (Arlington, TX)
• Brand manifesto:
America’s team. America’s pastime. American-made automobiles. Arlington is the
American Dream City. We are home to the Dallas Cowboys, the Texas Rangers, General
Motors, Six Flags Over Texas and a host of global, domestic and family-owned businesses.
And the American pride in our culturally-diverse citizens is undeniable.
Our competitive can-do spirit makes dreams a reality. When tasked with making Arlington
the General Motors Assembly Plant home, the city built a lake to properly expand its water
source. In the 70s, the city fought hard to make Arlington home of the Texas Rangers (then
known as the Washington Senators). Twice voters stepped up when asked for major bond
packages to keep and lure its sports franchises in Arlington and in the process built worldclass, iconic venues.
Beyond what is highly visible in Arlington is the backbone of the city: Top-notch education
where students can go from pre-K to Ph.D. (from an excelling school system to Tarrant
County College and UT Arlington); it possesses valued work opportunities and economic
vitality; it maintains an award winning parks system; and, it offers quality, diverse
neighborhoods where the housing dollar stretches further than most cities. Arlington is…
Alive with the American Dream.
PG County
Prince George’s County: Experience. Expand.
Explore.
Wonderful attractions for tourists to Experience.
Amazing opportunities we offer for businesses
to Expand.
And incredible communities and resources for
both new and established residents to Explore.
“From reducing crime to improving schools to
building a new hospital, along with a billion
dollar destination resort, and potentially being
the new home to the FBI, Prince George’s
County has been, as the Washington Post
editorial board noted, ‘A County on the Move.’ I
believe this eye-catching and creative campaign
will truly accelerate our momentum.”
#ChicagoPassion
Other considerations
• Need insights, which are
best gained from others
outside your usual circle
of influencers
• Research necessary
• Do you already have a
running theme that could
be rebuilt a little bit to
become your big idea?
• How can you tweak
communication, past and
present, to fit a new big
idea?
• Avoid generic “big ideas”
When in Roswell, let’s tell our story together
Simple themes include …
• Passion, energy, vitality: used by the state of Colorado; Prince
George’s County, MD; city of Chicago
• American Dream City for Arlington, TX
• Let’s Tell Our Story Together, Roswell, GA
• Must find something that feels authentic, rather than stale, generic or
ubiquitous, such as the “live, work, play” master slogan.
Rethink messaging
Summary
• Start with the foundational document = creative brief
• Use the brief to get a full description of your place, its people, their needs
and your challenges
• Brainstorm and boil
• Distill to main idea or big idea that can guide your messaging and
communication for months or years to come
• Develop story ideas, tags, tweets, sound bites, bulleted lists and more
• Re-tag and write new headlines for older, evergreen content to fit new big
idea
• Go through approvals
• Unleash: Feed channels the food they need
Sources and more reading for you
• https://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2015/08/behind-nikescampaign.html#.WPoiGogrKUk
• Soulful Branding: Unlock the Hidden Energy in Your Company and Brand, by Jerome
Conlon
• https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32763/The-10-Greatest-MarketingCampaigns-of-All-Time.aspx#sm.000m5f2261eapdom113xz0vevhj2n
• https://www.upwork.com/hiring/design/how-to-create-an-effective-creative-brief/
• http://libereurope.eu/blog/2013/06/03/expert-tips-for-marketing-your-library/
• http://tscpl.org/news/library-of-the-year
• http://www.constructiondive.com/news/6-cities-getting-creative-when-road-work-hurtsbusiness/311557/
• https://www.cityofmadison.com/transportation/roadworks/documents/survivalguide.pd
f
More resources
A formula for a brand manifesto, a link to more about the state of Colorado’s brand
initiative, and information about the Certified Public Communicator program at TCU.
There is no
formula for
a brand
manifesto,
but here’s
a structure,
and a joke,
that might
help you.
Brand manifesto video for Colorado
A 95-hour certificate program for public-sector communicators that meets
for one week, for two summers, at TCU in Fort Worth, TX. You walk away
with a communication plan for your city, county, school district or agency, as
well as professional development for yourself.
Co-directors are Laura Bright and Jacque Lambiase.
Learn more at www.certifiedpubliccommunicator.org.