A marketing campaign is only as strong as the strategy that drives it. Yet sometimes we treat marketing strategy as an afterthought. This often comes across in the creative brief process. Marketers copy and paste old creative briefs or parrot benefit statements without getting to the heart of why our brands or products are meaningfully unique.
In an ad shoot, we often hear someone say, “we’ll fix it in post-production”. This usually happens when there’s been a mistake, but not severe enough to reshoot the scene. Yet we learn the hard way that there’s only so much that we can actually fix in post-production. Our source footage limits how much we can do later. It’s often worth the extra effort of reshooting the scene to make sure we get it right.
Similarly, advertising can’t fix a bad marketing strategy. Agency creatives work with the material they have. The better the source material, the better the ideas. Garbage in, garbage out.
Creative briefs should be incendiary. Marketers should invest upfront to creative briefs that truly inspire. That investment will more than pay off in the creative work.
(Marketoonist Monday: I’m giving away one signed print of this week’s cartoon. Just share an insightful comment to this week’s post by 5:00 PST on Monday. I’ll pick one comment. Thanks!)