How you can Write a Creative Temporary in 11 Easy Steps [Examples + Template]

Step one in any successful project is drawing up a game plan with a transparent objective. It’s one among the explanations marketers love creative briefs.

A creative temporary acts as a roadmap that takes a project from ideation to completion. It ensures the scope, timeline, key stakeholders, and purpose of the project are communicated clearly. The creative temporary is the one source of truth for everybody working on a project. If questions come up or tasks develop into unclear, the creative temporary will steer things in the proper direction.

The Purpose of a Creative Temporary

Whether you’re a consultant pitching a creative temporary to a client, or a project manager presenting a temporary to your team, start by speaking with the project stakeholders. These discussions will allow you to understand the corporate’s mission, project goals, and challenges your team faces. Then, you’ll have enough information to jot down a compelling temporary that focuses on what’s really essential to your organization or client.

The thought of a creative temporary sounds easy, but it may be hard to wrap quite a lot of essential details into just a number of pages. Subsequently, a creative temporary is usually comprised of eight sections that may fit on one to 2 pages.

How a Creative Temporary Works

Creative briefs are pretty standard documents inside nearly every marketing, promoting, or design team. For smaller projects that live in-house (like designs, templates, marketing assets, etc.) the temporary is owned by the team who shall be executing on the knowledge within the temporary. This is frequently the creative team, but this team can fall inside the brand department and even live inside marketing.

For more advanced, long-term projects that involve an agency, the creative temporary is owned by the creative team or agency who shall be executing the work. It’s because they’ll work closely with the stakeholders on the project to know what is required, plus they’ll bring their very own expertise and competitive research to the temporary that the interior team may not have access to.

These kinds of creative briefs aren’t rare, but they’re created infrequently as a consequence of the character of the projects they support. So for this post, we’ll focus totally on the day-to-day creative briefs that you just’re prone to use often. Here’s how they work.

Step 1. The teams who need assistance from the creative team will retrieve the creative temporary template from a repository like OneDrive, Google Drive, or a web-based form.

Step 2. The team that’s requesting the project will complete the temporary in line with their team’s needs and goals. The completion of the creative temporary starts with the team requesting the project in order that they’ll explain their vision and goals clearly to the creative team.

Step 3. From there, the temporary is distributed back to the creative team to review. They’ll be in search of timelines, resources, and budget requirements.

Step 4. In the event that they have any questions, they’ll return to the team who wrote the temporary and finalize the small print.

Step 5. After that, the project is kicked off, sometimes with the assistance of a project manager, who will check-in with stakeholders on the project and keep the whole lot on schedule, inside scope, and inside budget.

Step 6. Once the project is complete, each teams will review the deliverables against the creative temporary to make sure the whole lot is accomplished accurately.

The format of each company’s creative temporary might vary barely to suit the needs of the project or client. Below is an easy outline that shall be the inspiration of your creative temporary. It includes an important steps within the creative process and data that’ll be relevant to stakeholders involved within the project.

When you’re fully informed and prepared to jot down, use the next steps to draft yours. To make it even easier, I’ve included a fill-in-the-blank template within the last step.

1. Settle on a reputation for the project.

Step one in developing a creative temporary is deciding on a project name. This might sound easy, nevertheless it’s one of the vital critical components of a creative temporary. In the event you’re constructing a campaign around a brand latest services or products, the campaign name shall be the primary time many members of your team shall be introduced to it. Referring to the campaign (and due to this fact services or products) by the proper name prevents the game of telephone from happening. And not using a specific and clear campaign name, people will make up their very own terminology which may alter the intent of the campaign.

To create a project or campaign name on your creative temporary, keep it creative and temporary. Just a few words or a brief sentence should work just superb. In the event you’re launching a product, discover what the decision to motion shall be for the audience, then center the name around that. Listed here are a number of examples of fictional campaign names:

• The Seek for Adventure Campaign- A scavenger hunt-themed amusement park.
• The Don’t Forget Your Memories Campaign – A photograph frame company.
• The “What’s hotter than Pepperco hot sauce?” Campaign – A hot sauce brand.

2. Write in regards to the brand and summarize the project’s background.

One other easy, yet essential section is the corporate background. In the event you work in an agency setting, that is non-negotiable as your team is probably going handling several client campaigns directly. Nevertheless, if you happen to’re developing a creative temporary for an in-house project, you will still want to incorporate this part. Recent hires in your team, freelancers, and vendors will appreciate the background that your internal team is already aware about.

The corporate background should not be a general history of the corporate or a copied and pasted paragraph from the about page. As a substitute, tailor this to the project at hand. Set the scene with one or two sentences that sum up the brand’s mission. Follow this with a number of sentences that give background on the brand and what led to the event of the project.

While some creatives have put this information all together in a fast paragraph, others separate it with headers like “Brand Statement” and “Background.”

Listed here are some questions to think about when writing an organization background on your creative temporary:

• Has the corporate launched a campaign like this before?
• Why is the corporate selecting to launch this campaign straight away?
• What’s happening out there and the way will this campaign reply to it?

3. Highlight the project objective.

Here is where the creative temporary gets more specific. The project objective should briefly explain the aim of the project, the timeline, and the audience it’ll goal. This might be done in a sentence or two, but you’ll be able to get creative and stylize it in sections.

This a part of the creative temporary shall be helpful in emphasizing why the project must occur. The goal elements will allow you to and your team align on the project’s expectations. If the corporate or client hasn’t identified any major challenges, you’ll be able to focus this section on goals and objectives. Explain what a successful project looks like and the way it’ll profit the corporate.

Pro Tip: Writing a project objective could be very much like writing a goal, so take a take a look at this blog post for more detail on goal and objective writing.

Here’s an example of a sample creative brief for PayPal that provides separate sections for “The Problem” and “The Goal”:

4. Describe the audience.

Next, it is time to define the audience for the project. That is the segment of your market that can directly profit from the services or products being launched. You may take audience segmentation a step further by identifying a primary and secondary audience. Doing so will give your team more freedom to explore creative ideas which may resonate with one group greater than the opposite.

When crafting the audience section, make sure you include the next:

• Demographics – Easy demographic information gives your team insight into exactly who the audience is. This includes data points like age, income, education, ethnicity, and occupation.
• Behaviors – Buying behaviors, trends, and other customer history make up the audience behaviors. These provide essential context to the creative temporary because they explain where the shopper is of their buyer journey.
• Psychographics – That is how the audience thinks and feels about your brand and the services or products you sell, generally.
• Geographics – Digital, physical, and hybrid campaigns will profit from having geographics stated explicitly within the creative temporary in order that media buyers can price ad slots in each market.

Pro Tip: Your creative temporary should not be too long, and this section can take up quite a little bit of space. To make this section more digestible, think about using buyer personas.

Here’s how the sample brief for PayPal noted above thoughtfully explains a latest product’s audience:

5. Interpret the competitive landscape.

Knowing what your competitors are doing is advantageous for the entire team. You need to use competitive data to give you ideas that haven’t been tried yet, learn from their failed projects, or construct a project that improves on a technique they’ve used prior to now.

Include a fast list of competitors with similar services or products offerings. Briefly list a number of things your organization has in common with them, how your brand has differentiated itself already, and a number of areas where this project can allow you to get ahead.Get Your Free Templates

6. Prepare the important thing message.

The important thing message might be essentially the most difficult a part of the creative temporary to develop because nearly every stakeholder may have a unique opinion of what it needs to be. To get buy-in faster, try this easy trick. Ask yourself “We’re launching this project, so what?” The “so what?” is your key message. It explains why your audience should stop what they’re doing and listen to your campaign.

The important thing message includes the pain point, what the audience’s experience is likely to be like without the pain point, and the profit they’ll receive consequently of your organization’s solution. This framework places the shopper within the highlight of the campaign. As a substitute of telling them what this services or products could do for them, it positions them because the foremost character within the journey from problem to solution.

7. Select the important thing consumer profit.

In the event you’re launching a latest product, there are likely several features and advantages that the audience will experience once they determine to buy it. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to structure a campaign around several different features. That is why marketers and creatives use something called a key consumer profit (KCB) within the creative temporary to maintain everyone aligned on the first profit being communicated. To decide on the proper KCB, you will need to get input from the project stakeholders and depend on consumer data to guide the choice.

Pro Tip: Your KCB won’t all the time be the fanciest feature of your product. The profit that solves the most important problem on your audience is an ideal selection for the KCB.

8. Select an attitude.

The tone and voice of your campaign create the general attitude and that needs to be consistent throughout every creative element that is being developed. Identifying a number of adjectives that describe the attitude of the campaign may help copywriters draft copy that sends the proper message inside the proper context. Graphic designers can use colours and techniques to portray the tone and voice as well.

On this section of the temporary, you must also note the suitable voice on your audience. While some audiences, like those within the business world, prefer more formal language, others might engage more with an informal, relatable tone. To substantiate your decision to decide on a selected brand voice and tone, you possibly can write something like, “Our brand voice is an informal and carefree tone since it speaks to younger Gen-Z audiences.”

Pro tip: Use a thesaurus to search out specific words that evoke nuanced emotions and attitudes for a hyper-targeted campaign.

9. Determine one of the best call to motion.

Finally, your audience needs something to do once they see your campaign. The advantage of CTAs is that they do not have to be physical actions. A CTA could have a goal to alter thoughts and perceptions about your brand which does not require the audience to do anything in any respect.

Your creative temporary might include several different CTAs, especially if you’ve a primary and secondary audience. However it’s idea to have one primary CTA that drives the project objective we talked about earlier.

10. Draft the distribution plan.

When the project is completed, you’ll must ensure your audience actually sees it. List a number of channels or platforms on which you propose to announce the launch, in addition to any promotional content you propose to create.

When drafting this section, take into consideration your audience. Don’t waste time on a promotional strategy that they won’t see. For instance, if you happen to’re promoting a project to Gen-Z, you’ll want to take a position in social media moderately than billboards or newspaper ads.

11. Share the creative temporary with stakeholders.

When you’ve drafted a creative temporary, share it with the team you’ll be working with. You’ll also wish to flow into it around the corporate via Slack, email, or presentations. In the event you’re a consultant working outside of a client’s company, encourage your clients to share the temporary internally.

As you or your clients spread awareness, try to be open to answering questions or taking feedback from colleagues in case they’ve any great ideas. This strategy will improve team alignment, increase support of the project, and be sure that your entire colleagues are on the identical page.

Follow Along with HubSpot’s Free Creative Brief Templates

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Creative Temporary Template

Having trouble with the flow and organization of your temporary? Here’s a straightforward template that would help. Copy and paste it right into a document and fill within the blanks. You can even add to it or adjust it as needed on your project.

Download More Creative Temporary Templates

[Inset company or client logo at the top along with the project name.]

COMPANY BACKGROUND:

For ___ years, ______ [Brand Name] has been serving customers within the ____________ [group/job field/geographical area] with ____________________

.

[Brand Name] has made achievements including __________,__________, and ___________. Now we have also launched marketing campaigns which have touched on ____________,________, and ____________. With the launch of _________ [project name] they hope to ___________.

PROJECT OBJECTIVE:

With this project, the corporate goals to resolve problems related to ____________________, while also expanding on ___________ and improving on _____________.

TARGET AUDIENCE:

Our audience is ____ [gender], within the age range of _ and _, and live areas like ____, _____, and ______. They enjoy _____, dislike ______, and might work in fields like _____, _____, and _____. They need more of ________ and their day by day pain points include ________.

Their favorite products might include _______ and ______. They study these products through channels including ________, _________, and _______.

COMPETITORS:

Our three biggest competitors [are/will be] ________, ________, and _______. These competitors offer _____, ______, and ______. We’re ahead of them in _____ and ______, but we’re behind in terms of product offerings like __________ and _________.

KEY MESSAGE:

The audience is experiencing __________ [pain point], but with our newest project ___________, they’ll get to experience _________ [new experience without the pain point]. That is what makes ______ [solution] an unrivaled solution inside the market.

KEY CONSUMER BENEFIT:

________ [feature] is one of the simplest ways for our audience to experience _____ [benefit].

ATTITUDE:

[Include three to five adjectives that describe the tone and voice of the project.]

CALL TO ACTION:

When the audience sees our campaign, they are going to [feel/think/do] _________.

DISTRIBUTION:

We’ll promote the launch on platforms and channels that our demographic commonly engages with. These will include ________, ________, and _______.

We will even release content including _______, _______, and ________ to realize attention from our audience and inform them of the project.

Below are a number of messages we are going to use:

• _________________________________________________.
• _________________________________________________.
• _________________________________________________.

Kinds of Creative Briefs

Creative briefs serve several purposes within the communications field. Marketers, designers, and advertisers use them in another way. Depending in your role, your team, and the project you are working on, one is likely to be simpler than the opposite. Below are a few of the most typical varieties of creative briefs used across industries today plus examples of what they may seem like.

1. Marketing Creative Briefs

A marketing creative temporary is mostly used to bring campaigns to market. One of these creative temporary might be used for each latest and existing campaigns. Broad business goals and techniques to perform them are often included in this kind of creative temporary. It is also not unusual to see revenue goals and a budget included in a marketing creative temporary.

Easy Marketing Creative Temporary Example

2. Product Design Creative Briefs

Product design creative briefs outline the go-to-market strategy for a latest product or feature launch. Product marketers are accountable for developing this kind of temporary. Developed at the side of the product manager, the product design creative temporary will describe the features and advantages of the product and the way the audience will profit from them. Unique features of this kind of creative temporary include product documentation and product descriptions.

Product Design Creative Temporary Example

3. Promoting Agency Creative Briefs

Promoting agencies develop creative briefs often for the varied clients they serve. These briefs are concise and include the client’s brand guidelines in addition to the particular project guidelines. A budget may additionally be included within the temporary so that each one teams could make sensible decisions in regards to the tactics they recommend for the client. An account manager or supervisor develops the creative temporary and shares it with client stakeholders before the agency begins working on the project.

Promoting Agency Creative Temporary Example

Creative Temporary Examples

1. Creative Request Template

For the day-to-day management of creative projects, using a creative request template in Asana acts as a dynamic tackle a historically static creative temporary. With a number of tweaks to suit your small business’s needs, this template flows through each stage of the project while specifying tasks, deliverables, and key points that have to be included within the project. Furthermore, Asana provides several varieties of views that make this template easy to have a look at from a calendar view, list view, board view, and timeline view so you will all the time know the progress of your project in relation to the creative temporary.

When to Use This Creative Temporary:

This creative temporary example is great for marketing, brand, creative, and design teams who handle a big backlog of projects with stakeholders on many various teams. Use this temporary for each ad-hoc and commonly occurring projects.

2. Creative Brief Presentation Template

This creative temporary example was designed by TemplateForest. It is a visual-forward example of a temporary that works well for long-term projects like constructing a business or refreshing a brand. This longer temporary includes a wide range of information from internal brand insights to an external competitive evaluation.

When to Use This Creative Temporary:

Use this creative temporary once you’re partnering with a creative agency on greater projects. They will use this layout to encourage a creative temporary that matches the needs of your small business.

Streamline Projects with a Creative Temporary

Scope creep happens to one of the best of us. Projects get greater, stakeholders are added, and the target of the project seems to morph as time goes on. Streamline your next product launch or marketing and promoting campaign with a creative temporary. In consequence, you will find that your team is more aligned with the project’s goals. We have even provided free creative temporary templates to get you began — download them below.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.