It should be clear that advertisers’ “own” brand strategy and are therefore responsible for the assignment briefing process. With multiple agencies making up an advertisers marketing services vendor network, how can you have it any other way? Coordinating efforts across this collection of specialist agencies to achieve innovative, impactful, integrated marketing campaigns that deliver on the organization’s goals is the responsibility of the Marketing Team, which is ultimately accountable for generating a return on marketing investment.
There was an intriguing piece written in Advertising Age recently by Casey Jones of Jones & Bonevac on the assignment briefing process that identified results from a recently fielded survey by his firm. The survey found that 54% of agencies surveyed said that “fewer than 40% of the client briefs provided gave a clear indication of what the client expected from the agency.” And of that number; “… 30% said only 1% – 10% of briefs provide clear performance expectations.” This is an issue which creates pitfalls ranging from wasted time and money to ineffective marketing outputs and client/agency discord.
The remedy to this problem requires three relatively straight forward steps. The first is the easiest… develop an assignment brief template containing the requisite information fields necessary to be completed by the Marketing representatives responsible for the brief development. This would include information such as brand value propositions, key competitive differentiators, target audience insights, market/ competitive overview, historical brand performance data and quantifiable objectives for the project. Secondly, formalize an internal review and approval process which includes key stakeholders and senior Marketing management to provide an opportunity for both strategic input and discussion surrounding assignment “success” criteria and how the attainment of those criteria align with the organization’s objectives. Thirdly, construct a concise assignment briefing meeting format that the organization follows to present the approved brief to their agency partners, engage in dialogue with the agency representatives and clarify each agencies roles, responsibilities and deliverables.
Professionals within both the client and agency organizations are intelligent, motivated and desirous of a successful campaign outcome, thus formalizing a framework for the assignment brief can immediately improve the efficacy and efficiency of the entire creative development process. Why? A tighter assignment briefing process results in better creative briefs and stronger creative outputs.