Memo to marketers: How to write a great creative brief

Creating briefs is an essential component of the advertising process, but is a task that is fraught with complexity.

How can a marketer write a brief that, at once, helps its agency drive productivity and also reduces cost?

For Debra Giampoli, co-founder/partner at Chicago-based Stone Soup Consultants LLC, it’s a deliberate process that begins on the client-side of the partnership.

“The marketers know the brand best and have an intuitive sense about it,” she told delegates at the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) 2018 Advertising Financial Management Conference.

“Start with a template, but don’t end with the template,” she advised the Hollywood, Florida assembly. “Find the right direction and then sit in a room with your planners and bounce...

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands