Communications Objectives and Creative Brief

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Achieving communication objectives

Brand communications and promotional activity can help you achieve various communication objectives. For example, they can help you to:

•      Increase sales using conversion channels like PPC and email. 
•      Improve margins and increase average revenue per customer by promoting bundles, upsells, and cross-sells in marketing channels.
•      Widen your customer base by targeting new audiences through digital channels.
•      Optimize revenues from existing customers by offering discount codes in email and through mobile apps to reward loyalty.
•      Drive greater share-of-wallet or SOW.
•      Improve brand reputation.
•      Inform consumers of your brand’s sustainability credentials.

Avoid greenwashing

Some brands have claimed that they’re environmentally friendly but haven’t been transparent about what they mean. This can lead to charges of greenwashing – which is when a business implies its products and services are more environmentally friendly than they are. Brands need to follow the green claims code or risk being fined. 

Example: Greggs

Greggs is transparent about its sustainability credentials. The brand has published the Greggs Pledge – which describes ten things the company is doing to make the world a better place. 
 
It uses a variety of communication channels to share this information with consumers, including its:

•      Eco-Shops
•      Signage 
•      Packaging 
•      Website, app, and social channels
•      Events for investors and business professionals

The Advertising Standards Authority has ruled against several brands for greenwashing, including Oatly, Hyundai, and Shell.  

Ryanair was ruled against for this ad, as it implied that air travel could be environmentally friendly, which it cannot be.
 
Communication objectives

Your communications objectives can have various goals. For example, you can use them to: 

•      Increase awareness. 
•      Share knowledge. 
•      Project a brand identity. 
•      Stimulate needs or desires.
•      Generate sales revenues.

Objectives should be:

•      Limited in number to retain focus – two to four is ideal.
•      SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timebound).
•      Correlated to an overarching business objective.
•      Focused on a specific target audience.
•      Have clear KPIs attached to them.

Creative brief

When dealing with agencies and media buyers, a clear brief that contains your objectives and budget can help them customize a solution based on your requirements. For this, you can use a creative brief template, also known as a campaign brief. This document should tease out campaign ideas and objectives and set a basis for creative personnel, copywriters, and producers to undertake key work on the campaign. 

The campaign brief could cover a plan to publish blogs and other content formats, create digital advertising assets, produce video content, plan social media campaigns, or even create traditional offline campaign assets, or any combination of these. Once the target audience and creative messaging have been agreed, you can decide which channels should be used to distribute the message to your target audience. 

Using consumer research insights

Some of the best and most ambitious campaigns are built on ideas derived from consumer research insights. Insights about the target audience help you develop tailored marketing campaigns and help you focus your creative brief and messaging strategy.

Example: Dove

For example, when Dove conducted consumer research, the brand discovered that only 4% of women considered themselves beautiful, while 66% said that the media set unrealistic standards of beauty. So, the brand began to build campaigns that center on redefining beauty and empowering women and girls to feel good about how they look. 

By broadening the definition of ‘beauty’, it made the brand accessible to a wider audience and much more appealing. Since the campaign was launched in 2004, revenues have doubled, and the brand has a much broader customer base. 

Since then, Dove has continued to explore the theme of ‘real’ beauty. One of its more recent campaigns, the Dove Self-Esteem Project, is aimed at a younger audience. This campaign has its roots in another insight gleaned from Dove research: that by the age of 13, 85% of girls in the UK distort the way they look online using social media filters and so on. The campaign #NoDigitalDistortion highlighted this fact and encouraged young girls to feel good about themselves without using any artificial filters or enhancements. 

The brand used a range of channels for this campaign, including: 

•      TV
•      Outdoor advertising
•      Cinema
•      Social media

Dove also produced a Confidence Kit for young girls to help build their self-esteem, as well as a kit for parents and teachers.