Application Exercise

Advertising professionals often make creative briefs to help guide advertising campaigns and make sure that all advertising team members are working together so that resources are not wasted. Suppose you are an advertising executive hired by TBSL. Make a creative brief for your client:

Background: Write a paragraph explaining the background of the company. (This paragraph would be shared with the client to assure that your perceptions and the client's perceptions are the same.)

Describe the target audience or audiences.

Based on the target audience, what's the campaign objectives? Look at the hierarchy of effects model presented in this chapter for a little guidance on how this would work.

What key benefits will be promoted by the campaign? Importantly, the campaign does not have to promote all key benefits. Pick one you believe will resonate soundly with the target audience.

Develop a creative theme for the campaign. What one thing should audiences take away from exposure to the advertising creative? Creative themes are frequently tag lines or slogans. Write a tag line or slogan for your campaign. The slogan can guide the messaging in your campaign on digital media, social media, and on mass media.

Using the section on creativity in advertising in this chapter, select an execution style for your campaign. How will the creative theme actually take form? If you do not believe TV mass media advertising is advisable for TBSL, that's fine. Execution strategies apply to any media, traditional or not.