Strategic Design | marketing & branding thoughts by Nick Rice

I don't know how many times I've seen the "Audience" section of a creative/project brief filled in with simply "purchasing directors" or "executives" or worse "customers". While this may be accurate at the most basic level, it is far from enough information to base marketing/design choices on.

Much like the last post on creative briefs, the Audience section is more about why this project is important to the audience, not just their title. You should include demographics, psychographics, business concerns, and any other market research data you have available on this targeted segment of your audience. The more detailed the better.

Your message will be ignored if your message is not tailored to what your audience wants and/or needs to hear. Today's consumers are too busy to take time to figure out how a particular product or service helps them.

Your marketing collateral needs to be:

• easily understood
  
• to the point
  
• laden with customer benefits
• easy to act upon the call-to-action
  

Don't talk about you; talk about how your product will make their life easier, save them money, or make them a superstar. Put yourself your customer's shoes. Figure out how they want to be communicated with (medium), figure out how often (frequency), and figure out what they need to hear in order to take immediate action (differentiated & benefit-focused message).

In order for your design team/agency to build effective collateral like above, your marketing staff needs to be able to clearly articulate more about the audience than their business title.