So you’ve finally crafted your proposition, and it’s a good one.

You’re now on the last leg of finishing your agency brief. This part is easy. It’s basically giving your audience (or target market, if you want to be technical about it) very good reasons to believe you.

This comes in two parts: the reasons to believe (RTB) section, and the substantiation.

Often a cause of confusion among advertisers (and even their agencies) the  difference between the RTB and the substantiation is very simple: one is logical, while the other is often technical. If your proposition is a case you are building for your product or service, the RTB are the arguments that support your case, while the substantiation is the different form of proof why your arguments are valid.

Say, for example, you want to say that your product is the best defense against turning into a zombie.

For your RTB, you may want to include why it’s the best (i.e. unlike other products that still cause loss of brain cells, the number of people who  have managed to avoid being turned into zombies by using your product versus that of other products), that it helps prevent brains from being turned into mush, and the fact that it is both zombie and zombie-master repellent.

For your substantiation you will want to include the ingredients, the endorsements of the anti-zombie invasion researchers as well as the clinical tests that have proven it so.

Yes, it’s that easy.

If you’ve been following this series so far, by this point you will have completed your agency brief. Now all you need to do is send it to your agency. Don’t have one yet? Drop us a line, and we’ll see how we can help you with that.

If you’re like any good, sensible businessman  who’s proud of their product or service, this part of the brief should be the most fun for you.

Here’s where you get to talk about your product, to define it, and say just how wonderfully awesome it is and why.

There’s just one catch. It has to be a single idea, and you should be able to capture it in just one sentence.

Don’t worry, it’s not as hard as it sounds.

What do you want to say about your product? What’s the story, morning glory?

Is it the greatest thing since sliced bread? (Yes you can say that, we just can’t guarantee the ASC will give your ad clearance for that without substantiation.  Also, it’s been done so often, you may want to rethink.)

What is your product?  Define it in the best way you can. Is it the next best thing to sunlight? Is it the lawnmower of razors? Is it the Kobe Bryant of vacuum cleaners?

What does it do better than the rest?

Many agencies (including ours) call this part of the brief “the proposition.”  It’s the one single message you want to convey to your audience, but distilled in only one, concise, clear sentence that will both define your product and what you want it to stand for in the minds of your consumer.

Here’s the good news. Crafting the proposition isn’t just your job– it’s also your agency’s. In the ideal scenario we’ll sit with you and craft that one sentence that captures everything you want to say in your communications.

Yes, it can be done.

Call us and we’ll show you just how.

In most briefs to the agency, there will often be a segment where product differentiation is discussed. Simple marketing dictates that you will need to differentiate your product from your competitors. Finding it is the key.

Here’s the bad news: in this day and age of fierce competition and parity products, chances are, you will have trouble filling in that blank, especially since the USP (unique selling point) has been dead since perhaps the seventies.

Here’s the good news: your customer or potential customer can and will probably find one for you anyway.   If there is something that will set apart your product from the rest, or better yet, make it seem like the better the deal, the more advanced formula, the better, faster, bigger or  more effective product, your target  market/customer  will be able to see it.

And even more good news, it’s better that way. Many advertisers have tried time and again to dictate the consumer perception of their product. Some succeed, but many more fail– and for the obvious reasons. They’re too close to the product, and too stuck in what they think of the product.

So here’s a piece of advice. Do a bit of research: test perceptions. If you have the budget, go get the works from a research agency of you can. If you don’t, you can perhaps do a backyard study from among objective and disinterested parties. (No, gathering all the secretaries and messengers from your company does not count.  Well, okay, it does, but that may not be as dependable as, say, people you are not related to or are being paid by you.)

Don’t skip this, and chances are, you’ll get your communications off to a running start. Need help doing that? We’re right here.

What does your customer think about your product? Or about your competition? Or about the situation where they need your product? Do they even think they need it?  Even the fact that they do not think about these things at all  is relevant.

Knowing the answer to these questions – what others often (but mistakenly) call ‘ the insight”– more about that some other time –  is another key to giving your advertising what it needs to make an impact.  Making your customers receptive to your message requires knowing how they think – it is what makes your pitch to them relevant and meaningful.  More importantly, it provides the jumping-off point from where to launch your sales message.

If you’re selling laundry detergent, what do they think  about laundry? What do they think laundry detergents are like? What do they like, and what do they hate?

Your answers to all these questions is your key to making what you’re selling more attractive to your customer.

Just a quick note, however: All these answers will not necessarily appear in your advertising brief. Which one to pick? That depends on which one your product answers.  Need a little help with this? Email us at info@prodigyads.com

Advertising is often defined as a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some form of action in connection with a.) product or brand. Defining this audience, the one you are gearing your advertising towards, is another step in making it more effective.

The importance of the target market can be seen by the fact that it appears on top of the advertising brief, right after the objective.  Unfortunately, often, what is written there are just generic descriptions of socioeconomic classes, gender and age groups, and perhaps, a descriptor or two. While that is not necessarily wrong, it is, at best incomplete.

Consider the following:

TARGET MARKET: AB, Upper C females, housewives 24-48

Or

TARGET MARKET:  Lower C and DE youth, 18-35

What does that tell you about your audience? Whom, exactly, are you talking to?

And do you really want to be talking to a class, when people are so much easier to talk to?

It is said that for advertising to be effective, it needs to be specific, and as your advertising agency will tell you, “more targeted.”  It’s simple, unless you know just who it is you’re talking to, chances are, your communications will end up irrelevant to them,, and the chances of connecting drops to almost zero.

Knowing more about your market informs the communications: in content, language, tone and more. As yourself these questions, for instance: Your target housewife, what kind of housewife is she? Your student, what are their interests?

There are many different ways to narrow down the scope and define the market by segmenting it using various aspects such as geography (location), psychography, (attitudes and values), life stage,  behavior (usage of product, degree of loyalty) and more.

So. Who is it you want to talk to?  If you can figure that out, let’s talk.

So, why do you want to advertise?

Did you improve your product or service? Did you get an award?

Is your competition coming up with a product or service that you’ve had for so long, but didn’t advertise?

Is there something in the news about one of the ingredients in your product, or an incident involving your service? Are you celebrating an anniversary of sorts?

Tell us all about it.

After all, it’s your story.

You’ll have to tell us first.

Want to tell us all about your company, your products, services and their stories? We might be able to help you tell those stories better.

Contact us at info@prodigyads.com and see how we can help.

It’s basic, but something that keeps falling through the cracks when clients and their accounts people create the agency brief: the objective. Sure, that box is often filled in different ways ranging from the obvious (to create a tri-media campaign) to the more obvious (to advertise xxxxx product) to the even more obvious (to sell XXXXX product) to the okay but generic (to communicate xxxx as the product/service/company of choice). Often, this happens when people directly copy paste the brilliant marketing presentation from the last corporate planning session and hand it off to agency.

What’s the advertising objective?

Every piece of work, whether it’s something you intend to do yourself or something you’re going to assign to your agency, has to have an objective. For too many people, however, coming out with a TV commercial/print ad/brochure/flyer/billboard/music video is the whole objective. Unfortunately, these are the same people who believe all you have to do is get your name and brand out there, and people will automatically fall in love with their product and buy.

So what is it?

First of all, let’s look at what it’s not.

“To sell xxxx” is a marketing objective, not an advertising objective. You can add all you want about what kind of market share you want to get out of it, how many trials and the like, it still doesn’t change it from a marketing objective to an advertising objective.

“To come out with a TV commercial” on its own is a production objective, not an advertising objective. If this is the objective you give your agency, you’re just leaving your money on the table, and you really can’t blame anyone if your product looks and feels like every other parity product out there.

“To communicate xxxx as the product of choice” is not an advertising objective, but it is, at least, a third of one.

What is the advertising objective? Put simply, what do you want to accomplish? Who do you want to talk to, what do you want to say, and how do you want to say it?

That is your objective. Think about it for a while, and we’ll go into specifics next time.

So you want to advertise your business, your brand, your product or service. You call your advertising agency, then tell them what you want.

Unless you’re really clear on what you want, chances are, it’s going to take a very long time to come up with an effective ad. Okay, scratch that, it would be very easy to come up with one ad if all you want is your name, logo and product and what your product does.

Here’s the problem. That’s not going to be very effective.

You will need to brief the agency properly. If your advertising agency knows what its doing, they  will be asking you plenty of questions about the ad you want. You will need to be prepared to answer those questions if you want to get the most out of your money.

Here are some of the questions:

Why do you want an ad? (Yes, that’s a relevant question. We’ll accept “because I want one” as an answer if that’s all you’ve got, but it might not be as helpful as a better answer.

Just an ad? Or a campaign?

If it’s a campaign, single medium or multi-media?

Who are we talking to?

What do you want to say?

How do you want to say it?

How much do you want to spend?

And more.

All the answers to these questions are important. Now, if time is of the essence, and you do not want to be playing telephone tag with your agency, scheduling meetings, answering the same questions all over, there’s one document that you will need to be familiar with.

We call it the advertising brief. It’s the same meeting, with the same questions and the answers to those questions, but condensed on a piece of paper.

More importantly, it’s also the document that you will need to create an effective ad, and  the same document you will be using to judge whether or not your advertising agency is doing what you are paying it to do– create effective advertising for you.

The next few posts will discuss the parts of the advertising brief and how you can use it in order to ensure effective communications for your business.

Watch out for it. If you’re in a hurry, however, drop us an email at info@prodigyads.com, and we can talk about the brief and other ways we can help.

The only time I get a creative brief that DOESN’T say 18-35 is when it’s for a very high end product, and most likely, media will be traditional. Meaning print and television. And not just television– late night news.

I’ve always found it strange, this assumption that only teens and people up to 35 years old use the internet. Or that the only thinga you can sell fifty-year olds are Viagra and Sustagen Prime.

Here are the facts, according to Nancy Shonka Padberg of MediaPost’s Engage: Boomers :

According to US statistics, people falling into the age range of 44 to 64 years old spend two hours more on the internet than teenagers.

It is a fact that 77% of all wealth in the US (and presumably, the Philippines) is held by this age group. Here are a few more facts from technology, travel and entertainment industries, according to MediaPost’s Engage: Boomers blog:

* these are the people who grew up as adopting early technology: stereos, VCRs, microwaves, cordless phones, large cellphones, videos and DVDs.
* they travel more — they have the time and resources to do so.
* this is the generation that grew up knowing good entertainment: movies, concerts, live music and hey, sports events and board games. Today, they spend more time online than any other generation, and spend more on concert and movie tickets. They also bought more Wiis than Gen X and Gen Y combined. (ouch.)

It does seem strange to assume that the early adopters of previous years would be changing their early adopting ways, and not be interested in iPods, iPhones, iPads, Kindles, Nooks, GPS, Android, and websites that fuel what have been lifelong passions and interests, yes?

So why does a quick scan of today’s advertising and media landscape say otherwise?

Here are a few more facts–Baby Boomers within the age range of 46-64 also purchase:
*74% of prescriptions drugs
*57% of over-the-counter medication
*74% of prescription drugs
*42% of online travel
*80% of luxury travel (those over 50)
*$157 billion worth of leisure travel annually
*3 out of 5 new car buyers are over 50
*8 out of 10 of US boomers own their homes
*1 out of 4 US boomers have a vacation home

What does this mean for us? Discuss.

Hugh Macleod.
He writes and draws stuff we try not to think about all the time. Check it out. Download the manifestos. Order the books.