After reading the comments on a Propagation Planning post found on Made By Many I thought it might be good to sit down and think about a brief that propagation planners can use to begin their thought process. Briefs are helpful in reminding us what questions need to be asked but they must also be flexible to include new questions if it helps the creative process.
Here is the brief that I came up with. I'm hoping that you will challenge these questions or the flow so together we might move beyond the 'draft' stage and into the agreed upon brief.
Propagation Brief (Draft)
Who is the target audience?
The audience that the client needs to reach to meet their business objectives. Is there a certain action that this audience needs to act on to reach these goals.
This group of people might be more likely to engage with the creative assets or act on the creative to influence the real target audience.
This should focus on communication vehicles. Could include things like in person, phone, email, web chat, Facebook, Twitter, World or Warcraft, etc.
List the creative assets that exist and ask yourself if new things need to be made to help communicate the role of the assets. For example, a YouTube video that demonstrates how to use the asset. Perhaps you need to think about a pre-story to the real story that you want to tell.
Is the creative designed to entertain, act as a branded utility, to challenge, to spawn user generated content, etc.
This is a timing question that reminds us to use Owned, Earned and Paid media appropriately.
Sometimes it is hard to set goals when using word of mouth campaigns and different platforms have different metrics. The key here is to describe which things you will be following to report on.
Interesting brief. The section I think is the key to the whole thing is the question of how the creative fosters a social experience. But the brief assumes we have a piece of creative rather than offering an insight as to how to create a social piece of creative. Maybe if we ask the question: "why would someone want to pass something like this to their friends" we can gain insights into this audience and what particularly causes them to share.
Posted by: Mark | 04/13/2010 at 12:30 PM
Great comments Mark. I will add that line to the next iteration of this brief.
I think the creative brief still has a lot value in helping us formulate what the creative idea is? The best engagement or propagation plans seem to be formed after the big idea is complete. However I can see value in redefining the audience through this process so perhaps their is a pre-idea and post-idea way of looking at this?
By the way congratulations on your recent move to Redscout.
Posted by: Griffin | 04/13/2010 at 05:36 PM
I think something very simple might have been overlooked that ties into the bit on metrics, and the social experience. You know from my post on Made By Many that I'm in a mental battle with myself about the what social is all about/has the potential to be.
That said, I think what might be missing is a very clear outline/question of what the goal is. Is it to create good will for the brand/product? Are there specific sales figures/conversions/etc. that need to be hit? Is it to enhance your CRM efforts? Or is it simply to raise awareness?
The reason I think it's important to ask that question, despite how rudimentary it might be, is because it'll guide what kind of tools and strategies you deploy. For instance, a client who is not very concerned about building up social credit and is more focused on acquisition numbers may lean towards Facebook activation, or something more tactical in nature. Whereas, something along the lines of building awareness and branding has more latitude for creating "social experiences" as I said on Made By Many. And then of course there's "to create dialogue", which brings up the point I was making before, about conversations for the sake of conversations.
Posted by: Amadeo Plaza | 04/13/2010 at 06:00 PM
I had the same nagging thought. Why do they come together/connect? What purpose are they trying to serve for one another? How might that mission or goal be served by a sponsored platform or a set of useful tools or both.
Posted by: @scotRcrawford | 04/13/2010 at 08:40 PM
Griffin - I don't think the best engagement or propagation plans are formed after the big idea is complete - in fact I think they shouldn't be. They should be formed in parallel with the very creation of the strategy and creative, as otherwise we risk the propagation bit being an add-on, tacked on as an afterthought - and believe me, the audience is smart enough to know when something isn't embedded into the very psyche of the strategy.
As some people have said here, and you too :), the audience needs to be kept at the forefront at all times - why will they find this interesting, how will they pass it on to their friends, what can we do to make that process simpler, how can we keep them coming back for more (maybe give them tools to personalise the campaign, create unique creative on their own like Elf Yourself, maybe give them the opportunity to be part of something larger than themselves like a crowdsourced video and so on).
And as Amadeo said, the metrics. Should there be metrics? Personally I don't think you can put a value on engaging with the audience, but clients need something better than that and we work for clients - so yes we need metrics. Are there any benchmarks? Can we build a rough benchmark guide? You know, budget $50000, target audience to reach XYZ and so on. I think something like that would be useful, at least initially. Maybe we also need to put down the key goals and then benchmark success metrics against those, as Amadeo and @scotrcrawford said above.
Hope all this makes sense...
Posted by: Anjali Ramachandran | 04/14/2010 at 04:44 AM
@Mark Maybe "Why would someone want to pass something like this to their friends?" goes after "How does the creative foster a social experience?" It could act as substantiation for the former. Thoughts?
Posted by: Kenjisummers | 04/15/2010 at 03:27 AM
Hey Griffin and all. I am hugely excited by this brief. Its very refreshing - big props!
Some thoughts: As per Anjali's comment, absolutely right in my opinion, the creative should come as a response to the brief rather than lead it. Often is the case where you have to work with the creative assets to hand but ideally, the strategy should lead the creative/media direction with a propagation strategy not the other way round. So "how creative fosters social experience" is not necessarily a question in the brief but a response to it.
KenjiSummers - I think the danger with asking "why should someone want to pass this to their friends?" is the express mention of "want" and "friends" - I don't think people always want to share things with their friends, it may even be a case of them deliberately not. Likewise we may not be persuaded by our friends but by our boss/parents/celebrity depending on the demographic we're talking to. Perhaps the question could be "What is remarkable about [brand/product/service]?"
Whilst I advocate wom, I still believe there's a place for media to optimise it (especially for mass awareness campaigns) and again I don't think its a matter of timing one before the other - media could be used to galvanise earned media for example, it really depends on the nature of the brief. So perhaps to start, there should be: "Communication Objectives"?
Target audience: I think we should be open to engaging with more than one audience especially given the nature of these relationships and how they connect with one another. i.e. Aspirational vs Inspirational.
Metrics are a tough one and really depend on the communication objective. Are we driving awareness or acquisition? Do we use brand tracking or direct response? At The Population we created our own metrics for measuring propagation which not only took in to account impressions, reach and interaction but also very importantly, sentiment. What represents quality engagement is something to think about. Frankly - being a new space - its hard to define measurements and benchmarks. In retail focused campaigns, clients want cost per acquisition and word of mouth should deliver on that. How - is another question but should probably come as a response to the brief rather than lead it.
Well there's my 5 cents worth. I'd be very interested to know your thoughts?
Posted by: Jessicabrookes | 04/21/2010 at 08:17 AM
Thanks for all the great feedback. I posted the revised Propagation Planning brief here:
http://griffinfarley.typepad.com/propagation/2010/05/revised-propagation-planning-brief.html
Posted by: Griffin | 05/03/2010 at 09:50 AM
I am a big fan of postsecret.com. I agree with the fact that it gives people an outlet to express their feelings without backlash. Alot of people can relate to the problems on the site. It's really awesome that the creators of the site help the users with their problems.
Posted by: mens health | 11/10/2010 at 02:49 PM
Objectives, what behaviours are we trying to change or encourage???
What action is teh target to take?
I think metrics based around impressions, reach , sentiments etc are all nice to have but we can build awareness - loyalty after we have actions.
That is where any brief should start
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