15 March 2012

So what exactly makes a good brief?

Two of our Directors, Ian Boardman and Ben Leeves, were recently invited by the Institute of Fundraising to talk about just that. When it comes to getting donors to leave something to a charity in their will, a marketing campaign can make all the difference.

So, Ian and Ben ran a workshop at the RNIB for charity folk about how to write a good brief to help them get the best from their creative agency. Here, we offer you the essentials of their talk.

Value of a good brief

Make sure you answer these five questions:

1. Do you have a written brief?
   Make sure the brief becomes a common point of reference to keep everyone on track.
2. What do you want to say?
   Define the message you want to get across, such as reasons to give.
3. Who do you want to say it to?
   Be specific about your audience demographic - for legacy campaigns are you targetting Dorothy Donor, Baby Boomer or both?
4. Why do you want to say it?
   Establish your objective and define how you'll measure success.
5. How, where and when?
   Is it a digital campaign? National? When's the launch date?

Okay, that's more than five questions. But we hope you get the point. You can download our briefing template here. If you want more information, read their presentation document:

Our campaigns

We've created legacy marketing campaigns for some of our charity clients:

• See what we did for Scope
• Look at our work for British Red Cross