Know-How Exchange : Strategy

A great question!

A few points/observations:

1. Distilling a lot of information for use by the creative team is really an art form. It requires not only knowing what to ask the client, but also what will be useful to the creative team. It makes sense, therefore, to involve the creative team in this exploration.

2. Most clients, in my experience, are much more in tune with their product and how it works/what it does than they are aware of consumers' needs, attitudes and perspectives. After they've disgorged themselves of all the features and benefits they deliver, I usually probe what they know about their primary target audience and it's needs -- including emotional needs and payoffs. And I play devil's advocate when they tell me about the target audience, and challenge the source of the information (research or opinion?), the definition of the target audience, and the methodology/approach to gathering the information.

3. I also spend some time probing (and setting) clients' expectations for the creative development process. How will they judge the submissions? What criteria will they use to decide if it's good/bad, on-strategy/off-strategy? What does the approval process look like?

4. Once a decision is made and the creative work has been accepted, how will the client know if it's working? Is there a feedback loop of some kind so we can improve next time, or is this just a one-off, take-your-best-shot situation? (This is a great way to get the client thinking about a long-term relationship and measuring the effectiveness objectively.)

Hope this helps.


P.S. We actually offer to prepare Creative Briefs for clients, and we charge for the service. (We are consultants, not a creative shop.) Invariably they find the whole exercise/process valuable and worth the fee. There is something of an art to preparing a good Creative Brief. We've even had some agencies and designers hire us to do this, and pass the cost on to their clients.