GUEST POST: Kindi Lantz, Funnelbox

All Hail the Creative Brief.

Unless you work in marketing or at a creative agency or design shop, the idea of using a creative brief may be foreign to you. Great video content starts with insightful strategic objectives that are neatly summed up in a creative brief for video marketing, or as we call ours, the creative blueprint. Blueprint seems fitting because for us, it’s all about envisioning the goal before we roll.

Creative briefs come in many forms, and they need to in order to accommodate the variety of creative projects different companies undertake. For our purpose here, we want to explore what goes into a brilliant creative brief for video marketing and how to develop a document that has the power to unlock the creative greatness that lies within.

First, seek insights. Your customer research and the key data points derived from it are a critical component in guiding your video marketing strategy. “Walking a mile in your customer’s shoes” will help you better understand their real needs and desires. Insights borne from hard work that street teams do, surveys and focus groups reveal, and qualitative research uncovers, will ultimately move the needle for companies. First, though, a process is needed to gather and use such information.

Once you discover and document relevant insights into your customer’s journey, you’re ready to detail it in your creative brief for video.

The brief is a series of questions, followed by revealing answers. When faced with the question, “What problem can video marketing solve?” focus on your business objectives. If sales are flat and the objective is to boost sales and revenue during the crucial fourth quarter, a brand video probably isn’t the solution. It’s critical for the particular video type to directly correspond to the goal.

The drafting of a creative brief for video is usually accomplished by the marketing director, strategist, agency, or production house. The marketing director at the client company has the greatest understanding of the company’s offering, audience, brand voice, current objectives, and so on. The down side of all this inside knowledge is marketing directors may be too close to the action to see the problem objectively. A strategist from outside the organization can provide value by tapping the depth of knowledge on the client team and then filtering it through a strategic sieve.

Now, as I mentioned, every creative brief for video (and any other creative project) will differ. Still, I want to give you a head start. Check out our FunnelBrief — the questions we make sure we have answered before beginning any projects.

Kindi Lantz is Head of Marketing at Funnelbox, a video production and marketing agency in Portland, Oregon that helps businesses strategize, create, distribute, and optimize video content at every stage of the funnel. Her specialties lie in content marketing, video analytics, and copywriting. She is a storyteller and produces high-impact content with a data-driven approach that fuels inbound marketing.