Here’s a great tool I’ve been using since I first started in this business.  It’s a discipline I’ve adhered to to make sure we keep all the pieces in the marketing mix aligned, on strategy, and focused on end user benefits and call to action.

Creative Brief

Key Fact:

What one aspect of the product, competition, marketplace, economy or consumer behavior offers the greatest point of leverage for communication?
• What is the big opportunity or biggest obstacle for the Brand?
• What’s going on today that you’d like to change…your business, retailer’s business, customer behavior?
• Can communication do something about it?

Primary Marketing Problem
What may keep the prospect from buying, thinking, doing what you would like?
• What is going on in their mind?
• Does this statement explain the problem that might keep prospects from buying, doing, using, thinking what you wish they would?
• Is it closely related to the key fact?

Communications Objective:

What will each communications discipline do specifically to overcome the consumer problem and what do you expect the prospect to do as a result?
• Is the objective realistic?
• Is this something communications can do alone?
• What role do sales, manufacturing, distribution etc., have to bring in to support achievement of the objective?

Target Market:
Who are our best prospects?

Describe and precisely define them in terms of:
• Demographics
• Psychographics
• Behavior

Primary Competition

More than a list of brands, a definition of the market segment that will be the source of business.

• What the prospect will be buying/thinking/doing if they don’t buy you? (May not be a brand, could be habits, ignorance, attitudes, inertia)

Promise:
Not what the product is, but what the end benefit of using the product is.
(What it does/What the end user will get)
The promise has two components
   Consumer Benefit Functional
The functional benefit is the tangible, functional, logical outcome of                        choosing and using the brand.

    Consumer Benefit Emotional
    The emotional benefit is the ability of a brand to make a user feel something.

Desired Action

What specific action do you want the target to take?

Is it measurable?

Look and Feel

What personality will the communication have?

Define the Brand via color palette, type face, tone and manner

Mandatories

What information must be included.