PSFK: A Creative Brief To Guide Social Media Efforts

We were inspired by Griffin Farley’s collaborative brief to help planners (and the brands they work with) arrive at strategic social media efforts. Some of the questions that Farley and his collaborators propose be asked prior to developing and activating their social media strategy include:

* What are the campaign goals and/or communication tasks? A very clear outline of communication tasks, and how they will be measured. This could include CRM, conversions, sales goals, awareness or good will for the brand/product.
* What is remarkable about the Brand, Product or Service?
* Who is the target audience? Which audience will actually deliver on the brand’s business objectives? What is the desired action? Think of this audience as your aspirational audience.
* Is there another group of people that has more persuasion over the target audience? 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. Think of this audience as your inspirational audience.
* How does the creative foster a social experience? Is the creative designed to entertain, or to act as a branded utility? To challenge participants to submit and share responses? To spawn user generated content, etc.
* Why would someone want to pass something like this to others? This is an area to reference social theories (i.e. custom or personalized, gift economy, peer production, random acts of kindness, pay it forward, etc.) to inform why this creative might be shared and passed along among friends.
* What are the existing creative assets (if any)? List the creative assets that already exist, and allow room for them to be used in new ways. Do new assets need to be created to help extend the narrative?
* How long do we have before the paid media begins? This is a timing question that references how to use Owned, Earned and Paid media appropriately.
* What are the benchmarks and metrics will we be following? Are there platforms the client feels are most important to measure success (acquisitions, Facebook or Twitter followers, video views, etc.)? If not, identify the metrics that you will follow including impressions, reach, interaction and most importantly sentiment.

Propagation Planning: “Revised Propagation Planning Brief”
PSFK