In order to carry out successful media campaigns, it is essential to have a good roadmap, and that is to say that you have a good briefing. Next, we will see the steps to follow and an example. But first, what is a briefing? The briefing of a media campaign is a concise, complete and detailed informative document of the product or service that the client gives to the media or advertising agency.
At OTS Media we receive daily briefings for international media campaigns of all kinds and we know that it is the basis for a successful campaign. We, who work for agencies, giving support to their international campaigns, are the first to know that clients do not always share all the information they have with the agencies, and that is something that ultimately harms the client and also the agencies, since their success depends on the client’s success. Hence, it is important to make the client aware of the relevance of a roadmap as defined as possible in order to work well and get better results on the campaign.
Steps to follow:
- Be clear about what you want to achieve.
To begin with, we must be very clear about what we want to achieve: branding, build loyalty, get new customers or increase sales, reservations, downloads, etc. This point is key to move forward.
- Analyze your target
We have to know as much as we can about our target, who is the final consumer of our product. We must define our target as detailed as possible, with demographic, geographic, age, sex, purchasing power, social role … we must know how they think, their tastes, hobbies, how they behave and what media they consume.
- Define the strategy
What do we communicate and how do we do it? If you already know what you want to achieve and who your potential clients are, now it’s time to know, what media should be used to have the greatest possible impact.
- Select the media.
Depending on our target, we must choose between offline media (television, OOH, press, magazines, radio, etc.) and online (search engines, display, programmatic, social media, email marketing, etc.). The ideal is usually to make a mix of all these and be in the media that the target consumes.
- Define the formats.
Look for the formats that best suit the media, objectives and budget. Many times it´s important to take into account the recommendations of the media, they are the ones who know best what works.
- Markets
If it´s a national campaign, the country will be selected as the market, and if necessary, it will be classified by region, city or even neighborhood in digital campaigns. For international campaigns it will be necessary to choose which countries or cities want to be included in the plan, this is important because sometimes requests addresses continents as if they were a country and countries that seem like continents due to their territory and demographical extension, and it´s necessary to limit with cities and under other categories.
- Assign budget
The budget must be defined and we will assign each media a percentage taking into account the media consumption results of that country and the target, which will allow us to make a budget distribution in an effective way.
- Design a campaign calendar.
Decide the dates and the periodicity of the insertions. Important to take into account variables that may affect the campaign such as holidays, sales, national and local holidays, etc.
Now let’s see an example of a concise, complete and detailed briefing:
Client: Marriot (hotel chain)
– Objective: Branding, increase brand awareness in selected markets.
– Target: business travelers 35-65 AB + (50% men and 50% women). 80% of the reservations in the hotels of the client are made by users who travel for work during the week and have executive positions.
– Strategy: increase awareness and brand awareness through messages that align the client within its market segment.
– Markets: countries where the client has hotels, that is: Belgium, The Netherlands and Austria.
– Formats: digital for OOH, notary formats for online and full page for b2b media.
– Media mix: OOH, online (Display or RTB, according to the agency) and print (inflights or onboard magazines).
– Budget: € 250,000 for both Belgium and The Netherlands and € 150,000 for Austria. Total: € 650,000
– Campaign calendar: April, May and June 2018.
Keeping these aspects in mind, we only have to wait for good results.
Published by: OTS Media International