The brief is one of the most common documents that event agencies encounter. It would seem that there is no magic in this, everything is clear. But this is not entirely true. We can say that this is not true at all. A formal brief before the tender contains a minimum of information - the goals of the project, the essence of the assignment for the agency, dates. But if the brief is dry and formal, this is also information. Most likely, this is information that you are not welcome in this project. But the world of marketing is a set of encrypted messages that we want to convey. The only question is whether those to whom we send messages know the code. and advertising will inspire the consumer, make him a fan, because he feels that the company understood him and his values and found answers to important questions for him. Also, advertising will leave another consumer indifferent, because he is not interested, he did not understand anything, he was just annoyed. The same goes for the brief for organizing the event. Some agencies will understand the problem, show off their creativity and find an elegant solution for the customer. Others will not understand and will offer something standard and inappropriate.
BRIEF - ENCRYPTED LOVE MESSAGE
Any brief is an encrypted message from the Customer to a certain Agency. Like a story of love and secret correspondence. The only question is whether you were given decoding clues or not. And if they didn’t give it, then why? There may already be a “leader” who knows the task well. Or maybe everyone is equal, and let the strongest, the smartest and the freest win.
IDEAL BRIEF
It happens, although rarely, that we receive an “Ideal Brief”. We are looking forward to it, because it is a great pleasure to work with real professionals. An ideal brief includes: a short description, summary and dates, brand platform, its values and massages, product and description of the target audience, comparison with competitors, earlier implementation experience, project description, KPI, agency objectives, format and budget, timing of the tender itself. What can the agency do in response? Conduct research, find insight, create creativity and calculate the correct estimate. Like the perfect date, right?
REASONS TO SAY “NO” OR “SLAG IN THE FURNACE.”
But the event brief is not always ideal. Sometimes, after reading the brief, the agency says “no,” because they deciphered the brief and read that there is no need to work. Here are examples and what the agency deciphers.- Projects with a budget of up to X million rubles “This means”: so much time and resources will be spent on the project (and tender) that the company will not make a profit. For example, profits from projects with budgets up to 5 million do not cover the expenses of a large agency. And for the average, this threshold can be 1.5-2 million.- Company representatives refuse to hold a personal meeting. “This means”: you’ve already met who you need, your favorite has been determined. And there are too many other participants to waste energy on everyone, it’s a pity for time. Either the customer company does not want to receive a well-developed proposal from you, and therefore does not consider it necessary to invest time in communication.- The tender is conducted by an anonymous company (i.e. it is not disclosed for whom they are asking to prepare the event) “This means”: everything is not completely resolved. The company is afraid of ruining its reputation by canceling the event. Therefore, he hides himself to simply test the market to make a decision. You are being asked to invest time and money in developing a tender for which there are no guarantees. Or, the company has a very bad reputation, everyone knows that they cannot work with it and they are trying to get at least something from the uninformed part of the market.- If it takes 2-3 days or less to prepare an offer “This means”: we don’t know how to plan our time, our work, so we’ll force you to work on the weekends. And throughout the entire project you will cover up our incompetence with your work. We don’t consider the project important, we forgot about it, but then we remembered it.Companies whose names don’t tell us anything are companies that are not brands. “This means”: we have not become a brand, which means our reputation means nothing. We can behave with contractors as we want, no one will know anything anyway, we are almost anonymous. And since we are not a brand, we don’t have a lot of money.
RESULTS OF A GOOD BRIEF
Any restrictions are a source of creativity. You can’t be creative in absolute emptiness, you need to start from something. The more accurately the task is described, the more successful the creative will be. This applies to events and digital projects. Creative based on a good brief is radically better - more accurate and interesting - than creative based on a vague brief. Would you like to send a brief to Eventum Premo? Here is the form for our brief - -https://disk.yandex.ru/i/Fug27cEY9GCYmg
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This romantic essay was written by Eventum Premo, one of the founders of REMA - Russian Event Marketing Association. REMA unites the largest event agencies in Russia with the goal of developing a civilized market for marketing events.
