- [Narrator] Using a well-defined creative brief
is all about moving past the surface information,
available to anyone and diving deep
into the psyche of a client.
You're after the emotional and intuitive essence
of your client's business product or service.
Now that may sound intimidating,
but it can be greatly simplified by spending
the necessary time to carefully craft questions
that will elicit a more in-depth understanding
of who your client is
and how they think about their business.
A creative brief can be used for a new business,
or it may be a business that has been around for awhile
and now needs to rebrand itself.
Your questions should force your client to view themselves
from an uncomfortable position
and help them to see their company
from their audience's point of view, et cetera.
The whole point of the creative brief
is to reveal unexpected information
that in turn will give you insights needed
to creatively solve the problem.
Let me walk you through questions.
I asked to my creative brief
and how the two clients
I'll be creating logos for, answered them.
The initial first question that I ask is,
your business identity.
What is your current company product or service name?
What is your business product or service?
Do you have or want a slogan or tagline?
We will use this information to create a logo type portion
of your new identity.
The two businesses we're covering in this course
is Elevated Culture, a lifestyle brand
and Cascade Lakes Soda company.
We'll just refer to them as Cascade Lakes as we go through.
So this was the first question.
The second question on my creative brief
is brand naming, an excellent way to build brand equity
and value is to establish a well-defined brand name.
If you plan to sell your business in the future,
considered a custom brand named development
now as part of your new identity,
because your name alone can build value
as your business grows.
Now, most clients have no need for this, for the most part,
but those that do this is the time you want to do it.
When you're going to rebrand to change that,
in this case, the two clients here Elevated Culture,
they're a new startup.
So their brand name is firmly established.
Cascade Lakes had been around for approximately
I believe it was 15 years.
So they considered a name change,
but ultimately kept the same brand name they've had before.
The third question, who are you?
Someone approaches you and asks what you do?
Or what is your business?
How would you explain in layman terms,
your mission statement?
So this is a good example of having them speak forward
about who they are as if somebody asked them
and it can give you some insights.
So Elevated Culture,
we are a lifestyle brand for African American culture.
Cascade Lakes,
we specialize in bringing a diverse range
of high quality soda products to our customers.
We are a catalyst for community and adventure.
We maintain an artist's commitment to our customer's
experience through integrity, quality,
continuous improvement, and giving back to our community.
The first one I think is basically
what you would really say to somebody.
The second one kind of feels like it was copy and pasted
from a marketing document to be frank.
Question number four.
Your objectives.
Where do you want to go with your business?
How would you like to see your business grow?
What are your short-term goals after launching?
Elevated Culture,
we want to be an authentic African American lifestyle brand
that applies wisdom, strength,
and perseverance to elevate culture.
Cascade Lakes,
we seek to revitalize our aging soda brand to increase
our sales locally and in the states we distribute.
So we want an image that will better connect with our base.
Both of these are legit
and both of these give me good objectives
from their point of view.
Question number five.
Desired results and visions.
How would you like your business to be perceived
by those experience in it daily?
Elevated Culture,
help facilitate ingenious, resourceful commodities.
Cascade Lakes,
we want to add a missing cool factor
and give people a reason to try or retry our products.
This, I found a little interesting.
It kind of smacks of desperation of sorts,
and that gave me some insights.
At this point in time,
I hadn't met with the client that was coming up shortly
when I was working on this project.
So let's take a look at the next question.
Question number six.
Target audience.
Who is your market?
Your primary demographic focus?
How do you see your business engaging with them?
Elevated Culture,
African American influencers ages 21 to 40.
Cascade Lakes,
generally adults 18 to 91.
I'm not making this up.
This was the actual information they gave me.
And as Glen, that's not a general demographic.
That's everybody. (laughs)
So we're getting some red flags here.
So I'm going to have to clarify some of these things.
When I meet them in person,
let's take a look at question number seven, competition.
Who is your primary national or local competition?
Who is the equivalent entity in your area of business
directly or indirectly?
How is your company different from them?
Elevated Culture,
no one, because most companies lack vision
and understanding of our culture.
So they rely on nearsighted attempts
to capitalize on trends.
I thought this was very insightful from Omar
in terms of looking at his potential new business,
in the context of where it falls with others.
That was great insight.
This is the type of information I want to elicit
with these type of questions.
Cascade Lakes.
We have at least six equivalent businesses
in central Oregon.
They have a lot of competition.
We need to keep that in mind.
Question number eight.
Success criteria.
Define how you will judge is successful project?
This tends to be more about expectations.
Elevated Culture,
since our branding will be featured prominently
on our merchandise and products,
we hope it helps to drive awareness of our brand
and bring those passionate about our culture together.
I like that.
Cascade Lakes,
our personalities should be cool.
"Our sodas cool."
The experience we convey is one of fun whimsy,
and just what the doctor ordered.
We'd like sales to increase to recoup our investment.
Now, after I read that this is kind of all over the map
in terms of their personality.
It's not really hyper-focused
and purpose driven in my opinion.
And I think there's some unrealistic expectations
as to what is a rebranding or in this case specifically,
a logo design going to do to help increase sales.
I think that's a little unrealistic
in terms of an expectation.
We're going to dive into that in another movie
to go into specifically what else logo won't do.
But this brings up a good point.
If you look at this business,
this was a business here locally,
a fitness center called Epic Fitness.
I designed the icons down below to be used
within their marketing
and the guy who ran the facility,
mentioned to me after they had taken the brand
and started moving forward with it,
that he's having a hard time filling the gym.
And so my logical question, that was,
well, what kind of marketing are you doing?
And he's saying, "well, I'm posting on social media".
I go, "well, that's good".
But like,
what specifically are you doing to target your audience?
And he's going "well, nothing".
And I go, (laughs) I kind of, well, there you go.
I go,
it's not that the brand logo I designed for you can't work.
You're just not using it the right way.
Specifically, your messaging
needs to be hitting your demographic.
So I put together a simple three panel
tri-fold brochure that explains their services
so that somebody who does visit
can take this back with them
and see everything else they provide as well.
But more importantly,
they had to hit their demographic locally.
And one of the best ways to do that
is with postcard direct mail.
Keep this in mind.
I should point out a successful direct mail campaign
reaches 3% of those who you send a postcard to,
that's considered good.
So I develop postcards that give that message,
the public needs to hear from the audience's point of view.
You know, you could do it on your own,
but you won't let Epic Fitness help you
get in shape for summer.
So this was one of the quarterly postcards we sent out.
Here's another one, life isn't always funny.
Let Epic Fitness help you get in shape for summer.
This is all it takes to improve marketing,
to drive traffic and to reinforce who you are
through the identity as you see here.
Question number nine.
Brand voice.
What do you want your identity to say about you?
How would you like to see people react to it?
What personality should your brand have?
This is important.
Elevated Culture,
our journey is yours because we walk in the same shoes.
I loved the thinking behind this.
It is so rich and meaningful.
Omar is dialed in.
He has it figured out,
and this is exactly what you want to do
when you have a brand voice,
it's a vision, it's seeing the future,
where you want to go and locking into that.
Cascade Lakes:
We want a clean design and one that we can manipulate
for use on future labeling will be critical.
Not exactly a brand voice.
I think he has a little confusion
on what our brand voice is.
So that's another point of information
I need to lock in with them to make sure
we're getting the information we need
to deliver on target for who they are.
Question number 10.
Aesthetic tolerance.
Do you have the capability to accept a design direction
appropriate for your company product service
or target audience that you might not personally?
Your aesthetic preferences might not be the best fit
for the audience you're trying to reach.
That said we strive to create universally pleasing motifs.
This is important.
I've seen too many people get locked into their own
personal tastes and opinions when it comes to design,
that really don't align with their audience.
Elevated Culture said,
we want something symbolic and progressive.
Go for it.
Thank you, Omar.
I agree with that.
We can do that.
Cascade Lakes, probably not.
As shareholders we're part of the target demographic
and if it's not exciting to us,
we don't think it would be exciting to others.
That's fair.
But I locked in on the word, shareholders.
Shareholders don't own a company.
They own an investment in a company.
So is this a group of shareholders
that are going to be making the final decision?
I'm not completely sure,
but I need to try to clarify that.
Question number 11.
Color preferences.
If this is a rebrand, you have an established brand colors.
If so, can you provide Pantone callouts for him?
If not, what is your favorite and least favorite color?
Explain why?
When we rebrand,
we audit existing colors and may recommend shifts
to facilitate better communication and clarity.
Elevated Culture provided in his mood board.
Some of the colors that affected him.
And you're going to see that in the upcoming movie.
Cascade Lakes, no pre-established color basis.
So these are wide open.
We can move forward.
Question 12.
Gauging your perception.
Name a brand logo you like and explain why,
what is the brand logo most people like
that you don't like or care for in respect
to its look and feel?
Elevated Culture,
love Air Jordan and loathe Lawry's Food logo.
You're going to have to Google that one.
I wasn't familiar with that one myself.
Cascade Lakes,
I hate to punt on this question,
but there are too many good designs out there
to call one out.
This was a little concerning to me
because I'm not asking for you to call out
the one and only logo out of everything.
Just name a brand logo you like can explain why.
And I didn't get any of that provided.
So once again,
we're going to have to clarify some of this
with them in person and follow up on that.
Question 13.
Identifying problem areas.
This is problem areas
from the client's point of view regarding their business.
What is the most common misperception people have
regarding your business product service or industry?
Elevated Culture,
we are just another sportswear line.
I can understand that being a lifestyle brand,
they're going to be doing clothing
and sportswear and products.
Cascade Lakes,
the locals who think we make mediocre product
so our business isn't super popular.
This also points to a problem and the expectations
on what's going to solve it
because frankly, a logo's not going to change
a mediocre product.
It's just a graphic.
So there's a deeper issue there.
We'll definitely have to discuss this.
But for example,
when it comes to a logo
here's Google's logo type circuit, 2002.
This is when it was horrible.
Was their business horrible?
No, their logo was bad,
but they were still making billions of dollars.
So a logo doesn't necessarily mean you're going to profit
from having a good logo or in this case,
you're not going to suffer
because your logo's not too great.
They've since changed their logo and improved it.
And they're still making billions of dollars.
So a logo is part of an equation,
but it doesn't tell the full story nor does it fix
every single problem a company may have.
Once again,
we'll cover that in a little more detail
in an upcoming movie.
Question 14.
Brand equity.
Where would you like to be in 10 years?
This is dreaming.
Elevated Culture,
to grow and develop our lifestyle brand
and either become the next Daymond John,
or get them as a partner on Shark Tank.
I love this response.
This shows just the attitude and focus that Omar has.
And by the way, this is Omar.
He's an entrepreneur and he has it all dialed in.
And I look forward to working with them, moving forward.
Question 14, still from Cascade Lakes, point of view,
we'd like to have a robust sales channel
through distribution and local sales.
Earn a high rate of return on our investments
and have a business as desirable
for possible acquisition or sale to employees.
This is definitely the future.
I just hope he doesn't think a logo,
a flown is going to do this.
We'll clarify.
Question 15.
Keywords.
Provide five or more keywords
that would best describe your business product
or service personality.
Elevate Culture: Wisdom, strength,
perseverance, authentic, bold.
Cascade Lakes,
quality, community, fun, Cool, success.
Question number 16.
Additional input.
Now is your opportunity to be part
of the creative direction.
Feel free to share any other you think are essential
that we should consider as we begin the creative process.
If you have any visuals that clarify your answer
to any of the above questions,
please include those within the email
containing your completed brief or embed the images
in the document you return.
Elevated Culture, provided by the client.
So they sent us this information.
Cascade Lakes.
They were slow to send us this type of information.
So I had to require this in order to properly gauge
their perception on what aligned
with their vision and aesthetic.
After first contact with the client,
you might discern the need for adding additional questions
to a brief, to help clarify communication
and get all the information you need.
So I added question 17 to Cascade Lakes, creative brief,
because they had mentioned retaining some of the equity
of their past logo design.
I wasn't completely sure if that was needed,
but since they had mentioned that I asked this question
based off of retainment of equity.
Based on your past conversations
and any will have during the on-site visit your facility,
we will do our best to retain any equity
you have established so far
with your existing brand identity.
Other than visual cues,
what are aspects of your business
you're doing well with currently?
And Cascade Lakes responded,
we have a new soda master.
That's good.
That'll help with the quality key management
and fully functioning soda manufacturing
and food service facilities.
Those are all positive things.
We do well-just not as well as we could-on all fronts.
So this was a good followup question
that gave me a little more insight and clarity.
So that's a good thing.
Create a briefs, aren't just collecting intel from a client.
They also serve the purpose
to hold the client accountable later.
If they contradict the original information
they provided and move in a different direction.
So I encourage you to take the time
to wordsmith your own creative brief
you can use with your clients to improve communication
and help you glean insights.