Launch an Advertising Campaign

Consumers live in a world saturated by a growing number of messages. As part of your advertising strategy, you have to be even more creative than your competitors to make your product or service stand out from this mass of information.

In Part 2 of this course, you will discover how to prepare a creative brief and media plan. We will also discuss the advertising message, using the advertising slogan, and the baseline. We'll get to work and create an actual campaign for Bio Boost!

Because you will be working with different outside teams, you want your ad campaign's specifications to be clear. We've called this the campaign strategy brief, but it can have several names.

This document defines the communication objectives and the message elements that all teams should communicate to the target audience.

You can use it as a reference document between you and the advertising agency.

Write Out Your Campaign Strategy in a Brief

This strategy is structured around customer benefits and highlights the brand's assets that you want to emphasize. This document enables you to express how you want consumers to perceive your brand. 

Let's take a look at all of the information you'd usually find in this type of document.

Context

Include a background or contextual element that explains why you decided to launch the campaign. Then provide information about the behavior of the consumers or purchaser, which the advertisement can leverage.

In the highly competitive food market, Waitrose is launching a campaign for its ready meals. The product offers a higher quality taste than other options on the market, with a microwaveable plastic plate packaging.

Positioning 

Define the space that the brand or product should occupy in the minds of your consumers compared to your competitors.

In the luxury watch market, Patek Philippe positions itself with a resolutely emotional approach. It emphasizes the unique and robust bond that binds an owner to their Patek Philippe watch. This certainty of owning an exceptional creation reflects a rich cultural, artistic, and scientific heritage. Consumers are aware that they are acquiring a valuable object designed and made to last for several generations.

Problem

You must precisely and realistically define the problem that the brand's customers are struggling with daily.

Diageo's long established Pimms brand teamed up with Schweppes to position the combination as the quintessential drink of the British summer.

Communication Objectives

Clearly state the communication goals for the campaign. Do you want to increase your brand awareness? Improve your image? Increase sales? Whatever the goals, be accurate and realistic.

Promise 

Define how the primary customer will benefit and what they will gain by purchasing the product or service.

Duracell plays on the quality of its products as the most powerful, longest lasting batteries in the universe. Without Duracell batteries, even the most awesome toys die and turn into skeletons.

Bio Boost's promise🥤could be defined as follows: a 100% healthy organic energy product that will provide you with the energy you need.

The Reason to Believe

Highlight the evidence that justifies the promise.

Yakult, makers of a fermented milk-based drink, focused on the science behind their gut-friendly bacteria with this 'Science not Magic' TV commercial in 2019.

Tone and Atmosphere

As you saw in Part 1 of the course, you have a lot of options in terms of the tone you want to use in your advertising campaign; there are a wide variety of tones and types of speech: informative, interrogative, narrative, imperative, descriptive, explanatory, etc. that can be humorous, emotional, persuasive, etc.

Target Audience

At the end of the advertising strategy document, remind all stakeholders of the target audience: gender, age, socio-demographic, geographic area.

Let's Recap!

• Produce a summary document that recaps the advantages of your brand and expresses how you want to be perceived by consumers.

• Include all of the following information:

  • Context

  • Positioning

  • Problem

  • Communication objectives

  • Promise

  • Reason to believe

  • Tone and atmosphere

  • Target audience

In the next chapter, we'll look at how you can brief the creative team.