While Mad Men might have you believe that most advertising projects are born from a fortuitous combination of naps and "old fashioneds," there is - in fact - a process. The CNP User's Guide series offers valuable insight about this process and what helps us be most effective.
Home builders have blueprints. Chefs have recipes. Navigators have the stars.
At CNP, we have the creative brief.
Appropriately named the CNP Launch Pad. Because it helps us launch client projects into successful orbits and resulting outcomes. The brief, typically completed by your account manager and/or creative director for new mass media or collateral projects, includes detailed info that helps us do more targeted and efficient work.
Work that works. Work that makes clients successful and happy.
Without this important process document, we play a guessing game in trying to deliver work consistent with your goals, brand and mission.
In fact, a client project without a launch pad is like a ship without rudder – tossed about on the waves of confusion, inefficiency and randomness. It’s enough to make everybody seasick of a project pretty fast – including the client who gets a higher-than-expected invoice due to false starts and re-dos that could’ve been avoided by taking a little time up front to complete the launch pad.
Guidelines don’t stifle ideas. They just keep them focused.
Questions included on the CNP Launch Pad – all good to ask before diving into any project:
OBJECTIVE: Why are we communicating?
PROJECT TYPE: What is the nature of the communications?
AUDIENCE: Who are the communications intended for?
KEY MESSAGES: What’s in it for them?
RESPONSE: What do we want to happen?
MANDATORIES: What must be included?
SPECIFICATIONS: Sizes, formats, colors?
TIMELINE: When must the project be completed?
Download a Sample CNP Launch Pad
In the web development world, our CNP Wireframe is the parallel. In our next post of the series, Alex will explain why these are an important first step in any web development project.
