What Is Creative Brief In Digital Signage And Why It’s Important

They say ‘to be prepared is half the victory’ – a creative brief increases your chances of launching an effective signage campaign.
It is a document on which you pen down your thoughts regarding signage industry. You may counter this statement by saying ‘Why…? Why do we need a creative brief when signage industry is all about art, illustration and pictures?’

How Is It Done?

1. Brainstorming
The first step is brainstorming – you have to think about ideas. In any business, the ultimate goal is to maximize the profit and minimize the losses. In the world of digital signage, you need to think about ways through your signage will receive the most exposure.

• What colors and illustrations should be used in your sign?
• Where will the sign be displayed?
• Is the sign visible from far proximity?
• Does it feel good to read the sign?

If you look closely, you can see that the following aspects are being covered through creative briefs.

2. The Challenges

• The end client’s business objectives
• The holistic strategy of a particular brand
• The scope of visual needs of an environment

Your creative brief does not have to be lengthy. It weighs in terms of quality, rather than quantity so think about the problems you are going to solve through your writing.
Remember that ‘content is king’ and the main items to focus upon, in your creative brief include attention to detailing, deadline, budget and key audience.

3. Importance
AIGA’s official sponsor, Aquent states that a creative brief helps in smooth running of a project. It prevents delays and increases output by:

• Streamlining expectations
• Defining distinct goals
• Building team consensus
• Joining goals with different creative strategies

4. Beating the Competition
The creative brief and marketing trends depend upon one another. It is a continuous cycle and so, you need to refresh the both.
If you are going 90% by the book (in this case, the creative brief), you can include a 5 – 10% new innovation (or trend) to be a little different from mainstream market.
If you succeed in making a new trend, other people will follow and will include it in their respective creative briefs. Ultimately you will get famous and people will gossip ‘oh look! This is the original logo and look at all the others who copied from the original’

5. Impact
Once a creative brief is established, you can take it as a guideline in your digital signage building scheme. Like a SWOT analysis, once you feel you are going astray with your design, your creative brief will keep you on the right track.
Digital signage industry is not constant. After a while, companies change their signs to keep afresh amongst the free market. Creative brief will help redesign your sign as well as give you short term realistic goals. These short term goals are an epitome of your market growth and like the trends of market, the creative brief is subjected to change.