The creative brief begins with the overview section. The overview section must
provide a short summary of the overall goals of your campaign and its importance to
public health. It is this section where you must provide background information about
the specific public health problem you’re aiming to address with your campaign. Your
goal should be to provide sufficient information for a non-expert to understand the
nature of the problem and why it deserves time/money/attention. NOTE: BE SURE TO
PROVIDE IN-TEXT CITATIONS FOR EACH AND EVERY STATEMENT OF FACT
YOU MAKE THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE PAPER, INCLUDING HERE IN THE
OVERVIEW].
Target Audience Segment [who the campaign is trying to reach]
[This section must provide basic background information about your audience
analysis and must walk the reader through your audience segmentation process. Per
the text: You must identify “a carefully defined, unique audience segment with specific
characteristics, such as demographic description, behavioral readiness stage, literacy
level, lifestyle information, and role in the overall communication strategy (primary
audience, secondary audience, etc.)” (Parvanta & Bass, 2020, p. 160). YOU MUST
CITE the sources that you looked at to help you do your audience research.]
Objectives [what the campaign wants your audience to do/believe/think]
[This section must describe the overarching CONCEPT for your campaign, in other
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words, the specific thing that you’re asking your audience to do, or believe, or think.
You must describe the specific behavior you want your audience to engage in
(for example, an anti-STD campaign might want people to “get tested for syphilis”), the
specific belief you’d like them to adopt (for example, an anti-STD campaign might want
people to believe that “syphilis is a dangerous disease that should be taken seriously”),
or the specific thought you’d like them to think (for example, an anti-STD campaign
might want people to think “I may be at risk for syphilis infection”). In many cases this
may be referred to as a “call to action.” YOU MUST CITE the sources that you looked at
to help you understand what behaviors, beliefs, and/or thoughts are useful to address
the health problem you’re focused on.]
Obstacles [the factors that influence the audience’s behavior]
[This section must draw upon your audience research to describe the “structural
barriers, beliefs, cultural practices, social pressure[s], or misinformation” that may pose
obstacles to your audience doing/believing/thinking what you want them to (p. 160).
These factors align with the third component of the BEHAVE framework, which is to ask
“what are the factors influencing your audience’s behavior?” (see p. 154). By answering
this question, you’re able to develop specific MESSAGES to try to appeal to your
audience and move them to do/believe/think what you’re asking them to. By describing
these factors in this section of the creative brief, you’re providing context for the
messages that you’ve developed and included in your presentation. YOU MUST CITE
the sources you looked at to help you understand the factors influencing your audience.]
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Benefit/Key Promise [the “product” the campaign is selling to the audience]
[This section must describe “the single most important reward (from the audience’s
point of view) that will result from doing the desired behavior” or believing the desired
belief or thinking the desired thoughts (p. 160). Another way to think about it is, what is
the “product” that the campaign is selling to its audience? For example, the key
benefit/promise of an anti-smoking campaign might be a lower risk of heart disease and
cancer, the key benefit/promise of an anti-STD campaign is reduced risk of infection
and/or reduced risk of transmitting an infection to others, and the key benefit/promise of
a campaign to reduce consumption of junk food could be reduced risk of diabetes.
Consider whether there are secondary rewards, for example a campaign to get people
to exercise more could have a key promise of increased strength/energy/stamina but
could have a secondary benefit like improved mental health. YOU MUST CITE the
sources you looked at to help you understand the health benefits of
doing/believing/thinking what the campaign is asking its audience to do/believe/think.]
Support Statements/Reasons
[This section must summarize all of the evidence that you’ve collected that
supports the assertion that the audience will actually experience the benefits that the
campaign is promising them if they do/believe/think what the campaign is asking.
According to Parvanta & Bass, this section explains “why the target audience should
believe the promise of the key benefit. This may be scientific data, emotional data, or
data drawn from the experience of others who the target audience admires or relates to”
(p. 160). Examples of support statements could be statistics on the lowered risk %age
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for lung cancer if someone quits smoking, the results of a survey of depression patients
who report reduction in their symptoms from engaging in regular exercise, or anecdotal
stories of people who gave up refined sugar and feel that their physical health has been
transformed as a result. Because support statements generally address/counteract
obstacles to the desired changes in audience behavior/beliefs/thoughts, they may often
be used as the basis for crafting MESSAGES for the campaign. YOU MUST CITE the
sources you used in finding/developing support statements.]
Tone
[This section must discuss the overall “feeling” or “personality” that the campaign
will have. For example, the truth campaign’s “Body Bags” commercial that we reviewed
in class adopted a rebellious and angry tone to encourage its audience to distrust and
oppose the tobacco industry, SFDPH’s “Healthy Penis” cartoons and comics used a
playful and humorous tone to educate its audience about the dangers of syphilis and
encouraged them to get tested, and the “It’s Up to You” campaign used a family-friendly
tone in its ads with Big Bird and Elmo to soothe the fears of children and their
caregivers about getting vaccinated against COVID-19. Although decisions about what
tone to adopt for a campaign are largely subjective, it is nevertheless important to have
some evidentiary basis for the effectiveness of a particular tone for the particular topic.
It is important therefore to CITE SOURCES that discuss the issue of tone so that you
can provide support your team’s decisions in this regard.]
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Distribution Opportunities [promotion]
[This section must discuss marketing practices that will help in distribution, such
as using influencers, or developing partnerships with particular community organizations
or leaders? Are there in-person events or venues that could be leveraged to reach the
target audience? Are there different versions of the materials that should be used in
different settings and for different audiences? For example, the “It’s Up to You”
campaign to promote COVID-19 vaccination had different versions of its materials
targeted at different ethnic groups and different age groups; the “Healthy Penis”
campaign had different materials tailored to different geographical communities with
graphics showing cartoon characters in familiar nearby locations and specific
information in its ads about the closest location to get tested for syphilis.]
Creative Considerations [including media channel selection] [This
section must describe the media channels you’ve selected for your campaign, (for
example, print ads like posters and billboards, social media and internet ads, TV/video
commercials, radio/podcast commercials, etc.), and how the media channel selection
will be used to TAILOR MESSAGES to the targeted audience segment … in other
words, it must describe how will those media channels will be used. For
posters/billboards, what neighborhoods/areas should they appear in? For TV/video or
radio/podcast commercials, what type of content should they be embedded in or
associated with to better reach your target audience segment? For social media or
internet advertisements, what platforms or websites should they appear on? In addition,
are there specific considerations that need to be taken into account in order to resonate
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with your target audience segment while avoiding stigmatizing them/stereotyping them,
etc.? YOU MUST CITE sources that support the choice of media channels for that
particular topic/issue AND that support the appropriateness of these specific channels
for the target audience segment.]
References
[The reference section must start at the top of a new page. Throughout this paper you
should have cited relevant and reliable sources to support EVERY factual assertion that
you’ve made. Each of those in-text citations must correlate with an APA-formatted
reference that you should include in this section. For more on how to properly format
references according to APA rules, see the materials provided to you on Canvas.]