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Contents
What is a Brief?
A Project Brief is something all professional designers, advertising agencies and businesses use - it is like a job description from the client to the company outlining exactly what they want (format), what they want to achieve (increased sales, new customer base etc), who their target audience(s) is and how much they want to spend. Have a look at this professional questionnaire, which a company uses to find out exactly what their client needs them to do. You will need to do this with your clients - your school, your small business, your sports group etc - the people you are producing your piece of communication for.
However, before you reach this stage, you have to find a 'gap' in the market, a group of people who NEED a piece of communication. How do you identify such a gap?
As Communication Studies students you have some tools to use - you can look for barriers to communication in existing situations. If there is NO communication at all in a particular area e.g a business has no promotional material this is obviously a mechanical barrier - NO message is getting through to potential customers and you can put this right.
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However, sometimes even if there is existing communication (leaflet, website etc), it can have problems. It may be that there are semantic barriers (language is inappropriate for target audience) or psychological problems - it doesn't appeal to the audience - wrong pictures etc.
- Once you have your idea, you will identify a 'commissioner' - a contact, with whom you will work to produce your artefact (piece of comm). This is usually the owner of the business, or a teacher in a school, or Captain of a football club etc.
- Prepare a questionnaire (like the one in this link) to help you work out what your commissioner wants you to do - it is best to use the questionnaire in a face-to-face interview because often other details or information come up in the course of the discussion which are helpful to you.
- After this interview, you should have a clearer idea who the target audience for your artefact (piece of comm) will be. The TARGET AUDIENCE are the people who will use the communication you produce. You will need to conduct some MARKET RESEARCH with these people, to check that they will actually use your artefact or product and that they need it. You should do research with as large a sample of your target audience as you can at this stage - 20-30 people if possible, but this will depend on the exact nature of your project.
Target
Audiences
Definition
- The audience for any media product (which is the artefact in your A2 project) is the group that consumes it.
- The target group is the group at whom the product is specifically aimed, in your case this may be homeowners or junior school children or parents etc.
- Some texts will aim to engage a wide or mass audience e.g. programmes like Eastenders, advertisements for products such as The National Lottery/ Lotto, films like “Four Weddings and a Funeral” or “My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Some texts are aimed at a specific niche group, for example “Tortilla Soup” (Maria Ripoll 2002), advertisements for Vans or other skate labels etc, the Pink Paper.
In your case, it will be a very specific, niche audience, narrowed down by age or gender or location or interest etc.
- Each audience (and indeed each individual member of the audience will consume the same product in a different way. In order to be able to target the most appropriate audience, the producers of media text will research using categories, which include age, gender, socio-economic group, sexual orientation and consumption history or preference.
- You may not even be aware that information that you reveal about yourself, indirectly, are used by companies and agencies so that they can sell you their ideas/products. You are a product - list brokering is big business. Consider some of the following:
- Hotmail or any email account – you have to give your details to become a member – your details are then sold to hundreds of companies.
- Internet Cookies
- Student I.D. cards
- Store cards like Boots Advantage Cards or discount cards
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Market Research
Quantitative
- Concerned with numbers and categorising people for example by social class.
- It can be used by the producer of a product or by the institution which is selling it.
- Television companies use BARB (Broadcasters Audience Research Board) to analyse viewing figures.
- Radio stations use RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research) statistics to check listening figures.
Socio - economic groups used by advertisers:
A higher management/administration/professional
B middle management/administrators or professionals
C1 supervisory/clerical/junior management/or professionals
C2 skilled management
D semi-skilled/unskilled manual
E subsistence income/pensioners/widows/casual labour/unemployed
Qualitative Research
In depth interviews to find out about consumers awareness and attitudes - things that can't be easily categorised. One good example of this mode of research is the focus group. The producers of a product will select a group which has the profile of their target audience, and will show them the product. This can be done pre-release or post-release if the product is not performing as well as anticipated. The response of the focus group is then used by the producers to alter, completely rethink, or even confirm the look or content of the product.
Pyschographic Research
Investigates how people see themselves
- Succeeders
- Aspirers
- Carers
- Main-streamers
- Individualists
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Lifestyle Groupings
Advanced psychographic research- asks consumers to give to their views on statements about religion, education, voting habits and political beliefs, leisure pursuits, spending habits etc.
Qualitative and quantitative methods are used in parallel in order to research the habits and preferences of the target audience. Once the profile of the audience has been established the product producers will target the audience by using a carefully constructed campaign of promotion. The product might be advertised in magazines that the target consumer reads, on Internet sites which are popular with the group, or feature on a commercial between preferred programmes.
Interviewing is very time-consuming and best in one-to-one situations but you get a lot of detail and depth.
Group discussions generate lots of ideas but it is difficult to collect data and statistics from it.
Questionnaires are easy with large numbers of people, you can ask closed questions to get lots of statistical information but you will only the get the information you ask for.
Questionnaire Design
Whether you are going to construct questions for an interview or for multiple questions, you need to think carefully about how you design them. Questionnaires are a form of communication - if you want people to respond well you need to think about how to appeal to them.
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Key points to cover in your questionnaire
- Always write a short introduction at the top of your questionnaire, explaining who you are, what you are doing and why you want the information you are asking them about. Try to make them see that it will be to their advantage (better info/comm for them) if they help by filling in the questionnaires.
- Collect as much demographic information and some psychographic information about the audience as you can - click here for an article with more details about these two words. Ask your audience questions about who they are - age, gender, occupation, location they live in and key info relevant to your project such as do they have a computer (if you are doing a website for example)
- You need statistical proof that there is a MARKET for your product so you need to ask your audience if they have seen any existing communication in the area you intend to cover, what they think of it and whether they would use any new communication you produce.
How to use your questionnaire results
Once you have got your questionnaires back from your target audience, use a blank questionnaire to collate your results. It sometimes helps to get a friend to read out the answers on all the filled out questionnaires as you tally the responses. For example, imagine the first question on your questionnaire is:
1. AGE
16-19
20-25 IIII 4/20 (percentage - divide 4 by 20 and multiply by 100) 20%
26-30
31-35 III 3/20 (percentage - divide 3 by 20 and multiply by 100) 15%
36-40 IIIII IIIII III 13/20 65%
2. GENDER
Male IIIII IIIII III 13/20 65%
Female IIIII II 7/20 35%
Look at what each questionnaire has ticked and put a mark next to the age range. Go onto the next question and put a mark next to the response on your blank questionnaire and so on until you have finished with that completed questionnaire. When you have recorded the responses on all your questionnaires total them up (see above in red). Then work out each total as a percentage (see above). You will then have a set of statistics to use as evidence in your brief.
For example, you will be able to write, "65% of my target audience are in the 36-40 age range and are male. This means that I will need to include...........in my publicity leaflet".
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Costings
Just as a professional advertising agency would do, you need to give your client some idea of how much your product will cost them, if they decide to use it as publicity or with the target audience. If, for example, you are producing an A5 flyer, how much will each flyer cost? How many flyers would your client need?
When you interview your commissioner, ask them what kind of figure they could afford, for advertising or publicity. Can they afford £25, £50 or £2,000? This figure will determine what kind of flyer, leaflet, website you produce. You must produce something the client/commissioner can afford. If they have only a small amount of money, you may have to settle for a black and white flyer, rather than colour.
Once you know which format the commissioner and the target audience would prefer to receive their information in (they choose, NOT you), get quotes from at least three copyshops for 100 (or however many copies your commissioner would like). Your commissioner will choose the best value quote, IF and when they decide to use your product, at the end of the project.
Writing your Brief Report
Now write up all your findings as a 500 word report. Use the numbered points below to help you structure this report. This is your BRIEF. It is the only thing you need to include in the final coursework folder. No need to include questionnaires etc.
1. State briefly where idea came from – perhaps mention existing
situation/material and why it is not doing a successful job at the
moment (don’t include an actual analysis of existing material
here, do it at the beginning of the research section)
2. State the aims of your proposed piece of communication –
what will it actually achieve?
3. State target audience and describe it in as much detail as you
can, demographically.
4. Justify the NEED for your project by mentioning explicitly,
the primary (with target audience) and secondary research (commissioner
or national statistics etc) you did to prove it.
You don’t need to do this in a separate paragraph but it needs
to be somewhere in this brief.
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5. Justify the choice of format – saying the audience chose
it, is not enough. What makes that format perfect for meeting your
stated aims and suiting your potential audience? Do back that up
with audience research as well. Look at the sample projects on the
Intranet or in the classroom to see what I mean.
6. Discuss how the artefact will work in the real context it will
be used in
7. State costings as accurately as you can
8 . Restate why your project is a valid one, briefly
FOR AN EXAMPLE OF HOW A BRIEF SHOULD SOUND/READ, CLICK HERE
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Use the Brief mark scheme on the next page to check how well you
have done.
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