Before the brief gets expensive

A campaign may already be promised. There’s still room to check whether the audience needs what the brief is asking social to deliver.

“We need younger buyers” can send a social team straight into making a brand look younger, before anyone has established why those people aren’t buying. It’s a plausible response, and it may be the right one. But by the time the first creative comes back, a theory about the audience can have become the basis for several weeks of work.

You may have inherited that theory along with the budget. Perhaps the audience came from the growth plan, and a campaign has already been promised. Reopening the question means asking colleagues to revisit something they thought was settled. There needs to be a good reason, especially when you’re the person expected to get things moving.

Low awareness would give social one job. An audience that knows the product but sees no place for it in their lives would give it another. You could approve excellent work against either brief. The evidence needs to tell us which deserves the investment.

I’d want to know which before asking anyone to make the brand look younger. There’s far more satisfaction in discovering a better opportunity while you can still act on it than in explaining afterwards why the campaign did everything asked of it and sales barely moved.

What Sony’s research changed

An old Sony project captures this particularly well. Rolly was an unusual MP3 player, developed with a Japanese audience in mind. Its US reception had been poor, and the European launch needed a different approach. Technology enthusiasts might have seemed an obvious audience, but Sony-commissioned research found they had little interest in it.

That finding shaped the European programme. The team approached highly connected creative communities whose members had overlapping interests and collaborated on projects. They received access to Rolly and the freedom to decide what to make with it, provided the product appeared in action. Their creations subsequently supplied demonstration material for shops and online.

What I like about this is the willingness to follow the finding. Sony had commissioned the research, and the work gave a different audience the opportunity to explore the product. Its technical features hadn’t changed. The people encountering it, and the reasons they might enjoy it, had. A brief built around winning over technology enthusiasts would have led everyone somewhere else.

When the disagreement comes back as creative feedback

Sometimes the uncertainty only becomes obvious when the work arrives. Imagine two colleagues asking for a campaign to feel younger. One thinks younger customers don’t know the brand exists. The other thinks they know it perfectly well and associate it with their parents. Both can approve the same audience definition. They’re likely to have rather different reactions to the creative.

An execution makes those differences visible. That can be valuable: seeing an idea often reveals something a written discussion missed. But if the feedback keeps circling around relevance, it’s worth asking whether everyone is using the word to mean the same thing. Otherwise, the team can spend another round changing the treatment while the disagreement survives intact.

I’m quite happy for a creative idea to make us reconsider the strategy. I’m much less happy asking people to keep revising without telling them that the strategy is what we’re reconsidering. That leaves them guessing at a solution to a disagreement they may never have heard.

Four questions before committing more

These are questions I’d bring into that conversation. They work just as well before the first brief goes out, particularly when the proposed answer already has plenty of support internally.

What are we actually seeing?

Take the younger-buyer example. They account for a small share of customers. Has that share fallen, or has it always been small? Is the business losing younger customers, or seeing an opportunity to attract more? The distinction changes what deserves investigation. A growth ambition can be entirely sensible without telling us what has prevented that growth so far.

The source of the observation matters too. People commenting on the brand’s social posts may have different reasons for being there from the people it wants to sell to. Their reactions can suggest something to investigate, but they cannot stand in for everyone who isn’t buying.

What do we think it means?

If the view is that younger buyers consider the brand dated, put that on the table. It becomes possible to discuss whether that perception affects their choice, rather than debate which visual style feels contemporary.

There may be a competing explanation. Perhaps those buyers like the product but rarely encounter it where they shop. Both problems could exist, but they would require different spending choices. Agreeing that the brand needs growth doesn’t settle which obstacle deserves the next pound.

What evidence supports or challenges that reading?

I’d start with whatever could change the recommendation. If a dated image is supposedly putting people off, what evidence connects that perception with their reluctance to buy? Research showing that people describe the brand as old-fashioned is relevant. It still leaves a question about whether that is what stops them choosing it.

Look for the finding that makes the preferred explanation less comfortable as well. Recent customers might use the same description quite affectionately. That would be a reason to investigate further before paying to remove associations they value. A focused conversation with buyers and non-buyers may reveal more than another round of internal opinions. The point is to resolve the uncertainty that affects the spend; there’s no requirement to commission a vast study.

What can social genuinely change?

The answer needs to describe something the activity could plausibly achieve. If people struggle to see when they would use the product, demonstrations in recognisable situations could give them a reason to consider it. That gives creative people a specific problem to explore, with room to surprise you.

If availability is the obstacle, more persuasive content still leaves people unable to buy. Social might direct them to somewhere that stocks it, but the wider availability problem needs an owner. That dependency belongs in the conversation before additional demand is paid for.

You may still have to proceed with an assumption. Most marketing involves some uncertainty. A smaller commitment can make sense if it tests something that will determine whether you continue. Agree what finding would cause you to change course before committing the full budget.

If a campaign has already been promised, you now have something specific to take back to colleagues: evidence that changes the audience choice, or a barrier the proposed work won’t address. You can explain what needs to change in the investment. And the people making the work can put their imagination into an answer you have better reason to believe in.