How Long Should It Take to Produce a Brochure, a Website, an Ad? - Issue: 2002 Qtr 1
Getting your brand's message into the market is what it's all about. So what's taking so long? The answer is, creating marketing materials goes much faster if you have the brand strategy and key messaging figured out before you start writing copy and developing layouts.
Like the old carpenter maxim "measure twice, cut once," if you've nailed down your strategy and key selling points, the whole process is bound to be smoother.
Next steps: develop a Creative Brief document and a realistic budget. The Creative Brief document (or Creative Strategy) identifies objectives, audience, key selling points, timing and other aspects of the project that are key to getting the project produced. And having a realistic budget that everyone agrees to before work begins means there will be fewer surprises later.
Finally, manage the process. Make sure one person is responsible for managing the deadlines and the process through to completion…getting approvals, production estimates from printers, web site programming, etc. A project without realistic deadlines (milestones) is destined to take longer than it should…and cost more than it was supposed to.
Here's a sample of the kinds of issues that need to be addressed in the Creative Brief:
- Situation Analysis
- Competitive Analysis
- Target Market
- Communications Objective
- Key Facts
- Reasons Why
- Tone
And here are some of the typical milestones that need to be managed throughout the process…and assigning deadlines is a very important part of the process:
- Open a project
- Write Creative Brief
- Creative quote
- Develop concepts
- Production quotes
- Client OK (with rounds of revisions)
- Final art
- Client OK
- To production
- Review/approve proofs
- Production complete
- Deliver
- Review/Critique
- Close job and process invoices
Develop the Creative Brief and production milestones appropriate for your needs and see how much less time it takes.
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