A few months ago I had the good fortune to lead a marketing effort for the Colorado Nonprofit Association called Generous Colorado. It is a consumer campaign to build awareness and support of Colorado’s 19,000+ nonprofit organizations. Participating on the client side were the acting CEO, staffers and a handful of volunteers from the membership ranks.

When I first met with this client there was a lot of excitement since they had secured donations of television airtime and a template website tool to support their outreach effort. Like most campaign start-ups, there were lots of ideas about what the TV spots should say, who should be in them, could we get any Colorado celebrities to lend a hand or maybe even the Governor? It was a very typical marketing campaign start-up where most everyone jumped into the tactical and art direction details.

I knew for us to get anywhere we needed a creative brief to focus our thinking and provide a “playbook” to the creative team who would be tasked with coming up with the deliverables– two television PSAs and a website that could facilitate online donations. So playing the role of account executive, I suggested we collaboratively develop a creative brief (a standard best practice in the ad agency world). This of course did not sound as exciting as a brainstorming session with creative directors and copywriters but it appealed to the clients’ strategic sensibility and took them off the hook for having the big creative ideas.

We talked about what should be in our creative brief, including: what we hoped to accomplish overall; who we intended to reach; how we intended to reach them; our brand strategy, desired image, attitude and core message. I know, pretty sexy stuff! But it’s important stuff if we want to give our creative team the information and strategic thinking they absolutely need to do their jobs!

The creative team, which consisted of a copywriter, creative director, graphic designer, and film editing folks, embraced the creative brief and I think were relieved we had some specific goals and an actual message, all committed to in writing. The pressure was intensified by the fact that most of this team had never before worked together and we only had 6 weeks to develop this marketing campaign, the first of its kind for the Colorado Nonprofit Association (no pressure, right?!).

I credit the client for getting out of the tactical thinking trap and taking the creative brief development process seriously. And I also credit the creative team for following the creative brief as their North Star. It proved to me, once again, the absolute power of this very simple technique.

The results? It’s too early to know the 4th quarter donation results but we do know it helped raise the issue of Coloradans giving at a time when the need has never been greater. And as the industry advocate for nonprofits, the Colorado Nonprofit Association now has some powerful evergreen marketing tools in its arsenal.

Take a look at the resulting PSAs entitled Essential Services and Philanthropy which are airing in Colorado.

To view the website (and make a donation if you feel moved to) visit www.generouscolorado.org.