TMRRW BIZ SCHOOL, ADFEST’s newly launched creative business school for marketers, welcomed to the podium Mitsuyuki Nakamura, Global President of dentsu X and chair of this year’s eCommerce Lotus and Media Lotus on the last day of the program. Mike, an accomplished all-rounder in media, content, creative, and innovation, shared his wisdom on what would be “A Brief for Tomorrow” to build forward-looking partnerships with agencies, “because [he said] today’s briefs just don’t deliver the experiences, the insight or business growth.”
“All agencies involved can move forward together on the business solution”
Regarding his motive for creating a new way of briefing, Nakamura said he felt urged to reinvent the process using a simpler way of working, since it’s never about separate processes such as media, PR, advertising or even social and search, but instead an integrated process in which “we ask different questions, use better tools, and create integrated solutions…We created MAP (Motivation & Attention Planning) to deliver the answers and solutions. For the brief, MAP’s single integrated design aligns all agencies involved, such as media, PR and creative and clarifies four issues – business obstacle, consumer opportunity, objective, and design direction/creative inspiration – which means all agencies can move forward together on the business solution,” he explained.
“We don’t start with behavior, but motivations”
During the session he underscored the importance of understanding consumers’ deeper insight, which is what marketers also need, and also that he had to come up with a different way of creating it for the brief. Whereas most briefs start with a profile, on which needs are based, instead he said needs should be based on factors of attention and motivation in a consumer’s life, which can then be used to build a profile.
Three ways to brief for tomorrow
As a takeaway, he ended his session with three key pointers on how to brief for tomorrow to help marketers navigate the complexity of the digital world and create magic in marketing.
- Empower marketing and your agencies to solve business issues. Help them leverage data to diagnose the real business challenge without simply looking at the metrics. Empower them to look outside the category at a higher level as well as to look inside the client organization.
- Empower marketing and your agencies to solve the real consumer issue at hand. Identify the motivation before you profile and address the motivation not just as a person and behavior but as something that is real and crucial for their lives, and which can make the world a better place.
- Empower your specialist agencies to work together and unite them through a single brief with aligned design direction. And, let the agencies create connected experiences, not simply separated exposures.
