The Strategy Before the Spotlight

What a Netflix creative brief teaches us about modern marketing

Every iconic advertising campaign begins with a blueprint that consumers hardly ever see - the creative brief. Long before friends in a cramped college apartment huddle around their television and watch a Super Bowl commercial or a child crafting their Christmas list flips through the toy catalogue of the year, internal marketing departments and advertising agencies come together to craft a document that kickstarts an entire campaign. This document is aimed at answering one question: What are we trying to say beyond selling a product, and why should anyone care? Sometimes these creative briefs are released to the public, and in today’s blog post, we are going to explore a brief from Netflix.

A creative brief is not designed to impress consumers; it is designed to align the people responsible for creating the campaign. A creative brief is a concise, typically one or two-page document that outlines the strategy, objectives, and parameters surrounding an advertising project for a client (the brand). Agencies will send these briefs to clients to present their solutions for their client’s business problem.

Take a look at this creative brief from Netflix. Pause reading and examine the different sections of it.

Image from Laura Ferrari.

Breaking Down the Brief

Creative briefs offer a snapshot of the strategy and research that shape a campaign before the public ever sees it. They answer the essential questions of advertising: who the audience is, where the message should reach them, and what the campaign should communicate. The advertising and marketing industries alike rely on briefs to understand how a campaign will unfold.

Briefs follow a similar structure with written categories outlining context, the solution, the purpose, challenges, competitors, media strategy, target audience, success metrics, key message, and branding guidelines. 

The visual design is crucial in briefs and simplicity matters because clarity trumps decoration when aligning multiple teams and companies on a single project. There are headings to separate topics, charts and graphics to help information or numbers jump, and white space so the reader is not overwhelmed.

The Language of Advertising

Briefs follow their own sort of language; one that perfectly balances business strategy and creative freedom. Professional language that relies on clarity, concision, and courtesy is observed within the writing. At the same time, an agency is selling themselves to a client, trying to prove that they are the right man for the job, so there is often a hint of inspirational language as well. Take the Netflix brief - the slogan, “bringing social distancing closer,” involves emotion and quietly demonstrates the agency’s understanding that successful advertising is built on human connection, not just promotion. 

The world of marketing and advertising circles around accomplishment - and so do briefs. That’s why the tone is often action-oriented, it functions as strategic inspiration for members on the agency side and Netflix’s side. By taking a look at the Netflix brief, active verbs are used to tell the team what the campaign needs to accomplish rather than stating the present situation. The Key Challenges section has their business objectives bolded and in red to emphasize the importance of increasing subscribers, keeping current customers, ad increasing brand awareness.

The Art of Persuasion Before the Advertisement Exists

Long before an advertisement attempts to persuade its audience of consumers and potential consumers, the creative brief must first persuade the people who are responsible for bringing the campaign to life. By combining credibility, logical planning, and emotional direction, the Netflix brief aligns everyone on a single vision before any work begins.

It is important for an agency to understand the competitors and audience of their client, because it shapes the context of advertising. Competitors inform what is working with other streaming-services and where Netflix may need to step up, but it also confirms Netflix’s competitive advantage. Target audience analysis is crucial so the right potential audience and core audience are actually reached. Logical planning is also necessary and objectives, data, and clear deliverables, often outlined within media strategy, contains these. At the end of the day, human connection is at the heart of advertising, making emotional direction a critical element of the creative brief. The Tone and Brand Voice section includes the desired emotions, of consumers, naming humored and happy as some of them.

The Bigger Picture: What Netflix’s Brief Reveals About Modern Marketing

Beyond the Logo aims to explore modern advertising and marketing through the lens that successful campaigns are no longer built solely to sell products, but to create emotional connections that make people feel understood and included. 

The Netflix brief reflects a larger shift within advertising, where understanding people has become just as important as selling products. 

The business objectives don’t take up the bulk of the space on the brief, but the sections describing the people do. By focusing on the struggles of isolated people during the COVID-19 pandemic, the brief proves that consumers are at the center. 

Consumer emotions are researched before mocks are created, the campaign slogan focuses on connection, and the brief defines a brand personality and desired feelings, not only business goals. Agencies and brands are increasingly focusing on understanding how consumers already feel, rather than trying to shape them into an idealized version of who they should be.

Netflix is one of the top globally recognized brands for understanding culture, and successful campaigns begin with understanding culture and human behavior. In many ways, this brief from Netflix, although only one page, suggests something much bigger. It proposes that effective marketing belongs to the brands that create a sense of belonging for their consumers.