Creative Platform

Creative Platform

What it is and why it’s important

The creative platform is a result of the creative brief. This could be a creative platform for an identity or packaging design, brand or employer brand campaign or activation campaign.  They will each have their specific requirements however the key elements are common.

The brief for the creative team contains the following elements including the creative platform:

  • Purpose of the brief: What do we need to achieve? What’s the look of success?
  • Objectives: Specific commercial, brand and identity/pack/campaign objectives
  • Target market: Who are they, their values and (unmet) needs?
  • The key challenge: What’s holding the audience back? What’s the problem behind the problem?
  • Creative platform or territory
    • Insight
    • Tension
    • Strategic opportunity
    • Core idea
    • Reasons to believe
    • Tone of voice
  • Media and executional considerations
  • Deadlines and deliverables
  • Background
    • To the brief, business, brand or employer brand
    • Understanding of the product, service, experience; relevant value propositions and messaging
    • Available research on the audience

As a result of the creative brief, multiple platforms and territories will be developed. These will be stress-tested with the creative team for the richest creative territory. Depending on the requirements, the creative team may develop a number of tissue concepts off 2 or 3 territories and reviewed by the agency and/or client team in a tissue session, prior to selecting and refining the key creative platform and developing creative concepts.

As you can see, the creative platform plays an important role as the catalyst for bringing your strategy to life.

Our experience in this area

Our managing director, Rachel Bevans, has worked on creative platforms across the board:

  • Brand campaign: National Parks (with The Hallway)
  • Product campaign: MasterCard (McCann)
  • Experience campaign: Ballantine’s Whisky (Dragon)
  • CVP/Service campaign: Transport for NSW Cyber Security Advisory
  • Graduate recruitment campaign: WSP Engineering (Radley Yeldar)
  • Sponsorships platform: QSuper (Iris Concise)
  • Brand identity design: Cred Jewellery (Radley Yeldar)
  • Packaging design: Skittles, Lockets, Starburst (Dragon)

How we go about it

We ask our client to fill in the top and tail of the creative brief – minus the creative platform – along with the budget. This can be done prior to commencement by the client and briefing in a working session or developed collaboratively with us in a working session.

  • Purpose of the brief: What do we need to achieve? What’s the look of success?
  • Objectives: Specific commercial, brand and identity/pack/campaign objectives
  • Target market: Who are they, their values and (unmet) needs?
  • The key challenge: What’s holding the audience back? What’s the problem behind the problem?
  • Media and executional considerations
  • Deadlines and deliverables
  • Budget
  • Background
    • To the brief, business, brand or employer brand
    • Understanding of the product, service, experience; relevant value propositions and messaging
    • Available research on the audience

Download a copy of the creative brief here: THBC CREATIVE BRIEF

We will refine the brief and then come back to you with any additional requirements on research or strategy development – for example if we need to develop the brand architecture as part of an identity project or conduct some consumer research to better understand their barriers and drivers. 

We will then develop alternate creative platforms and stress-test these with the creative team prior to sharing with you the creative platform/s and initial concepts.

From initial concepts, we take on board feedback and develop 2-3 concepts. At this stage there may be a requirement for researching the 2-3 concepts with consumers to understand which are resonating with them and any improvements. From this stage, we go through to developing the design or campaign and preparing assets for production.

With creative briefs for campaigns, we recommend briefing these at the same time as media and running the two in parallel so as to integrate creative and media for maximising effectiveness.

We work with independent partners and agencies to provide this service, to develop the creative brief and alternate creative platforms or end-to-end strategic direction.

How can we help you? 

Contact Us

Please contact us to discuss further what we can do for you. 

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