The toolkit
Canvases, templates, checklists, worksheets and calculators to use today. Each one is built on a named framework, explained with its sources, and ready to fill in here, print or download. What you type stays in your browser.
Canvases1
One page that holds a whole idea, filled in together.
Templates4
The documents a plan needs, with the headings already right.
- The positioning statement: for, who, is a, that, unlike, becauseOne sentence that says who the brand is for, what it is, what it does better than the alternative and why anyone should believe it. The fill-in-the-blank form credited to Geoffrey Moore, checked against Keller's points of parity and difference.
- The creative brief template: one problem, one insight, one propositionThe page a planner hands to a creative team: the problem the work must solve, the audience and the insight, the single proposition and its proof, the tone, and what the work should make people think, feel and do. From the account-planning tradition and the industry's briefing guides.
- The agency brief template: the client's business brief to every agencyThe brief a client sends to its agencies and internal teams: where the business is now, where it needs to be, who it must reach, what the work must achieve, the budget, timing and rules, and how success will be measured. One brief for every discipline, after the industry's joint briefing guides.
- The campaign calendar: phases, key dates and the flighting of every disciplineOne timeline that shows every discipline phase by phase: when each is off, light or heavy, the phases of the campaign, the fixed dates it must respect and the dependencies between teams. With the scheduling patterns of media planning: continuity, flighting and pulsing.
Checklists1
What to check before it goes out, ticked off as you go.
Worksheets2
Questions to work through, one decision at a time.
- The STP worksheet: segment the market, choose the target, set the positionA worksheet for the oldest sequence in marketing strategy: describe the segments on the bases that predict behaviour, score them, choose a targeting strategy and write the position. From Wendell Smith's 1956 paper to Kotler's textbooks.
- The integration RACI: who is responsible, accountable, consulted and informedA matrix of the activities in an integrated programme against the people and agencies involved, marking for each who does the work, who signs it off, who is consulted and who is kept informed. A general project-management practice, defined in PMI's lexicon, applied to marketing teams and agencies.
Calculators1
The arithmetic behind a rule of thumb, with its source and its limits.