Start with a one-page business brief
Bring the actual product, audience, objective, service area, budget, proof points, offers, constraints and available channels into one source document. Mark unknowns instead of filling them with attractive guesses.
- Facts: approved product details, prices, locations and evidence.
- Assumptions: audience ideas or messages that still need testing.
- Constraints: brand, legal, cultural, production and tracking limits.
- Decisions: who approves claims, creative, spend and publication.
Use five distinct passes
Keep a hand-off document between passes. Each output should state what is fact, what is assumption and what requires approval. This prevents an attractive but unverified claim from spreading across every variation.
- Research: identify customer questions and the evidence still needed.
- Positioning: propose differentiated messages grounded in the verified offer.
- Creative: develop hooks, scripts and production briefs without adding claims.
- Campaign: recommend an organised experiment plan and tracking requirements.
- Review: interpret measured results and propose changes that can be tested.
A grounded campaign example
Review every customer-facing output
- Is every claim verified against the approved brief?
- Is the creative culturally appropriate and understandable to the intended audience?
- Are the target, outcome and measurement definition clear?
- Has a responsible person reviewed copy, design and targeting?
- Does the next test change one main variable and record its hypothesis?
Official and reference links