How to make a competent technical task for a designer and copywriter. Part 2

Initial data, goal, and final result

Provide detailed source data for the task that the performer will use when solving the problem:

• Formulate the purpose of the task or advertising campaign. Answer the question of what advertising should encourage the target audience to do: go to the website, subscribe to a newsletter, channel, or chat, register for an online event, make a phone call, or visit the office. Example: "registration of managers and directors of IT companies for a webinar on information security".

• Provide comprehensive data on the audience to which the creative will be directed: gender, age, marital status, occupation, position, place of residence, and income level. Describe the interests, fears, pains, and needs of the target audience. If necessary, provide the terms of reference with quotations and links to marketing research and surveys.

• Provide a link to the competitor's analysis. Perhaps they will be able to spy on some interesting ideas.

• Provide a detailed description of the product.

• Provide links to materials with content that you need to use in creating a creative. These can be logos, font files, photo shoot materials, corporate colors, corporate identity, brandbook, etc.

Expected result from advertising

Design is one of the most important components of advertising creativity, which is responsible for the transfer of meaning through the visualization of the image, the emotional component. Emotions in advertising are important because they control human behavior. In terms of reference, it is important to note what emotion the advertisement should cause.

Selling copywriting is a separate style of copywriting. The advertising text is designed to attract attention, arouse interest, satisfy the needs, pains, and fears of the reader, and convince him to perform a targeted action. Since the texts for advertising creatives are often limited to sites in terms of volume, the approach to writing sales texts differs, for example, from the information style. In selling copywriting, brevity and accuracy are important.

General design requirements

Describe in detail the requirements for creatives:

• raster/vector graphics;

• color scheme (specify specific colors in #RRGGBB format or refer to the color ranges from the official brandbook of the client);

• fonts;

• the presence of visible borders;

• links to documents describing elements prohibited from placement by the advertising system;

• the presence of logos and elements of the brand's corporate identity;

• other elements that should be present on the creative;

• the presence of animation;

• the maximum percentage of the creative area that the text will occupy;

• texts of slogans that should be placed on the creative (before putting the design to work, give the task to the copywriter to come up with slogans).

General requirements for the text

General requirements include requirements for style, the presence of links, and the design of the structure:

• style: informational, gaming, selling, storytelling, etc.;
• minimum and maximum number of paragraphs;
• presence of structure: bulleted lists, paragraphs, line gaps,
• number of links, etc.

Placements and technical design requirements

Technical requirements and requirements for the design and content of the creative are an important part of the terms of reference.

At this point, the marketer or manager must translate his ideas into text that the performer can understand.

Several types of creative are used in advertising:

• static images;
• simple GIF animation;
• videos with subtitles and sound overlay; complex special effects.

The technical specification for a static image is the easiest to make. Under the video, you will need not only to describe the requirements but also to come up with a script, make a storyboard, pick up and overlay music, and record sound of good quality. For a creative in the style of motion design, you will also need to meet much more requirements.

Specify the placements and technical design requirements for each of the placements where the ad will be displayed:

• the platform where the advertisement will be placed;
• format;
• dimension in pixels (aspect ratio);
• file extension;
• minimum or maximum duration of a video clip in milliseconds;
• number of frames per second;
• audio/video codecs;
• file weight.

Placements and technical requirements for the text

Many Internet sites support a combined text-graphic format.

• Specify the maximum amount of text in characters for each placement.
• Specify the maximum allowable volume of uppercase font;
• Specify the maximum number of emojis.

Pick up analogs

Analogs are the creatives and advertising texts of competitors, on which it is recommended to rely when developing.

The presence of analogues in the terms of reference simplifies the task for the performer. He already understood at the start that the task was quite feasible. It is much easier to make something like this and copy it with small differences in details than to come up with the whole concept from scratch. It is especially important to correctly select analogs for promotional videos since the amount of work involved in producing them is many times greater.

To make it convenient for a specialist to view analogs, take screenshots of pictures and texts, download videos, and place all materials in one place, providing the terms of reference with a link.

Other important task information: dates, contacts, links

Specify the contact details of the specialist; provide a link to his account in social networks, messenger, or a nickname in the task manager. Write down the stages and deadlines. Provide the terms of reference with links to the source data and other documents necessary to the work.

If you consider it necessary to add some more information to the terms of reference that will help the specialist implement the task, feel free to add it.

Write in detail, but don't overdo it

A task described vaguely or incompletely will necessarily be interpreted in its own way by the performer. The manager will definitely be unpleasantly surprised when the result of the completed task, if it can be completed at all, turns out to be completely different from what the manager or marketer imagined.

On the other hand, it is also not necessary to rush to extremes. Excessively overloaded with details, the terms of reference, taking into account all possible nuances, up to the state of the Earth's magnetic field at the time of the deadline, will firstly require a lot of time to prepare  secondly, will not leave a creative maneuver for a specialist.

After preparing the terms of reference, give it to a specialist for editing. After he gets acquainted with the task, the manager or marketer should ask him to run through the technical task. Suddenly, there were some questions.

The specialist understands the details better, and the author of the terms of reference could not take into account important nuances that will significantly affect the final result.

Results

A well-written technical task is the key to a predictable result, ensuring that the task will be understood the first time and executed close to the customer's expectations.

Remember that the preparation of technical specifications is a skilled job because the final result largely depends on a correctly set task. Often, technical tasks are so voluminous that they take up several A4 pages, and sometimes dozens.

Do not spare time to develop a high-quality technical task. This time will pay off by eliminating unnecessary and exhausting conversations and, as a result, reducing the specialist's working time that he spends on the task.