Ubuntu Adverts Process

The process for the UbuntuAdverts Team to create great marketing materials that promote Ubuntu.

idea

This is where the campaign starts. Someone (anyone) can come up with a new concept based some combination of the following:

• trends in research findings or general observations (e.g., very technical people are drawn to what Ubuntu offers)
• a specific goal (e.g., grow awareness of the next Ubuntu release)
• a media opportunity (e.g., someone has donated free space in their magazine)

Before proceeding to the next step, it's important to document the goal of the campaign.

The Media team should advise on the right medium(s) to use for the campaign.

Output: A campaign goal with some reason why or the desired result.

planning

Planners take the campaign goal and either do additional research or move on to writing creative briefs. Ideally, a campaign would require only one brief. If more than one brief is needed then the goal is probably not specific enough.

Writing a brief is usually a one-person task. Multiple Planners should write their own creative briefs for the same campaign. When briefs are available, the Planners should meet to review the briefs and decide on the best one. This could be an iterative process.

Output: The final creative brief.

creative

Creatives working on a campaign should organize into multiple small groups of two or three (e.g., a writer and two designers).

Planners should present the final brief to the Creatives. Q&A if needed. This should help the Creatives be more efficient in their execution.

After the Creatives go away for a little while (week or two), they should return with their advertisement concepts/sketches (not finished products) and present to all of the teams. Anyone else is welcome to join this creative review. This could be an iterative process. Part of the review should ensure that the creative executions are possible to implement and fall within the Ubuntu brand guidelines.

Everyone decides on the best advert concepts and what should actually go to production. Add other team members if additional skills are needed to create the final product (e.g., web development, animation, etc.).

Creatives that are not working in the current advert in production can move on to work on other adverts as more briefs from Planners are ready. I'm sure everyone is welcome to pitch-in on the advert in production, but there is a point where too many people hurt productivity.

Media should advise on the final stages of the production advert and ensure it meets any special requirements for placement, tracking, etc.

There will probably be multiple production adverts that are created over time for a single campaign.

Output: The finished/production advert.

media

Media take the final product and ensure that it is delivered/implemented correctly. This may include helping with some of the operational aspects of deployment (e.g., a website).

Performance tracking and general measurement is an important task of this role. Being able to understand how many of the target people were exposed to the advert and what kind of an effect it had on them is important. This will influence future strategies in creative execution and media selection.

Media should strive to share the results in a public manner as much as possible. Everyone can learn from the outcomes and others teams may want want to apply the learnings to their own projects.

Output: A report of some kind or debriefing document describing what we did and the results.