What to include in a campaign toolkit

As an organisation, you probably already have brand guidelines to support with your marketing and communications – so why do you need a separate toolkit for a campaign?

A campaign toolkit offers guidance around a specific marketing campaign rather than general advice on how to bring your wider brand to life. Its core purpose is to make it easy for people to amplify your campaign message and achieve your campaign objectives.

Your campaign will likely reflect some of the key elements of your brand – like values, fonts, colours and tone of voice – but it will also have its own purpose, messages and visuals.

A campaign toolkit presents all of this in a way that makes it easy for people to understand why the campaign is important and what they can do to help you achieve the campaign objectives.

A great toolkit empowers others to talk about your campaign in a knowledgeable, passionate and consistent way. It encourages organisational buy-in, partnership advocacy and more.

The content of your toolkit will depend on the nature of your campaign.

It’s important to consider who the toolkit is for when preparing your content. You will want to tailor the advice and the ask based on their role in supporting your campaign.

For example you may have an internal toolkit for your immediate team and an external toolkit for partners or advocates. Your internal team may need assets for events, promotional activity or internal communications, whereas your partners may support the campaign by sharing your approved content, using the campaign hashtag or engaging with relevant communities.

We worked with Greater Manchester Combined Authority to devise and develop their foster carer recruitment campaign, Fostering Unfiltered.

We created three toolkits: one for GMCA, one for the ten local authority campaign partners, and another for campaign supporters (like foster carers, care leavers and support staff). This allowed us to tailor the guidance and tools depending on who was sharing the message.

As a general rule of thumb, your campaign toolkit should include the following:

The objective

First and foremost, set out the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of your campaign, so people understand what you’re trying to do and why it’s important. Where possible, include data to support your position.

The ask

Be clear what you’re asking people to do with the toolkit – so they know what is expected of them. For example, do you want them to use the assets provided on their own channels to help maximise your reach with a specific target audience or do you want them to create their own content in support of the campaign.

The audience

Specify who your campaign is aimed at, so people know who the target audience for the campaign is. Summarise the key audience insights so people understand what is important to each audience group.

The key messages

Include the key messages for each audience group, so people know what it’s most important to get across in any campaign related comms.

By providing the key messages your equipping your team, partners and/or advocates to talk about the campaign in a consistent way – building on the good work you’ve already done.

Example: Campaign toolkit for Dorset Council: #FosteringWins

We worked with Dorset Council’s fostering service to develop their #FosteringWins campaign - a campaign focused on the day-to-day triumphs of being a foster carer, and the value that can bring to both the foster carer and the foster child.

Including a variety of key messages within their campaign toolkit enabled the client to continue evolving and executing the campaign in-house.

The look and feel

Explain the design system that creates the campaign look and feel, so others can replicate it if needed. Include things like logos, fonts, colours and layouts. Clarify how partner logos can be included and if the creative differs depending on the audience. Include plenty of visual examples to illustrate your approach.

Example: Campaign toolkit for University of Central Lancashire: We See You student recruitment

For the University of Central Lancashire’s student recruitment campaign, ‘We See YOU’, we developed a high-impact creative style that highlighted the undiscovered potential of prospective undergraduate students.

The campaign used the university’s existing colour palette but with a unique look and feel that spoke to a younger, aspirational audience. The toolkit detailed how to use colour, imagery, text and the ‘YOU’ device from the campaign concept across all campaign channel

The channel strategy

Include an overview of your channel strategy – so it’s clear where you’ll reach your target audience. For example, this may include digital marketing channels - like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Google – out of home (OOH) activation and email marketing.

Being clear on which channels will be used to support different objectives or reach different audiences helps your colleagues, partners and supporters know how to reach the right audience with their contributions to the campaign.

The assets

Finally, include the key campaign assets in your toolkit. This should include any logos, images, graphic devices, templates, videos and artwork.

This helps bring the campaign to life and gives your wider team, partners, collaborators and advocates something practical to use to contribute to the delivery – and success – of your campaign.

Offer guidance on how, when and where assets should be used – and include links to downloadable assets or templates where possible to make it easier, and therefore more likely, for people to use what you’re providing.

Assets for your campaign may include social media content, a hero video, event collateral, digital and printed posters, PowerPoint slides and templates – just to a name a few.

There’s no right or wrong way to share your campaign toolkit. However, it’s important to consider who’ll be using it and how you can make it as easy as possible for them to use.

Example: Network Rail: Safety toolkits

For example, when we worked with Network Rail on their Safety Toolkits, the assets were provided as editable templates which were hosted on their brand asset library where staff from across the organisation could easily edit the templates to suit their specific needs and download the final artwork for them to use.