How to Write a Single-Minded Proposition 301 (Half Day)

The Ingredients to the One Most Important Thing to Say About your Product
(Half Day Workshop)

The most difficult sentence to write on a creative brief is the Single-Minded Proposition. It has many other names — One Key Thing, Unique Selling Proposition, Single Most Important Thing — but one purpose: To inspire your creative partners to come up with the Big Idea. When it’s poorly written, it makes a creative brief weak and uninspiring. As a result, it makes creative work weak and ineffective. This workshop will dissect the inner workings of this simple but challenging sentence. You will come away with an insider’s understanding of how to craft a sentence that will ensure the two requirements of all advertising: creativity and ROI.

Led by the author of two critically acclaimed textbooks, How To Write An Inspired Creative Brief and How To Write A Single-Minded Proposition: Five Insights On Advertising’s Most Difficult Sentence. Plus Two New Approaches, and a former ad agency creative director, this workshop takes examples of outstanding creative briefs and breaks down their SMPs to reveal what makes them simple, inspiring — and effective. You’ll examine how and why they work, and practice the techniques strategists and account planners use so that you can achieve similar results.

Packed with individual and group exercises, this course will polish your skills in the creative process and improve your marketing effectiveness, efficiency, and ROI.

Who is this workshop for?

This workshop is for mid- to senior-level marketing and brand professionals who consider themselves proficient at writing inspiring creative briefs, but who want a deeper understanding of the Single-Minded Proposition. Pre-requisite: Highly recommended that participants take “How To Write An Inspired Creative Brief” full-day workshop. 

Workshop Benefits

The benefits of attending this workshop fall under the following key drivers of growth: improving marketing effectiveness, increasing marketing efficiencies, and maximizing marketing ROI.

This workshop helps attendees increase marketing effectiveness by:

• Sharing examples of highly effective and inspiring SMPs
• Teaching actionable skills to improve the quality of your SMP writing
• Learning how to articulate your brand’s attributes with clarity and assurance

This workshop helps attendees increase marketing efficiency by:

•  Teaching best practices to writing clearer and focused communication objectives

This workshop helps attendees improve marketing ROI by:

• Examining the ingredients of an inspiring Single-Minded Proposition to improve writing from your own people

Download the full agenda here

Howard Ibach

Howard is the author of two critically acclaimed textbooks on the creative brief: How To Write An Inspired Creative Brief, 2nd edition, and How To Write A Single-Minded Proposition: Five insights on advertising’s most difficult sentence. Plus two new approaches, both of which are required reading in a growing number of undergraduate and graduate programs in the U.S. He was an award-winning copywriter and creative director at a long list of legacy advertising agencies, notably Hoffman York & Compton in Milwaukee; DDB Direct, Team One Advertising, Direct Partners, Brierley & Partners, Rubin Postaer & Associates, OgilvyOne, Grey Direct West (now G2) and Wunderman in Los Angeles; and Carlson Marketing Group and Campbell Mithun in Minneapolis. He also served as the director of advertising and creative services at Asset Marketing Services Inc., a leading collectible coin retailer, in Minneapolis.

He earned his B.A. from the University of Tampa and an MA from Brown University. He lives in Los Angeles. Since 2012, he has volunteered with InsideOUT Writers, Inc., a public benefit corporation dedicated to assisting incarcerated youth.