a brief from the client. Hopefully, they will have (possibly with you) worked out their key business challenges and have a feel for what success looks like. Often the annual communications budget will be a nice round number and a % of the annual revenue target (typically 5-10%). You can make your first impact here by trying to work out the customer lifetime value of the client's customers and establish whether their budget makes any sense from the bottom up. There's often little rhyme or reason to where these budgets come from -- they're typically just rules of thumb that businesses have applied for years. I seriously suggest you push to get clarity on this before you do anything else because it can swing your entire approach. OK, onto the problem. The first few steps may need a few attempts before you decide on the problem. You will need to do some digging: qualitative, quantitative, keyword, website, social research. Maybe you'll dig up some behavioural economics, social sciences or psychology papers. Whatever your inputs, define the problem in an interesting way. Couch the problem in a customer's -- not a business's -- point of view if possible. Avoid phrases like 'we need more sales', 'we need to become more relevant' and 'we need awareness' -- these things are table stakes. Make it provocative, say it short, say it in one picture. Step 2: Personas Personas are a sort of customer segmentation. They're fictional representations of your client's customers based on