Writing a Brief That Works

Momentum in marketing does not start with a big idea. It starts with a good brief.

Every agency you will ever work with keeps the brief open on their desktop for the life of the project. It is the reference point for every decision the creative team makes, and it is also the single biggest factor in how quickly and how well that work gets done. A clear brief does not just produce better creative, it is also the most cost-effective thing a client can hand over, because it means less time spent guessing, revising and re-briefing, and more time spent getting to the final piece of work.

Pentagram partner Michael Bierut has written candidly about how much he struggles with a completely open brief, and it is easy to see why. An open brief gives a creative team nothing to push against, so the work either drifts or the agency has to burn time guessing at what you actually meant. Advertising veteran Sir John Hegarty makes a similar point from the opposite direction: a longer brief leaves too much room for a reader to pick out only the parts that suit them, while a short, sharp brief forces everyone toward the same destination.

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Start with the brand, not the deliverable

Before an agency can make good decisions on your behalf, it needs to understand who you are. If you already have brand guidelines, hand them over. If you do not, use the first part of your brief to describe how your brand feels, who it is speaking to, and what personality it has. What is the target market, demographically and geographically. What brands does your aesthetic sit closest to. Who are the competitors, and what do you like or dislike about how they present themselves. The more of this an agency has upfront, the more every subsequent decision they make will actually sound like you, rather than a generic version of the category.

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Be specific about what you want delivered

This is where most briefs fall down, and it is the easiest problem to avoid. A brief that asks for "a poster and some social tiles with our logo" leaves an agency guessing at sizes, styles and tone, and guessing costs everyone time. Compare that with a brief that names the occasion, the audience, the exact copy to include, and lists deliverables precisely: an A3 poster, an 800 by 400 pixel web banner, an 800 by 800 pixel Facebook tile, an 800 by 800 pixel Instagram tile. The second version takes a few extra minutes to write. It saves days of back-and-forth later.

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Be upfront about budget and timeline

Budget conversations are easiest early, not after the team has already spent hours deliberating on a direction you cannot afford. Timelines matter just as much. Agencies schedule work in the order jobs land with a firm deadline attached, so a brief without one risks sitting at the bottom of the pile. If a job genuinely needs to move fast, expect that to come at a cost, most agencies charge a premium for rush turnarounds, so the earlier a brief lands, the more room there is to do it properly and affordably.

A brief is not paperwork to get through before the real work starts. It is the thing that decides how much momentum your marketing actually builds, and how efficiently your agency can build it.

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