Here is a striking fact: more than 80% of marketers believe they write good briefs, but only 10% of creative agencies agree with them. That is not a minor misunderstanding — it is a gap that costs time, money and energy on both sides of the table every single week.
That gap also has a price tag. Respondents in the global BetterBriefs study, which included more than 1,700 marketers and agency professionals from more than 70 countries, estimated that around one third of all marketing budget gets wasted because of poor briefs and misdirected work. One in every three euros disappears before a campaign has even gone live.
I see this pattern every week with new clients who come to OMB. Not because they lack intelligence or good intentions, but because nobody ever showed them what a strong agency brief actually looks like. That is exactly what this article is going to do.
A brief is not a form to fill in
The first idea you need to let go of is that a brief is a box-ticking exercise where you download a template, fill in the fields and email the file to the agency. That approach does not work, and it never will.
A strong agency brief is both the document and the conversation through which you, as the client, make the strategic direction, the desired outcome and the rules of engagement clear to the agency. It is a roadmap for creative thinking, not a shopping list for the agency to work through obediently.
To understand why that matters, you need to grasp the difference between a brief and a briefing. The written brief is the tangible document you prepare. The briefing is the way you hand that document over: the live conversation, the space for questions and the shared interpretation of the assignment. If you simply send an email with a PDF attached, you skip exactly the moment where most misunderstandings arise and where an agency builds the enthusiasm that makes great work possible.
What a strong brief needs to contain
A good main brief is one to two pages long and runs to approximately 800 to 1,200 words. Everything heavier — such as research findings, data, brand guidelines and media plans — belongs in appendices, not in the brief itself. That keeps the brief readable and focused.
Background and context form the starting point of every strong brief. You describe the market situation, your brand’s position in the category and what has worked or not worked in the past. Without that context, the agency has to guess at the playing field, and that is always a bad start.
The business problem is the heart of the brief. In no more than two sentences, you describe the specific business challenge that communication needs to help solve. Not “we want more visibility”, but: what concrete problem or opportunity is at the centre of this brief, and why is now the right moment to act?
The goal hierarchy makes clear what success looks like on three levels: the business goal, the behavioural goal and the attitude goal. Every goal needs a benchmark, a concrete target and a deadline, because goals without numbers are not goals — they are wishes that will never be measured.
The target audience is more than a demographic description. Instead of “women aged 25 to 45”, you write a human portrait: what do they want, what frustrates them, what stops them from choosing your brand? Demographic data is a starting point, but a vivid portrait is what genuinely helps an agency find the right tone of voice.
The desired response describes what the audience should think, feel and do after experiencing the campaign. Those three dimensions — think, feel, do — give the agency a clear reference point for the creative work.
The key message is one thought that needs to stick, not a list of claims you want to communicate. One strong sentence always outperforms four average ones, because people simply cannot retain more than one core idea per brand.
The proof explains why the audience should believe you. Which facts, product truths or customer experiences support the key message and make it credible?
Deliverables and scope describe what the agency needs to produce and what falls explicitly outside the assignment. That second part is at least as important as the first, because it prevents scope creep and avoids disagreements later in the process.
Channels indicate which channels are mandatory, which are a hypothesis and where the agency still has room to advise. Do not close channels off too quickly if you are not certain, because a good agency can help you make the right choices here.
Timeline and budget should always appear explicitly in the brief. You record the briefing date, the readback, the feedback rounds, the go-live date and the measurement moment. You also state what is available for media, production and agency fees. Budget is not a taboo — an agency that does not know the budget will automatically aim at the wrong level of ambition.
KPIs are the measuring stick against which you assess the work. Choose no more than three to five, and formulate each one with a starting value, a target value, a deadline and a data source. More KPIs do not lead to more focus — they lead to less direction.
Stakeholders and approvals determine who gets to give feedback, who makes the final decision and who carries out the brand and legal checks. Writing this down before the briefing prevents the creative process from stalling later on because of internal disagreements.
Brand and legal constraints describe the tone of voice, the visual identity rules, the claims that must not be used and the privacy requirements that apply. This is not a detail — a campaign that needs to be revised after the fact because of legal or brand issues always costs more than a brief that addresses these things clearly from the start.
Where it goes wrong
The most common mistakes are surprisingly consistent and come up again and again. BetterBriefs names them explicitly based on years of research. Briefing too early — before internal alignment has been reached — leads to a brief that has to be rewritten halfway through the process. Too many objectives in one brief mean that the agency does not know what truly matters and tries to solve everything at once. Briefing by committee, where too many people give input simultaneously without a clear decision-maker, makes the assignment vague and the feedback contradictory. And jargon — words like “impactful”, “disruptive” or “update” — without explaining why any of that is relevant gives an agency nothing concrete to hold onto.
The result of all these mistakes is not just frustration but wasted time and money. BetterBriefs research shows that the average number of creative development rounds per campaign now stands at around five. Every extra round costs time, money and energy from both you and the agency, while the cause can almost always be traced back to three manageable problems: unclear strategic direction, too many stakeholders without a clear decision-maker and the absence of evaluation criteria agreed upon in advance.
Poor brief language versus strong brief language
The difference between a brief that works and one that does not is often found in the language itself, and here is what that difference looks like in practice.
“We want more impact in the market” is poor brief language because the sentence says nothing concrete about what problem needs to be solved or what success looks like. “Too few category entrants consider our brand; awareness is high, but preference lags behind” is strong brief language because it names the actual communication problem.
“Make something buzzy” gives the agency nothing to work with, while “Increase consideration among target group X from 14% to 20% in Q4” is measurable, time-bound and relevant.
“Budget to follow” is an invitation to aim at the wrong level of ambition, while “Media €120k and production €35k, with reallocation within this range open for discussion” is both clear and flexible.
The underlying pattern is simple: strong brief language is concrete, decisive and verifiable, while poor brief language is vague, full of jargon or already halfway towards a solution.
The briefing process in the right order
A strong briefing almost never fails because of its content — it fails because of the process surrounding it. The sequence that works starts with internal strategic clarity, even before you write a single word. After that, you write the main brief and then seek internal alignment on budget, brand and legal constraints.
Only once that internal alignment is in place do you schedule the live briefing with the agency. After that briefing, you ask for a readback: the agency tells you what they heard and how they understand the assignment. Based on that, you organise a maximum of two solid feedback rounds against criteria agreed in advance, after which you sign off on the final assignment.
The readback is not a formality — it is the moment when you discover whether the agency understood your brief or heard their own story instead. The evaluation criteria you agree on in advance ensure that feedback is about the work itself and not about personal taste.
What a good brief delivers
Fewer feedback rounds, better work and less wasted budget are the three direct benefits of a strong agency brief. But the most important benefit may be that you, as the client, become clearer about what you actually want to achieve, because writing a good brief forces you to make choices you might otherwise keep postponing.
A good agency brief is not an extra step in the marketing process — it is the foundation that the entire process rests on. Everything that follows — strategy, creative work, production and launch — is built on what you set down here. Get it right, and an agency can actually bake something great for you.
Rubin Koot is the founder of Online Marketing Bakery, a B2B marketing agency in Roermond that does not execute what you ask for — it tackles what you actually need.