In a Nutshell:
This article explores the multifaceted relationship between AI and brief writing.
- AI can be both helpful and unhelpful depending on how it is used in brief writing.
- Human input is an important part of the brief-writing process.
- The best approach is a balanced one. By leveraging AI as a tool rather than a replacement, marketers can unlock new levels of efficiency while still maintaining the human touch that makes great briefs great.
- AI tools like BriefCoach offer exciting possibilities for the future of marketing.
AI can help you write better briefs but only if you use it right. Here's why letting it write from scratch is backfiring, and what to do instead.
If you’ve been using AI to help with your brief writing, you might be worried about it “sounding like AI”. So you go through and remove any telltale signs – phrases like “It’s not about X, it’s about Y”, “At its core…” or “But here’s the thing…”
But the most obvious giveaway of AI authorship isn’t the language, it’s the lack of thinking.
Before we explain, let’s make one thing clear: we love AI at BetterBriefs! We use it all the time and believe AI has real value when used properly. This article aims to help you understand how it can help and hinder.
Balanced to the point of blandness
At first glance, briefs written by AI look comprehensive. Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini can write briefs and fill out templates with all the necessary sections. They even sound pretty good. The problem is that none of it commits to anything.
AI is trained to be measured. It will present options or keep things broad rather than make decisions. But the whole point of a brief is to make clear decisions. Define a clear problem for communications to solve, target a specific audience and communicate a USP that single-mindedly goes after one thing.
When an agency receives a brief that doesn’t make those calls, it ends up doing the strategic work the marketer was supposed to do. Our research has demonstrated that 60% of marketers already use the creative process to clarify their strategy. With more marketers using AI every day, that number is likely even higher now.
Exhaustive lists
When AI isn’t ‘briefed’ properly, it doesn't know what's important. As a result, it will include everything. You'll see proof points listed like shopping lists: "Quality, value, reliability, service." A good brief sacrifices and cuts out every bit of information that’s not part of the core, and leaves the rest out. But AI cannot sacrifice because it doesn't understand the strategic trade-offs of what’s important and what’s not.
No point of view
AI-authored briefs also lack perspective. Without clear guidance, they describe the situation neutrally, present options evenhandedly and avoid taking a stance. But strategy requires a point of view. Why this audience over that one? Why now? Why this message when we could say something else? Human-written briefs answer these questions.
Why this matters
The problem with using AI to write the brief for you is what happens when your agency receives the brief. With no clear direction, they have to guess, as all the decision-making is left to them. Agencies then spend too much time on figuring out what the brief is about and too little time ideating. The result is mediocre work that tries to cover all the bases rather than going deep into one area. Marketers then give feedback based on personal preference because the brief doesn't provide criteria. So, the work goes through five rounds because no one is clear what success looks like.
Our research shows that up to 30% of marketing budgets are wasted on poor briefs and misdirected work. AI-written briefs accelerate this waste, creating the illusion of strategy without the substance.
And agencies can tell. Even if they don't say it out loud, they know when a brief was generated rather than written. And it doesn’t inspire confidence in your marketing ability.
When AI helps and when it doesn't
We believe there are plenty of use cases for AI in brief writing. In fact, BetterBriefs is currently building BriefCoach, an AI tool that helps marketers improve their briefs.
BriefCoach checks your brief for clarity, identifies missing elements and analyses things like whether your objectives are measurable or your audience is too broad. It’s just one way that AI can help you get to better briefs.
But using AI to write the brief from scratch? That outsources the very thinking that makes the brief valuable. After all, the brief is where strategy gets finalised and put into a contract. Where the tough choices get made. AI can help refine that thinking – but it cannot do the thinking for you.
How to use AI properly
If you're going to use AI in brief writing, follow one simple rule: write the brief yourself first. Ensure all the strategic decisions are in place. Decide what’s ‘information overload’ and what you're willing to sacrifice.
Then, use AI as an editor, not an author. The marketers who do this will write clearer, sharper briefs. The ones who let AI write for them will end up with bland documents that sound good but deliver very little.
Like RoboCop, get the best from both worlds.
*Warning: AI is progressing so fast that this article might be completely outdated by the time you read it.
Pieter-Paul von Weiler is the co-founder of BetterBriefs, an advisory and training business that helps marketers write better briefs and deliver more impactful ideas. A highly awarded former agency strategist, having worked at Publicis Amsterdam, Publicis London, Saatchi & Saatchi and AJF Partnership. Pieter-Paul has served as an Effie judge across Australia and APAC for over a decade.
Together with co-founder Matt Davies, he wrote the BetterBriefs Project and The Best Way for a Client to Brief an Agency, a practical guide for marketers to improve the quality of briefs, co-authored by Mark Ritson and published in partnership with the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA). Pieter-Paul (together with Matt) also led the BetterIdeas Project, a global study exposing the poor state of the creative evaluation process. The study aims to improve the creative decision-making and evaluation practices and was launched in partnership with the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and the IPA.