In a Nutshell:
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- How you write a brief directly affects how energised agencies feel working on it—and the quality of ideas they produce.
- Briefs that lack a clearly defined problem force creative teams to guess, resulting in scattered, unfocused work.
- Cramming multiple objectives, audiences or messages into one brief dilutes impact and leads to bland ideas.
- Defining what success looks like gives creatives a destination to aim for while leaving them space to find the best route there.
Bland briefs lead to bland work. What can marketers do to reignite the energy?
If you want your agency to bring energy and ambition, give them something worth getting energised around. How you write the brief has a major impact on how agencies feel working on it. Here are four tips to help inject more energy into briefs:
Tip #1: Nail the problem, not just the task.
Every strong idea starts with a sharp, well-defined problem. If the brief doesn’t spell out what needs solving, how can the agency be expected to solve it? Everyone involved with the brief should be 100% clear on why the brief was written. Be precise about what needs changing: awareness, perception, behaviour, or something else? Also, explain why it matters to the brand and to the audience. Make the problem so clear that no one can wriggle out of it. Without clarity around the problem, the work risks becoming a scattergun of half-formed ideas.
Tip #2: Keep a single-minded focus.
Briefs often try to do too much at once. And things get very messy very quickly when multiple problems, audiences, messages and objectives get crammed into a single brief. This leads to confusion about what direction the brief is setting, ultimately leading to broad (and bland) ideas. Every good brief has a single-minded focus, with all components complementing and building on one another. When the team knows exactly what matters most, they can push harder and go further in the right direction.
Tip #3: Use plain language.
Every time someone has to stop and translate jargon, the energy and creative momentum wanes. Unfortunately, the language ‘marketingese’ is riddled with jargon. Words like “disruptive,” “authentic,” or “dynamic” may sound exciting, but they mean different things to different people. Plain language makes briefs accessible to everyone working on them. If the brief can be read once and understood instantly, the energy flows into ideas instead of interpretation. Clarity always beats cleverness, especially when it comes to briefs.
Tip #4: Define what success looks like.
A brief is a statement of ambition. It should be clear on what success looks like. The best way to guide creative thinking is to clearly define the change the brand aims to create: what should people think, feel, or do differently as a result of the comms activity? A good brief clearly states how you will know that the ideas have been successful. This gives creatives direction – it tells them the destination, while leaving space to decide the route.
When briefs are clear, focused and directional, creative teams can put their energy where it belongs – into ideas. Instead of wasting time decoding the problem, they can explore solutions with confidence. They’ll work past ‘first thoughts’ and create more original work that cuts through.
David Ogilvy famously said, “Give me the freedom of a tight brief” – something agencies still yearn for today. If you give them a sharp problem, a single direction and a clear definition of success, you’ll energise them to unlock the kind of work everyone wants to make.
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.