In short:
A muddled marketing brief is rarely just a writing problem; it's a warning sign about the health of the client-agency relationship.
* When an agency accepts an unclear brief without challenging it, the silence is telling: the two sides can't have the honest debate the work depends on.
* Pushing back isn't about defending a creative idea. Questioning a weak brief is an agency doing the client a favour, because work built on a poor brief burns the budget for little return.
* The strongest partnerships carry enough trust to survive a robust debate, often with a senior figure who can take a vague brief back to the client without it becoming a fight.
* Fix the relationship and the briefs improve on their own. Ignore it, and the problems return no matter how often you rewrite the document.
A muddled brief is a warning sign of a weak client-agency relationship.
Miners used to take a canary underground with them. If the bird went quiet, it meant the air had turned toxic, and things were about to get really bad. A marketing brief is similar. It’s a small, ordinary document, but the state of it can tell you the health of the whole relationship behind it.
As Caroline Hugall, former Marketing Director at IAG, puts it: “Agency relationships are built on a culture of trust and partnership. The briefing process – for any piece of work – is when the rubber hits the road.” When an agency accepts a marketing brief that isn’t clear on its objectives, audience or message, it’s a sign the relationship isn’t strong enough to have the debate necessary to fix it.
Unlike miners, agencies don’t always spring into action when things are looking grim. When we ran the BetterBriefs Project – a survey of more than 1,700 marketers and agencies across 70 countries – the two groups turned out to be on different planets. 80% of marketers reckoned they were good at writing briefs, but only 10% of agencies agreed.
Agencies rate three-quarters of the briefs they receive as not good enough, but then, more often than not, say nothing. Behind closed doors they’ll talk about the lack of clarity, but rarely have those conversations with the client. That silence is the bird going quiet. If an agency doesn’t feel able to question a muddled brief, it means the two sides can’t have the honest talk the work depends on.
So, why don’t agencies have the hard conversations? Because pushing back feels risky. As Matt Michael, CEO of Droga5 ANZ, admits: “The fear of being shot down is why many agencies stop short of speaking their mind and, ironically, stop short of being great partners.” But this kind of pushback isn't the same as fighting for a particular creative idea, which can be mistaken for ego or award-chasing. It's about the client’s business. When an agency questions an unclear brief, it’s doing the client a favour: work built on a poor brief burns through the client's marketing budget for little return. Pushing back is a sign the agency is on the same side as the client, trying to solve their problem for them.
What to do with a poor brief
Richard Goodrich, who has spent decades measuring client-agency relationships at Aprais, puts it plainly when asked how to solve this problem: “Simply push back, ask for clarity.”
When clients can see that the pushback comes from a genuine interest in their business growth, the relationship changes. It builds trust. As Matt Michael puts it, the aim is to stop thinking in terms of sides at all: “there is only one side – the brand’s side. It’s all of you versus the world.” Do this and the agency stops being a supplier that takes orders and becomes a partner. Richard measures this directly, and finds the healthiest relationships sit at around 80% trust on both sides – high enough to survive a robust debate. In fact, trust like that is built from hard conversations, not from nodding along to a weak brief.
In the best relationships, someone owns this job. Richard believes the strongest partnerships all have a senior business director at the centre of them – someone who, he says, “acts as the advocate for the client in the agency, or the advocate for the agency and the client. A bit like Switzerland.” It’s a lovely way to put it. This is the person who can carry a vague brief back to the client and ask the awkward questions without it turning into a fight, because they’ve earned the right to. Take them away, Richard warns, and the whole thing tends to topple like dominoes.
Which brings us back to the bird. It’s tempting to treat a poor brief as a document to be fixed back at the agency – try to find an insight that fits, put it in a different template and tighten the objectives. There might be a path through, but the brief is really a relationship in miniature, and the muddle almost always starts with two sides who aren’t speaking freely to each other. Sort that out – give the agency permission to push, give the client a reason to listen – and the briefs improve and the work gets better. Ignore it, and you can send the canary down as many times as you like. But there’s a good chance it’ll keep going quiet.
FAQs
Q: How do I know if my/my team's briefs are as good as they could be?
A: Ask your agencies. They're the ones receiving the briefs and best placed to give you a steer on what's working and what can be improved.
Q: What if my agencies never push back on my briefs?
A: It may be that you're a great brief writer! Or it may be that the agency doesn't feel confident and secure enough in the relationship to push back constructively. Your job here is to foster an environment of respectful challenge and make it an expectation that you have of your agency partners.
Q: When should I be discussing briefs and their quality with my agencies?
A: We would recommend having a chat about briefs in general when there is not a specific brief in play or a screaming deadline that's fast approaching. Make space for the conversation and encourage an open dialogue.
If you struggle to get the conversation started with your team/ agency download our cartoons as a starting point.
About us:
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). Matt (together with Pieter-Paul) 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.