Nearly all marketers say briefs are essential for evaluating ideas, but only 15% actually use them. That gap costs time, money and better work. Why does it happen, and what can you do about it?
Picture this: A marketing team gathers to review creative concepts. The brief took three weeks to finalise, and everyone agreed on the strategy. But now, 20 minutes into the creative presentation, someone says, "It doesn't feel premium enough." Another voice chimes in: "I like it, but I'm not sure our customers will get this." A third adds, "I don’t think the CEO will go for this tone."
Nobody has mentioned the brief once.
This scene plays out in too many meeting rooms and video calls every day. The document that was supposed to guide decisions has become wallpaper. And with it goes any hope of efficient, effective creative evaluation.
The Data Tells a Troubling Story
The BetterIdeas Project found that more than nine out of ten marketers and agencies say briefs are a key tool for evaluating ideas. Yet only 15% of marketers and 23% of agencies actually use the brief as a reference point when evaluating creative work in practice.
The reason for this gap between values and practice comes down to the mental association of briefs. They’re thought of as documents that belong at the start of the creative process only, but are often forgotten when ideas are presented.
The Problem: Briefs are Seen as Starter Pistols, Not Scorecards
For teams, the brief signals the race is on. It launches the creative process and sets people in motion. But by the time creative work is being reviewed, the brief is still back at the starting line, gathering dust in someone's email folder.
Without the brief to act as an evaluation criterium, evaluating ideas becomes entirely subjective. Personal taste and gut instinct fill the vacuum. Feedback becomes untethered from strategy, and rounds of revisions multiply as teams chase a moving target.
The original strategy – the very reason for the work in the first place – gets buried underneath personal preferences and shifting priorities. Creative teams find themselves trying to satisfy everyone's opinion rather than solving the original business challenge.
The Cost of Ignoring the Brief
The consequences of ignoring the brief during creative evaluation manifest in three critical ways:
Creative drift.
The further teams get from the brief, the less likely the work is to solve the original problem. Without a clear North Star, ideas drift toward the safe, the generic, or the outright irrelevant. Work becomes about avoiding criticism rather than achieving objectives.
Wasted time and money.
Every extra round of feedback means more agency hours spent, more internal meetings scheduled, and more opportunity costs as campaigns get delayed. When a brief isn't the reference point, there's no clear endpoint to the feedback process. Projects that should take weeks stretch into months.
Lower pride in the final work.
When the process is chaotic and the criteria constantly shift, nobody feels ownership of the outcome. The creative becomes a compromise with nobody feeling proud of the work they produce. The best work requires belief, and belief requires a clear purpose.
How to Make Briefs Central to Evaluation
Giving the brief a central role in idea evaluation doesn't require a huge mental shift, or even much work. Here are three practical things you can do right now:
1. Use the brief as the agenda.
Start your review session by recapping the brief. It helps the room zoom in on what needs to be done and gets everyone into the right mindset. This simple ritual helps open the mind for bold ideas that solve the brief.
2. Set clear, agreed criteria upfront.
What does "on brief" actually mean for this specific project? How will you know which solution is right? Ensure you have clear criteria in place and get agreement from all stakeholders before – not after – reviewing any work. Vague alignment leads to disagreements later.
3. Refer back to the brief, every time.
The brief is the contract. Make reviewing against it a non-negotiable step in every round of feedback. If someone provides feedback that isn't rooted in the brief, call it out. "How does this idea help solve the brief?" should become a standard question in reviews. This isn't about shutting down feedback – it's about making sure feedback is relevant and constructive.