Why writing briefs doesn’t get easier with experience

It’s an odd paradox: the longer you work in the industry, the harder writing a good brief can feel.
 
Surely with practice, it should get easier? And yet the BetterBriefs research finds the same frustrations appear across brands, categories and markets. When asked, marketing leaders and directors find writing briefs harder compared to mid-level and junior marketers. Experience may deepen perspective, but it doesn’t always simplify the art of writing the brief.
 

When experience works against you
Marketers with more years under their belts bring sharper judgment and strategic know-how. But those same strengths are often tested when it comes to writing briefs, which can feel more complicated because of:
 
More stakeholders getting involved
The higher the stakes, the more people want input – from product to legal and beyond. Each extra opinion adds pressure and complexity, especially when those opinions contradict each other. By the time they reach agencies, briefs have often become vague compromises.
 
Greater financial stakes
The bigger the spend, the greater the pressure for a brief to perform.  As a result, briefs can become ‘safe’ documents with the sharp edges that could have inspired great work taken out.   

 
The irony is clear: the more senior marketers get, the more the system around them can work against clarity. Sharpness gets diluted. Worse still, so does strategic direction.

 
Why experience alone isn’t enough
So why doesn’t the process get easier with time? We think there are a few reasons:
 
Habits calcify
It’s easy to fall back on inherited formats and familiar ways of brief writing. Long-standing habits create consistency, but they also risk embedding the very patterns that agencies find unhelpful.
 
Strategic drift
As marketers rise up the ladder, they may become further removed from customers and frontline insights. Without that closeness to customers, briefs risk sounding more like internal presentations than sharp creative springboards.
 
Committee culture
When too many people edit or approve a brief, it often loses focus. Our research has shown that briefs are frequently rewritten by committee, filled with jargon and extra audiences to satisfy internal politics.

Playing it safe
Higher stakes and bigger budgets often push marketers to be cautious, producing “safe” briefs designed to avoid risk. But since most advertising is ignored (and the investment wasted), playing it safe is actually the riskiest strategy. Safe briefs rarely inspire bold creative, and safe communications rarely deliver strong ROI. In other words, trying to minimise risk in the brief can lead to poor results.
 
These reasons are not so much individual failings, but more a reflection of systemic realities. Which means the solution isn’t just “more experience.” It’s about reshaping the environment that surrounds the briefs.

Breaking the cycle
If experience doesn’t automatically make briefing easier, what can? Inexperience? Ha. No, instead, here are four shifts that can make a difference:
 
1. Reinvest in the fundamentals
The best briefs still hinge on the basics: clear strategic objectives, sharp problem definition and a distinct message. But writing good briefs takes practice - the brief writing muscle needs to be trained on a regular basis.
 
2. Get closer to the customer again
Some of the strongest briefs come from those moments when marketers step outside internal decks and reconnect directly with consumer reality – listening to calls, observing behaviour or spending time in-store. Fresh exposure can lead to fresher insights.
 
3. Streamline approvals
Our research has shown that half the time the right people aren’t even signing off briefs. Defining ownership is key: one person writes, one person approves. Everyone else provides input, not edits. The brief writer should be the custodian of the project who acts as the main point of contact with the agency. The person approving the brief should be well-trained in brief writing.


4. Model simplicity
A brief exists to capture all the thinking a brand has been doing and summarise it in under two pages. If senior marketers show that two pages of plain, direct language are enough for a good brief, others will follow suit. Keeping briefs simple is important as agencies report being twice as energised when they receive briefs with clear strategic direction.

 
The leadership opportunity
Senior marketers set the tone in the marketing department. That makes getting briefs right not just a job to do, but a leadership act. By defending clarity, streamlining the process and reconnecting with the fundamentals, it’s possible to change the culture of brief writing across the team and the organisation. And by extension, an organisation.
 
The humble marketing brief remains one of the industry’s most powerful tools. But it doesn’t write itself and it doesn’t get easier by default. It gets easier with the right conditions: clarity of thought, closeness to the customer and the discipline to resist over-complicating it.
 
It may not get easier with experience, but it can certainly get better.