How to Write a Brief for Your Agency or Team That Gets It Right the First Time

Admin Cream · · upskilling
How to Write a Brief for Your Agency or Team That Gets It Right the First Time

An 8-part brief structure you can use today, a worked Thai example, and what to leave out, so your agency and team spend less time on revisions.

You send your agency a brief that says "we want a New Year campaign that really pops and makes the brand feel modern." Two weeks later you get three key visuals back and none of them work. Your boss asks why they missed. The agency asks what "pops" meant. The problem is not anyone's talent. The brief simply did not give enough information to make decisions.

What a good brief is

A brief is a short document that explains why the work exists, who you want to change the mind or behaviour of, and what counts as success. A good brief does not dictate every step. It gives a frame clear enough for the team to generate ideas without drifting off target. One to two pages is the practical length. Anything longer usually means key decisions have not been made yet.

An 8-part brief structure that fits almost any job

  1. Background: the current situation of the brand or product, in three to five lines.
  2. Objective: the business result you want, such as more trial sign-ups, not just "build awareness".
  3. Target Audience: who must see this work, what they think right now, and what holds them back.
  4. Key Message: the one sentence people should remember. If you cannot write it in one sentence, it is not clear yet.
  5. Reason to Believe: the facts that make the message credible.
  6. Deliverables: the pieces you need, with sizes, channels and quantities.
  7. Mandatories: what must or must not appear, such as logo, legal copy, brand colours.
  8. Timeline, Budget and Approver: due dates for each round, budget, and who makes the final call.

A worked example

Say you run a fitness class booking app and need short videos for social.

Notice there is no "pop", "modern" or "engaging". Everyone reads those words differently. Replace them with things you can measure or picture.

Mistakes that cause round after round of revisions

Making everything the key message

If you list five messages, the work will try to say all five and none will land. Pick one main message and treat the rest as supporting information.

The approver never saw the brief

One of the most common reasons work gets scrapped is that a senior decision maker sees the direction for the first time at the review. Always have the final approver sign off the brief before it goes to the agency.

Feedback that does not refer back to the brief

Instead of "I don't like this colour", say "this does not yet make the target feel it is easy to start, which is our key message." Feedback like that tells the team what to fix.

If you cannot state the goal in one sentence, do not send the brief yet.

Briefing an internal team vs an agency

An internal team already knows the company context, so the brief can be shorter, but it still needs an objective, a deadline and a decision maker. For urgent work, use a three-line format: what, for whom, when it is due and who approves. An agency needs more background and more constraints, because they are not in your meetings.

How to start

  1. Copy the 8-part structure above into a team template.
  2. Write the key message before anything else. If you cannot, go back to the objective.
  3. Have the approver read and sign off the brief before it goes out.
  4. Hold a short briefing call and ask the agency to play back what they understood.
  5. Keep briefs that produced great work as examples for the team.

Writing clear briefs is a skill marketing leads use every week. If you are building a career in this field, read marketing plan basics and marketing career paths, or browse marketing courses from our partners on the courses page.