Even the best agency only amplifies a clear decision; it cannot make the decision for you. Briefs fail when they hand over tactics - a campaign, a channel, a deadline - with no strategy underneath: who this is for, what you want them to do, and why they would. Settle that first and the brief almost writes itself.
Most briefs I see are careful about the wrong things. They specify formats, timings and deliverables in detail, then stay vague on the one thing the agency cannot supply: the decision the work is meant to carry. The result is work that meets the spec and misses the point.
What a brief is actually for
A brief is a handover of decisions, not a list of tasks. Its job is to transfer, cleanly, what you already know: the audience you are trying to move, the action you want from them, the reason that action should follow, and what success will look like when it does. Everything else the agency can solve. That part, only you can give them.
When those decisions are settled, the brief gets shorter and clearer, not longer. You stop compensating with instruction because there is nothing missing to compensate for. The agency knows what it is aiming at, and can spend its talent on how to hit it rather than guessing what it is.
Why good work still misses
When an agency delivers work that misses, the reflex is to question the agency. Often the fault entered earlier, in a brief that handed over a decision nobody had made. The agency fills that gap with its own assumptions, because it has to make something, and the output reflects the guess rather than your intent.
An agency cannot brief itself on the decision you skipped. It can only guess, and then you pay to correct the guess.
This is the pattern across most marketing problems: the work gets commissioned before the decision underneath it is settled, the same way a launch leaks when the offer was never nailed down. The execution is not the weak link. The brief that fed it was.
The research says the same thing. Reviewing why product launches fail for Harvard Business Review, Joan Schneider and Julie Hall found the most common cause was not the product or the spend, but poor preparation, the thinking that should have happened before anyone started making. Briefs inherit that gap directly. What stays unresolved upstream turns into revisions, drift and blown budget downstream.
What to settle before you brief
Do the deciding before the briefing. Settle who the work is for, narrowed to the audience that matters most rather than everyone who might respond. Settle the single action you want and the honest reason someone would take it. Settle what success looks like and how you will know. Write those down first; the brief is then mostly transcription.
Resist the urge to lead with tactics. A channel, a format or a campaign idea in the brief feels like progress, but it quietly skips the decision it should be serving. Decide the intent, hand it over clearly, and let the agency bring the how. That is the division of labour that actually works.
Get the order right and the brief gets easy
Briefing well is less about a better template and more about better preparation. When the strategy is settled, a strong brief takes an afternoon, because you are writing down decisions rather than trying to make them in the document. When it is not, no template saves you, and the brief becomes the place where unresolved strategy goes to hide. That is why we settle the direction with clients before anyone briefs a maker; you can see how we work.
Get that order right and the agency relationship transforms. You hand over a clear decision, they return work that carries it, and the arguments about revisions mostly disappear, because there was never an unmade decision buried in the brief for the work to trip over.
What makes a good marketing brief?
A good brief hands over decisions, not just tasks. It states who the work is for, what you want them to do, why they should, and what success looks like. The tactics, channels and deadlines matter, but they sit on top of those decisions. If the decisions are missing, the brief is a wish list.
Why does good work still miss the mark?
Usually because the brief handed over an unresolved decision. The agency fills the gap with its own assumptions, and the work reflects those rather than your intent. That reads as an execution miss, but the cause was upstream: something that should have been settled before the brief was written was not.
How much detail should a brief include?
Enough decision, not more instruction. Be precise about the audience, the action you want and the reason it should work, then leave the agency room to solve how. Briefs that over-specify tactics while under-specifying intent get compliant work that misses, because the agency was told what to make but not what it is for.
What should we settle before we even brief an agency?
The strategy the brief exists to express: who you serve, what you offer, and why they choose you. If those are unclear, no brief can hide it and no agency can supply it. Settle the direction first, then briefing an agency becomes straightforward, because you are handing over a decision rather than a hope.
Do the deciding before the briefing, and the work stops missing.
Peter has led delivery across Accenture, Colonial First State, Westpac and Telstra. He makes sure the thinking is settled before the work starts, so what gets built actually lands.
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