Insights

How to Write a Creative Brief an Agency Can Actually Use

A brief explains the problem. It does not have to invent the solution, and it is usually worse when it tries.

The useful ones say what should change: what the business objective is, who has to be reached and what they currently believe, what has already been tried and how it went, what is genuinely fixed - budget, deadline, legal or brand constraints - and how success will be judged. That last one matters most and is left out most.

What can be left open: the idea, the format, the channel, the executional detail. Those are what the team is being paid to work out. If the brief already specifies them, it is an order, not a brief, and the work will be as good as the guess that produced it.

A page is usually enough. Clarity beats length.