How to Write a Great Marketing Brief

A Practical Guide for Marketers and Agencies.

If there’s one document that quietly determines whether marketing work soars or sinks, it’s the brief. Not the pitch deck, not the creative idea, not even the channel plan. The brief.

Yet despite its outsized importance, briefing is still one of the most misunderstood and under-invested-in skills in marketing. Too often, briefs are rushed, vague, or treated as a formality before “the real work” begins.

That’s a big mistake.

A strong brief is where strategy meets execution. It's the moment where commercial objectives are translated into something creative teams can actually build. And when it’s done well, it'll save you time, money, and frustration on all sides.

Many expert marketers before me have written persuasively about the importance of strategic clarity in briefs, boiling them down to a small number of fundamental questions. Building on that thinking, this article focuses on how marketers can write briefs that don’t just inform, but inspire and align.

Because writing a banging brief is not a nice-to-have, it’s a core marketing capability.

First, let’s clear something up: the marketing brief is not admin

A brief is not a background document, it's not a shopping list of deliverables, and it's definitely not a thinly disguised way of saying, “We need a campaign by Friday.”

A brief is a strategic tool.

For marketers, it’s how you articulate the problem you are trying to solve.

For agencies, it’s how they understand where to focus their thinking and creativity.

For clients and stakeholders, it’s how confidence is built in the work that ladders back to real business outcomes.

Weak briefs produce busy work. Strong briefs produce effective work.

The real job of a brief

At its core, a brief has one job: to create absolute clarity on what success looks like and why it matters.

That clarity comes from answering a small number of critical questions well.

Here are the ones that I think matter most.

1. What is the actual problem we’re trying to solve?

This sounds obvious, but it rarely is.

Many briefs jump straight to solutions: “We need a campaign.” “We need a new brand platform.” “We need more content.”

But those are outputs, not problems.

A strong brief clearly defines the underlying commercial or behavioural challenge. For example:

• Sales are flat despite high awareness.

• We are losing consideration at a key decision moment.

• We are attracting the wrong type of customer.

  
  

If you can’t articulate the problem in one or two sharp sentences, the work will drift and no amount of creative excellence will fix a poorly defined challenge.

Tip for marketers: Pressure-test your problem statement by asking, if this problem were solved, what would be different for the business?

2. Who exactly are we trying to influence?

“Adults 25–54” is not a target audience. Neither is “SMEs” or “busy mums”.

Great briefs demonstrate real empathy for the audience, what they care about, what they believe, and what gets in the way of choosing your brand or business.

This doesn’t require a 40-page research deck, it requires clarity.

Agencies, consultants, even your in-house marketing teams do their best work when they understand:

• Who the audience is in context

• What motivates them

• What they currently think or do that needs to change

Tip for marketers: If you can describe your audience in a way that a creative team can picture a real person, you’re on the right track.

3. What do we want them to think, feel, or do differently?

This is where many briefs fall apart.

“We want to raise awareness” is not an objective, it’s a metric. “We want to drive engagement” is vague and unhelpful.

A strong brief is explicit about the desired shift. That might look like:

• Re-evaluating the brand as more premium

• Considering the brand earlier in the buying journey

• Feeling more confident choosing you over a competitor

  
  

This is the bridge between strategy and creative execution. Without it, people are left guessing what success actually means for you, your brand and your business.

Tip for marketers: Focus on change. If nothing changes in the audience’s mind or behaviour, the work hasn’t worked.

4. What is the single most important message?

If everything is important, nothing is.

A great brief makes a clear call on the primary message - what the work must communicate above all else. This doesn’t limit creativity, it focuses it.

The best creative ideas are born from constraints that are strategically sound.

Tip for marketers: Ask yourself, if the audience only remembered one thing from this work, what should it be?

5. What does success look like and how will we know?

Finally, strong briefs are explicit about how success will be judged. That doesn’t mean drowning in KPIs. It means being clear about:

• The role this activity plays in the broader business strategy

• The indicators that will tell us we’re on the right track

  
  

This builds trust, alignment, and better decision-making throughout the process.

Why this matters for marketers, agencies, and businesses alike

For marketers, writing strong briefs is a leadership skill. It demonstrates strategic thinking, commercial understanding and - above all - respect for the people you’re asking to do the work.

For agencies and consultants, a good brief is liberating. It replaces ambiguity with focus and allows them to spend time solving the right problem, rather than second-guessing the client.

For clients and stakeholders, a clear brief is evidence that marketing is being run with intent, not instinct.

In short: better briefs create better work, and better working relationships.

The bottom line

The art of writing a great brief isn’t about templates or jargon, it’s about clarity, discipline, and empathy.

When marketers take the time to brief well, they don’t just get better creative. They get work that actually works, which in a world of shrinking attention spans and growing pressure on marketing effectiveness, that’s a skill every marketer needs to nail right now.