how to brief an agency.

most disappointing agency work traces back to the brief. not a badly written brief, usually a brief that specified deliverables instead of a problem — twelve posts and two videos a month, delivered as requested, achieving nothing anyone can point at.

a good brief is short and answers four things: what problem this solves, what the constraints are, who decides, and what would count as it having worked.

it does not need to be long. a page is usually plenty, and a fifteen-page document assembled by committee tends to contain less usable information than a clear paragraph written by the person who understands the business.

— 01brief the problem, not the deliverables.

"we need twelve posts a month" is an order. "enquiries are steady but half of them cannot afford us, and the sales team is losing three days a week" is a brief, and it lets the agency propose something you had not thought of.

this is the difference between buying production and buying judgment. if you specify the output, you have already made the strategic decision yourself and are paying agency rates for execution — which is a legitimate choice, but you should make it knowingly. the same agency will produce noticeably different work depending on which of the two you asked for.

so describe the situation: what is happening commercially, what you have already tried, what worked and what did not, and what you think is causing it. your hypothesis is useful information, provided it is offered as a hypothesis rather than an instruction.

and be honest about the uncomfortable parts. a product with a weak page, a service with a delivery problem, a category where you are more expensive — an agency that learns those in month three has spent two months solving the wrong thing. an agency that reacts badly to hearing them early has told you something useful about working together.

— 02state the constraints plainly.

budget, timeline, approval requirements, what cannot be said for regulatory reasons, who can appear on camera, what the brand will not do. every constraint disclosed early saves a rejected round of work later.

budget especially. withholding it in the hope of a better price produces a proposal built for a different business, and two rounds of revision to reach the number you already had. a range is enough. it also lets a good agency tell you honestly that the problem cannot be solved for that number, which is more useful than a proposal that pretends it can.

and name the approval reality. if three people must sign off and one travels constantly, that is a fact the plan needs to accommodate rather than a problem to discover in week two. the same applies to seasonal pressure: a retailer who cannot review anything in the six weeks before a peak should say so while the plan is being written.

— 03name the decision-maker and the response time.

one named person with the authority to approve, and a stated turnaround for feedback. this single item probably affects output quality more than anything else in the brief.

work degrades in approval queues. a video that needed a small change and waited eleven days for it has missed the moment it was made for, and the team that made it has moved on. forty-eight hours is a reasonable commitment and it is worth writing into the brief as an obligation on your side. slow feedback also quietly changes what an agency proposes next time, toward safer work that needs less defending.

and consolidate feedback. one set of notes from one person beats three conflicting sets from a committee, and where there is genuine disagreement internally, resolve it before it reaches the agency rather than through the work. an agency mediating an internal disagreement produces compromise output that satisfies nobody and reflects badly on everyone involved.

— 04define success as a number.

what has to be true in ninety days for this to have been worth doing. enquiries at a stated volume, cost per acquisition below a figure, appointments booked, a specific search position. one number, agreed before the work starts.

without it, the review at month three becomes a debate about whether the work is good, which is unresolvable. with it, the conversation is about whether the number moved and what to change — which is a much better conversation and it makes the agency accountable to something real.

be realistic about the timeframe too. paid search can move in weeks, brand and content take quarters, and expecting the second on the first schedule guarantees disappointment. if you need results this quarter, say so in the brief — it changes which channels make sense and is better established at the start than discovered at the first review. our own strategy engagements set that number in the first fortnight, and the reporting is built around it rather than around whatever looks good at the time.

more on this: how to brief a content creator, how to brief an agency properly, how to brief a shoot.