Poor briefings, on the other hand, harbor the risk that the budget will be wasted. Either because a lot of rebriefings and correction loops have to be made in the development process between brands/companies and agencies, or because the marketing measures fizzle out without any effect.
The old adage therefore applies to bad briefings: shit in, shit out. This must be avoided.
And precisely because agency briefings often set a lot of money in motion (agency fees, production, media budget, rights), we consider briefing to be an absolutely essential basic skill in marketing.
Do you even need a briefing? Isn't it enough to call the agency and discuss all the essentials?
Maybe, but it can also backfire. The larger and more important the project, the more urgent a written briefing becomes.
One reason is that when writing the agency briefing, you need to be clear about what exactly the purpose of the briefing is and what is actually to be achieved.
A written document also helps to gather the internal stakeholders and rally them behind the briefing. This saves the briefers clarifying discussions and frictional losses later in the process.
Another important point: there are often more people involved on the recipient side in the agencies than those who take part in the briefing discussion. The briefing is therefore passed on within the agency. In this case, a written document is simply more reliable.
But how do you write a good agency briefing? There are of course numerous different templates, but at their core they are all very similar. Here is our briefing template that has been tried and tested over many years:
Start with a brief summary of the task in a maximum of two lines. This is how you frame the briefing and control perception.
Describe the initial situation, in particular the market and competitive situation. What is the fundamental problem or opportunity that you want to address?
What do you want to achieve commercially and how do you want to measure the success of your measure (KPIs)?
Who do you want to reach with the measure to be developed? Define the target group in socio-demographic terms, but above all in terms of their expectations, motivations and problems (human insights).
the key objectives for the planned measure, as they are upstream of the business objectives and ensure that they are achieved. There are cognitive (perception), affective (attitude) and activating goals (action).
What do we offer, what is the product (service) and what can it do? How do we solve the problem of the target groups, what are the benefits and supporting features (RTBs)?
With what tonality do we speak - often described in the form of 4-5 adjectives.
What exactly should the agency deliver, what are the components of the service package, including naming the most important touchpoints that can be used.
Legal or technical framework conditions, design guidelines, etc.
Timetable for the provision of agency services; steps and deadlines, planned from the time the briefing is handed over to the start of the measure.
If possible, conclude the briefing with an indication of the available project budget, broken down into sensible items (e.g. agency fee vs. production vs. media).
The above list is a common, tried and tested basic template that can be used for a wide range of briefing topics. Of course, the template can also be adapted to brief topics such as (packaging) design or technical/digital products.
The template for the agency briefing is of course only a guideline, but it does not fill itself. Writing an agency briefing requires strategic groundwork in which the following points should be taken into account:
In particular, the problem and the objectives must be clearly formulated. After all, if the company does not know what it wants to achieve with the briefed measure, who is supposed to know?
Be focused and "single minded" in the task at hand.
Do not overload the briefing. If necessary, include additional information such as a market analysis or similar in a separate document with the briefing.
Writing a good briefing is not actually rocket science, but it does require some practice and coaching in addition to a good briefing template.
So take part in our one-day briefing training course now and become a briefing champion!
Strategy consultant and marketing expert with many years of experience in brand management for top international brands such as Lucky Strike, Coca-Cola and Obi. Co-founder of Brylliant.one, the digital solution for briefing and agency management
Brylliant GmbH, 2024, All rights reserved.
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