20.10.2025
Are Client Briefs Getting Worse or Just Changing?
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The conversation comes back every few years, whispered in agency corridors and Slack channels: are client briefs getting worse?
On the surface, it might sound like nostalgia — the idea that “back in the day” briefs were sharper, simpler, more inspiring. But as projects become bigger, timelines shorter, and expectations higher, that question feels worth revisiting. Because if the brief is the starting point of every creative partnership, what happens when that starting point becomes blurry?
The slow decay of clarity
Talk to almost anyone working in design, branding, or advertising, and you’ll hear a familiar frustration. The documents that should inspire creativity have become heavy with detail, dense with attachments, and still, somehow, lacking direction. One strategist we spoke to described it as “getting ten pages of words and no heartbeat.”
The It’s Nice That piece that reignited this debate captured that perfectly: briefs are getting longer, more structured, more corporate — but not necessarily more useful. Teams receive exhaustive context but little clarity. Clients hand over everything they have, hoping that somewhere inside, the magic insight will emerge.
In many cases, the issue isn’t effort, but focus. Marketers and brand teams want to be thorough, but by trying to say everything, they lose the power of saying one clear thing. The result? Confusion masquerading as strategy.
The skill gap no one talks about
Writing a good brief has always been hard. It’s part art, part empathy, part strategy. Yet, as marketing teams grow and roles fragment, fewer people are trained to do it well. A LinkedIn study cited in the It’s Nice That article revealed that a third of marketers identify “writing an agency brief” as a skill gap inside their organizations. That’s not a small number — it’s a systemic problem.
The IPA’s research echoes the same issue. Almost three-quarters of UK agencies say the briefs they receive are unclear, incomplete, or misaligned. And only a third of those briefs clearly define the target audience. That lack of clarity doesn’t just waste time — it breaks trust. It turns what should be a collaboration into a guessing game.
Collaboration without alignment
Another tension comes from the way projects are now managed. The modern brief often passes through layers of stakeholders — brand, digital, procurement, legal, leadership. Each adds input, edits, or slides. Everyone means well. But when every voice needs to be represented, the brief stops being directional and becomes diplomatic.
It’s not uncommon for agencies to be invited to “co-write” the brief with clients. On paper, that sounds great. In reality, it can blur accountability. Who owns the challenge? Who defines success? A brief that tries to make everyone comfortable rarely makes anyone inspired.
The illusion of documentation
We’ve all seen it happen: a beautifully formatted document, complete with diagrams, personas, and moodboards — and yet, no one can explain what the project is really about. The belief that a long document can replace a conversation is one of the biggest traps of modern marketing. A good brief isn’t about information. It’s about alignment. And alignment doesn’t happen in Google Docs — it happens in dialogue. The best creative teams don’t just read briefs, they interrogate them. They ask questions, challenge assumptions, and sometimes help reshape the very problem being solved.
When briefing becomes a box-ticking exercise — a static artifact instead of a living exchange — creative energy disappears. What’s left is execution without insight.
Why it matters
Bad briefs don’t just frustrate agencies. They waste time, money, and potential. The IPA estimates that as much as 26% of marketing budgets are lost due to poor briefing and misdirected work. And beyond the numbers, there’s a deeper cost: missed opportunities for real creative impact.
Every unclear sentence multiplies into hours of back-and-forth. Every missing objective becomes another round of revisions. Every assumption left unexplored delays the moment where something brilliant could happen. When that happens often enough, people stop aiming high. They just aim to get approval.
The brief as collaboration, not control
It’s easy to blame clients for weak briefs — but the truth is, it’s a shared responsibility. Agencies can (and should) take more ownership in the process. Instead of passively accepting a document, they can help clients refine it. A short alignment call before kickoff can save weeks of misunderstanding. A co-created “pre-brief” can turn a vague direction into a meaningful challenge.
At diARK, we’ve seen this work in practice. The best results come when the brief is treated as the start of a conversation, not the end of one. When both sides are honest about what they know — and what they don’t. When curiosity replaces assumption.
The evolution of the brief
Maybe the question isn’t whether briefs are getting worse, but whether they’re keeping up with the world they’re supposed to serve. Marketing has become faster, more fragmented, more reactive. It’s no surprise that the documents trying to define it are under pressure too.
But we shouldn’t give up on the brief. If anything, it’s more important than ever — a shared compass in an increasingly noisy landscape. A great brief doesn’t have to be long. It just has to be clear, honest, and human. It should make people want to create something that didn’t exist yesterday.
And maybe that’s the real challenge today: not to write the perfect brief, but to bring back the kind of collaboration where a brief feels less like paperwork — and more like possibility.
Sources
• It’s Nice That – POV: Are client briefs getting worse?
• Creative Salon – Agency briefing tips & IPA findings, 2024
• Marketing Week – Marketers urged to rethink bad briefs, 2023
• Marketoonist – The Creative Brief Gap, 2021
