POV: Are client briefs getting worse?

Every generation tends to think the end is nigh. The Y2K scare, the Mayan apocalypse of 2012, Halley’s Comet – we all love to see wolves where there are spaniels. Designers and design writers are no different, watching trends and shifts, trying to discern if the design industry as a whole is collapsing beneath our feet. But surely not the brief. A steering, stabilising document for teams dating back to the mid-20th century, when corporate branding and advertising grew in complexity and deliverables, the brief has long been standard practice. “Off-brief” is a sin. The brief is bible. The brief is solid.

Or perhaps not. Two years ago, a chief strategy officer at Google/WPP, Ed Tsue, wrote on LinkedIn, “I remember a time when the brief was very important. Getting it perfect and approved by everyone and their moms was a ‘do not pass go’ moment in the process. I haven’t obsessed about a brief in years. Most briefs I see today are nothing more than regurgitated objectives from whatever the client said, vague audience definitions, [...] re-iterated objectives disguised as strategies (eg. grow the brand by increasing cultural relevance) and deadlines (eg. tomorrow).”

Ed Tsue’s comments are a pretty damning indictment of the state of the modern creative brief, though they could be chalked up to perspective. Similar conversations have also been bubbling up on Reddit, suggesting that his view isn’t entirely isolated. Recently this conversation resurfaced, when, out of a pool of 3,500 marketers, a third identified “knowledge of writing agency briefs” as a skill gap in their business – in larger organisations with 250+ employees, that number rises slightly, to 38 per cent.

There is anecdotal evidence of clients trying to close this knowledge gap. London design agency Studio Nomad, for example, was recently asked by a client to help them to run a workshop on how to prepare the perfect brief for agencies. When Studio Nomad raised the question – “what makes a good brief?” – on LinkedIn, founders came in droves with their own briefing wishlists, based on their experiences working across separate fields in copywriting, design and advertising.

From these comments, and from our own conversations with founders since, some trends begin to emerge in the kinds of briefs teams seem to be receiving these days. One such trend is length. Aries Moross, founder of Studio Moross – which works with major clients across music, entertainment and gaming – confirms that they have noticed “longer, more structured briefs,” often featuring “a higher word count.” Aries adds: “I have also noticed that some briefs have been written with AI, which can often make them more wordy.”

Mike Reed, co-founder and ECD of copywriting agency Reed Words, raised this issue on Studio Nomad’s original post too. “Probably in part because we’re a writing agency, a lot of our briefs come with numerous, often chunky, documents attached. ‘We thought we’d just give you everything we have’ sounds admirably open, but is a nightmare. What’s important and what’s not? What’s most important? Where do we find it? How will we know? You can waste so much time trawling through unmediated internal bumph if you’re not careful.”

Length is one thing, but Terry Stephens, co-founder of Nomad, thinks the biggest way briefs steer work off course today is actually stakeholder misalignment. Terry recalls the Nomad team responding to a client’s request for proposal and feeling “very excited” by the seismic creative shift the client seemed to want. There were check-ins and lots of enthusiasm. Then, came the big presentation day. “It (the work and us) completely bombed,” says Terry. “The key decision-makers weren’t expecting anywhere near that level of change, and they didn’t agree with the target audience that was outlined in the brief.”

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Client-creative mix-ups, after all, are as old as the brief itself. And some founders, like Aries, argue briefs are improving, not deteriorating. “I’ve noticed clients having a better understanding of their briefs and what they want or need, so in some ways it has improved due to better awareness of what is required for a project.” Perhaps that awareness, though, is also responsible for the length of contemporary briefs. As clients grow more attuned to the design process (aided and abetted by design media), they become chronic oversharers – anxious about leaving out the one detail that might unlock the “true” answer.

From his experience at Nomad, Terry is also optimistic about creative briefs that pass his desk today. In particular, he notes that they seem to be getting more ambitious in scope. “Brands are more aware than ever that they need to connect with people, build deep emotional relationships and strong fandoms. So briefs are focusing more on ideas that tell a story rather than a laundry list of ‘a logo, a TV spot, three social posts and an OOH billboard’.”

Whether or not this ambition is helping deliver more focused briefs, Terry has seen a more collaborative way of briefing. “Some clients invite us in to help shape the brief; others are bringing in external consultants to help advise on the shaping and delivery.” Terry sees this as a good thing – only serving to help clients and creative alike – but not everyone agrees. In his 2023 statement, Ed Tsue argued too much collaboration has actually weakened the creative brief. “Things like ‘territories’ and ‘tissue sessions’ transformed the brief from a definitive document to a perpetually fluid one,” he says.

Ultimately, it seems that briefs are not only in flux, but there is also some fundamental disagreement on the creative side about what makes a good or bad one. Design has a tendency to point the confusion at the client’s door, but perhaps we’re just as guilty of adding to the dance. “So much can be misinterpreted from a written description without clarification,” says Aries. Perhaps that’s why, beyond any other marker, a good brief for Aries is a face-to-face discussion where there is time to “dig into the details”.

As for the state of the brief, despite some whispers online that the whole affair might soon dissolve into an unending, nebulous dance between parties, it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, in 2025, when ChatGPT is writing plenty of briefs, nothing is more valuable than a client writing down, quite simply, what’s wrong – without spending too much time worrying about how to fix it.