How to brief a content or PR agency and get better work back

Most briefs describe an output: five blog posts, a company profile, a press release. Almost none describe what the output has to achieve. So the agency guesses, the client reacts to the guess, and two rounds vanish into discovering what was in the client's head all along.

A good brief takes twenty minutes to write and saves days. Here is what belongs in it.

What should a content brief include?

A useful brief covers six things: the business objective, one primary audience, the key message, the deliverable and format, mandatory constraints such as claims or compliance, and who approves the work and by when. Everything else is helpful context, not essential.

1. The business objective

Not "raise brand awareness". Something a person could verify: enquiries from manufacturing companies, a specific launch covered by two trade publications, a sales team that stops re-explaining the product. When the objective is concrete, the writer can argue for choices that serve it.

2. One primary audience

"Customers, investors and employees" is three briefs pretending to be one. Pick the reader who matters most for this piece, and describe them in a sentence: what they already know, what they are worried about, what would make them act.

3. The single key message

If the reader remembers one sentence, what should it be? Writing that sentence is uncomfortable, because it forces a choice. It is also the fastest way to align everyone before work starts.

4. Deliverable, format and length

Word count, file format, where it will be published, whether images are needed and who supplies them. Small details, but they are the ones that cause the awkward email two days before the deadline.

5. Constraints

Claims you cannot make. Competitors you cannot name. Regulatory disclaimers. Terminology the company insists on, and terms it has banned. Confidential material. Anyone working in finance, healthcare or law should put this section first, not last.

6. Approvals and timing

Who signs off, how many reviewers there are, and by when feedback comes back. Most delays are not writing delays. They are approval delays that nobody planned for.

Give examples, especially negative ones

Tone is hard to describe and easy to point at. Two links to writing you admire and one to writing you find embarrassing will teach a writer more than a page of adjectives. "Confident but not corporate" means nothing until you show what corporate looks like to you.

How to give feedback that improves the second draft

Feedback that says "not quite there" costs a round. Feedback that says "the opening buries what we do; our buyers care about turnaround time more than technology" gets fixed in an hour.

• React to the objective, not to personal taste: does this serve the reader we named?
• Consolidate comments from all reviewers before sending, and resolve contradictions internally.
• Separate fact corrections from preference. Facts are non-negotiable; preferences are a conversation.
• Send everything in one pass. Drip-fed comments produce drip-fed drafts.

What a good agency should ask you

A brief is a starting point, not a contract. If an agency takes your brief and starts writing without a single question, be slightly worried. Expect to be asked what happens after someone reads this, which competitor you lose deals to, and what you have already tried that did not work. Those questions are where the useful work begins.