A brief is a written assignment through which a company explains to a supplier what it needs and why. A good brief contains the business objective, the target group and its situation, the key message, the required outputs and formats, constraints including brand rules and legal requirements, the budget, deadlines, and information on who approves the output. It is precisely this last point that is often the source of the biggest losses – if five people get involved in approval only after the work is finished, rounds of feedback follow that push up the cost of the project and dilute the result. The brief should also include what the company has already tried and that did not work. Time spent preparing it pays back many times over, because the supplier does not have to guess and the company gets an output that matches expectations.
See also: Approval of marketing outputs, Contract with a marketing agency, Website Acceptance Procedure.
