What a Campaign Brief Really Needs
Anyone who has ever prepared a campaign knows the situation. The brief is on the table, the questions look manageable. Yet the process ends up taking much longer than expected.
In our experience, that rarely comes down to the document itself. Most briefs are filled out quickly once all the relevant information is already available. The real challenge runs deeper: the brief exposes which decisions inside the company have not actually been made yet.
We see the same three sticking points come up again and again in projects.
1. The target audience is often broader than the campaign
Most companies know their target audiences reasonably well. In the campaign brief, though, that knowledge is often not specific enough.
Terms like industry, buyers, or marketing are not target audiences you can actually plan a campaign around. Depending on the channel, target audiences need to be narrowed down considerably: Should the campaign reach existing customers only, or new customers too? Which industry takes priority? Which functions within the company should be addressed? Which regions matter?
In B2B in particular, this is where sales, marketing, and product management often turn out to have different priorities. A campaign brief does not resolve that conflict, but it does surface it early. That prevents wasted reach and corrections further down the line.
2. Budget is not a single number
One of the most common questions is: what budget would you recommend?
There is no credible standard answer to that. A realistic media budget depends on which target audience needs to be reached, how strong the competition is, which countries are covered, and which channels are used.
We often see a budget already approved before it is even clear which countries or products will actually be advertised. That is why we usually do not talk about a single budget, but about several scenarios. The budget should follow the objective, not the other way around.
3. Creative assets are frequently underestimated
This is often where projects lose the most time. The campaign is planned, the budget is set, the target audience is defined. Then it turns out that key creative assets are missing or do not exist yet.
Images still need to be produced. Videos are still in editing or not yet approved. Copy is stuck in its tenth review round, landing pages are still under construction. A project often starts with the wish for a fast campaign, and only in the brief does it become clear that no suitable content exists yet for the planned channel.
At larger companies, several departments are usually involved, which often pushes the start back by days or weeks. It is worth reviewing the available assets together as part of the brief itself, not to have everything finished right away, but to spot real dependencies early.
“I can only fully agree with that from my own experience in campaign management, especially when it comes to the collaboration between client and agency. A brief is not a documentation form, it is the working foundation for a genuine partnership between equals. Let’s do the homework before handing off to the agency. That is how the brief turns from a bottleneck into a real accelerator for successful campaigns.”
–Norbert Beyer, Head of Campaign Management
What the brief brings to the surface
Target audience, budget, creative assets: all three depend on decisions that should really have been made before the brief. When they only come to light there, it costs time that a few internal conversations beforehand could have saved.
