The Five Questions I Ask Before I'll Take a Marketing Brief
Most marketing briefs aren't wrong.
They're just incomplete.
They arrive asking for a campaign, a rebrand, a new website or more leads. But after enough conversations, I've realised the first version of a brief is usually the symptom a business has been living with—not the problem it actually needs to solve.
Somewhere along the way, I noticed I was spending too much time solving the problem I'd been handed and not enough time checking whether it was the right problem in the first place.
So I changed my approach.
Before I think about creative ideas, channels or budgets, I ask five questions. They're not part of a consulting framework or a workshop template. They're simply the questions that have saved me from solving the wrong problem more times than I can count.
1. What changed recently that made this urgent now?
Businesses don't wake up on a random Tuesday and suddenly need a rebrand.
Something changed.
A competitor entered the market. Growth slowed. The product evolved. Leadership changed. Customer expectations shifted.
I'm far more interested in that moment than I am in what's written in the brief. Because once I understand what changed, I usually understand why the brief exists in the first place.
Sometimes the answer confirms the brief.
Sometimes it completely rewrites it.
2. Who disagrees with this brief, and why haven't I heard from them yet?
Every project I've seen struggle had one thing in common.
There was someone who saw the problem differently, but they weren't in the first meeting.
Sometimes it's Sales. Sometimes it's Product. Sometimes it's Customer Success. Occasionally it's the founder who quietly nodded through the discussion because everyone else seemed aligned.
Finding that voice early almost always improves the work. Finding it halfway through the project usually changes the work.
I've learnt it's much cheaper to invite disagreement before execution than to discover it after launch.
3. What would make this fail even if we executed it perfectly?
This is usually the question that changes the room.
If the answer is pricing, product-market fit, leadership alignment or an inconsistent customer experience, then marketing isn't the first domino.
Marketing can amplify clarity.
It can't create it.
Every now and then, the most valuable thing marketing can do is admit that the next move doesn't belong to marketing at all.
4. If this worked brilliantly, what headline would we want to write six months from now?
I prefer this question to asking for KPIs straight away.
When people describe success in plain language, the metrics tend to reveal themselves naturally.
Maybe the headline is "We've doubled qualified pipeline." Maybe it's "Customers finally understand what makes us different." Maybe it's "Sales cycles are shorter because our story is clearer."
Whatever the answer, everyone leaves the room with the same destination in mind. That's surprisingly rare.
5. What have you already tried, and what did you learn from it?
I don't ask this because I'm interested in failure.
I'm interested in learning.
The answers tell me whether the organisation is building on experience or simply repeating the same effort with a different campaign wrapped around it.
Those are two very different starting points.
The Brief Filter
These are the five questions I work through before I say yes.
What changed recently that made this urgent now?
Who disagrees with this brief, and why haven't I heard from them yet?
What would make this fail even if we executed it perfectly?
If this worked brilliantly, what headline would we want to write six months from now?
What have you already tried, and what did you learn from it?
I don't always get perfect answers.
Sometimes I get uncomfortable silence.
Sometimes I get three different answers from three different people.
That's useful too.
Because by then, we're no longer talking about the brief. We're talking about the business.
And that's usually where the real work begins.
I've never skipped these five questions. They've saved me from what I think is the most expensive version of being wrong, not a failed campaign, but a brilliantly executed solution to the wrong problem.
HERE’S WHAT I’D DO
Five questions can change the brief before the brief changes you.
NEXT IN HERE’S WHAT I’D DO
How to Tell If Your “Rebrand” Problem Is Actually a Leadership Problem
Sometimes the brief isn't asking for a new brand. It's asking for a clearer business.
