Brief Encounters

On the curious art of saying what you want

I read a story the other day – one of those too-plausible-to-be-fiction consulting anecdotes.

A client sent through a brief just hours before an initial call. Many pages and full of detailed requirements. The consultant skimmed it and immediately spotted a mismatch: what was being asked for sounded expensive. The budget… not so much.

Fast forward to the call and things quickly unravel. The client admitted, I’d assume slightly sheepishly, that they’d used ChatGPT to write the brief. Well, it looked and sounded good, right?

And honestly, fair enough (well, to an extent).

Because while we read more briefs than we write, we do write them. And we’ve had to rewrite some of our own questionable ones too. The ‘this probably needs a bit more but it’s 5.30pm, kids are screaming, dog has just shat on the carpet again’ ones.

And briefing is a strange part of the job. It’s meant to be about clarity and direction and alignment. But in reality, it’s often the first performance of certainty before anyone really knows what the work is.

It got me thinking about the spectrum of briefs we’ve seen over the years and how, for better or worse, they tend to fall somewhere between a vague intention and a fully baked specification. 

For simplicity’s sake:

“I want a new kitchen.”
That’s a wish.

“I want a modern kitchen with matte cabinets, quartz surfaces, and a breakfast bar. Must be done by October.”
That’s a brief.

“I want a Howdens Hockley Super Matt in Reed Green with integrated lighting, plinth drawers, 20mm quartz, and a built-in recycling unit. Fit to plan ref #7312, electrics as per attached PDF.”
That’s a spec.

Hand that last one to an architect and they’ll gently suggest you save the fee and go straight to the fitter.

In marketing, we often see specs when strategy is needed – and blank pages when some basic direction would go a long way.

In any case, it can often start from the wrong place.

I (honestly) don’t believe briefs are ever bad on purpose. They’re just compressed versions of bigger dynamics: pressure, politics, decision fatigue and so forth. The chaos is rarely born from incompetence, but from ambiguity.

According to research by BetterBriefs, 80% of marketers believe they write good briefs. Only 10% of agencies agree. That’s not a knowledge gap. It’s a complete disconnect. And one I’d argue is a shared responsibility to resolve. 

The best briefs are not about nailing the ask. They’re about opening a useful conversation. And from the consultant/vendor side, asking the right questions.  

Good briefs clarify outcomes but importantly, they hold space for challenge.
They say, “Here’s where we’re trying to go” – not “Here’s the exact route, and don’t change a thing.”

At Fly, we (happily) live in that messy middle ground – between wish and spec.
Sometimes we help shape the brief. Sometimes we push back on it.
Sometimes we build tools like SiteSpec to stop people handing over kitchen plans they don’t actually want. And quietly embed the same thinking across everything else we do. Because the brief isn’t a form to fill. It’s the first real piece of work.

And if we get it right, or help clients get it right, the rest tends to follow.