The 7 questions your creative brief must answer to get usable concepts back on the first round — written from 600+ briefs analysed on MindHub.
Most agency briefs we see on MindHub are too long, too vague, or both. A good brief is one page, answers 7 questions, and lets the agency start work the same day.
1. What is the business problem?
Not "we want more brand awareness." That's a marketing goal. The business problem is: "Our DTC site converts at 0.8% — half the category benchmark — and our CAC is climbing." Specific. Quantified. Tied to revenue.
2. Who is the audience — in one sentence?
"Egyptian working mothers, 28-40, in Cairo and Alex, who buy beauty products on Instagram and trust UGC over polished ads." If you can't fit it in a sentence, you don't know your audience yet.
3. What does success look like in 90 days?
Three numbers max. "ROAS of 3.0×, CAC under EGP 180, 4× our current email list." Numbers force the agency to architect a plan instead of selling capabilities.
4. What's the budget — really?
Put a number. Not a range. "EGP 80,000/month all-in, including ad spend." Agencies that say "we love working within constraints" are lying — they need the number to design the right team.
5. What's already been tried and didn't work?
This is the question 95% of clients skip. Tell the agency: "We tried Meta with interest stacking, ROAS was 1.2×. We tried a UGC creator from KSA, the accent didn't land. We tried TikTok ads with stock footage and it crashed." Save everyone 6 weeks of re-discovery.
6. Who decides, and how fast?
Name the final approver. State the approval cadence. "Final sign-off is Mahmoud (founder). Concepts approved within 48 hours of submission." Briefs that go through a 6-person committee kill momentum and burn agency hours.
7. What are the non-negotiables?
Brand-safety lines. Banned competitors. Cultural sensitivities. Required brand colours. Stuff that, if violated, kills the project. List them upfront in 5 bullets — not buried in a 40-page brand book.
What to leave OUT
- Your origin story (the agency will Google you)
- Generic capability questions ("do you do video?")
- Templates copied from a US blog post
- Awards and certifications you require — they signal vanity, not quality
The 1-page test
If your brief is more than 1 page, you're writing for yourself, not the agency. Strip it down. The best agency briefs we've seen on MindHub fit on a single page with 7 short paragraphs and a budget line.
Round-one quality
A great brief produces concepts you can actually use on round one. A bad brief produces 3 weeks of back-and-forth before any creative starts. The difference is 90% in the brief, 10% in the agency.
Final
Brief once, brief well. The 30 minutes you spend tightening the brief saves the agency 30 hours and you 3 weeks. That's the entire ROI.