‘A strategic act’: Why agency briefing ‘isn’t a soft skill’
Are marketers underestimating the practice, strategic skill and training needed to craft an effective agency brief?
The belief weak briefs lead to weak work is a deep and commonly held understanding underpinning productive relationships between marketing departments and creative teams for decades.
So why is it a significant proportion of marketing professionals still feel ill-equipped when it comes to writing that all important agency brief? Close to a third (32.5%) of the more than 3,500 respondents to Marketing Week’s 2025 Career & Salary Survey identify knowledge of writing agency briefs as a skills gap in their team.
It’s partly a systemic problem that roots back to comparatively more informal education pathways into the profession, according to TMW chief growth officer Steve Garside. He points to the 2019 edition of the Career & Salary Survey, which revealed over half of people working in marketing don’t hold a relevant qualification.
