Take a step back with me to 2017. If you worked in marketing or communications, you were about to witness one of the biggest, most cringeworthy industry lessons unfold.
This was the year of Pepsi’s infamous “Live for Now” campaign starring Kendall Jenner – an attempt to tap into the imagery of contemporary protest, widely read as referencing Black Lives Matter. The ad shows Jenner leaving a photoshoot in a blonde wig, joining a protest, and defusing a police standoff by handing an officer a can of Pepsi. Yes, really.
As the old saying goes, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. And the intention was to create a socially uplifting, finger-on-the-moment campaign. The result was a critical bloodbath.
The backlash was so intense that Pepsi pulled the ad within 48 hours, admitting it had “missed the mark.” Fingers were quickly pointed at the creative agency, but others questioned whether the direction was off from the start. It remains a textbook case of what happens when briefs are blurry, and assumptions aren’t challenged early enough.
Nearly ten years on, you’d think things would have improved. Clients have more data than ever, including real-time analytics, consumer insights, social listening, and AI. So, you’d expect better briefs. But often, that’s still not the case.
As an agency, we’ve seen campaigns briefed as awareness exercises, only to be measured against lead-generation targets after they launch. We’ve seen multiple stakeholders sign off on the same brief, each with a different view of success, leaving us to satisfy objectives that were never aligned.
Industry-wide, it seems one of the most common causes of delays isn’t poor execution; it’s discovering a little too late that people read the brief differently. The cost of an unclear brief isn’t felt at the start – it shows up in revisions, delays, and conversations that begin, “But that’s not what we actually meant…”
Everyone talks about campaigns after they launch. Few talk about the document shaping every decision long before any work begins. A strong brief should be a clear, shared definition of the problem, the audience, and what success looks like: a document that is designed to align everyone from the outset.
The biggest mistake clients tend to make is confusing information with clarity. Brands often believe enough data and background makes a strong brief. It doesn’t. A brief isn’t judged by how much it contains, but by how clearly it defines the challenge.
Another common mistake is trying to achieve too many things at once. We regularly see briefs that aim to build awareness, generate leads, reposition the brand, drive sales, and create engagement in a single campaign. That’s not a brief; it’s a wish list.
Equally problematic is what’s missing. Agencies constantly chase answers to what should be simple questions. What does success look like? What is the primary objective? Who is the priority audience? Who has final sign-off?
Access to information doesn’t always create clarity; sometimes it does the opposite. We see briefs packed with data but lacking a clear answer to the most basic question. What are we trying to achieve?
A great brief isn’t everything the brand knows; it’s a clear articulation of the problem and the outcome it wants. It strips away excess, avoids ambiguity, and gives a sharp strategic direction that guides the creative work rather than overwhelming it.
Sadly, agencies that challenge briefs can be seen as slowing things down. In reality, that’s where they add value. If an agency never questions your brief, that’s a red flag.
This isn’t a blame game – it’s about the need for better communication on all sides.
My advice would be for brands to stop treating the brief as a handover. The best agencies will approach it like an investigation, repeatedly asking “why” until the real objective surfaces. They challenge contradictions rather than smoothing over them, tease out the competing objectives buried beneath a single request, and establish who owns the final decision.
Most importantly, they’re willing to push back when something isn’t clear. Clients shouldn’t hire agencies to agree with them; they should hire them for expertise and perspective, and an agency that withholds either isn’t doing its job.
Inevitably, this brings us to AI. Is it making things better or worse? It’s doing both.
AI can help organise information, identify trends, and build stronger foundations. But it’s also creating two problems. It makes unclear briefs look convincing or reduces them to a single sentence with the expectation the agency will “figure it out.”
We can’t blame our robot pals either, because AI isn’t a substitute for strategic thinking. It simply amplifies what it’s given – good or bad. Whether you’re briefing an agency or prompting an AI model, the same rule applies: the quality of the output depends on the quality of the input.
The truth is, as sophisticated as we are in 2026, too many briefs still lack clarity and focus and we should all take responsibility for that. It’s time for the industry to relearn its fundamentals, so that everyone involved can benefit from saving time and protecting reputations. No one wants another fizzy drink-related fiasco.
(Sam Grogan is founder of Meteor Marketing)
