A brief is a set of instructions about a funnel. If the funnel has never been measured, the brief is a set of instructions about a guess.
Most briefs describe what the business wants the agency to do. Very few describe where the buying journey is actually losing people, because nobody has the number.
The real risk
The brief points the agency at symptoms, not the structural leak. It assumes a conversion rate the funnel has never been tested against. It sets the agency up to be blamed for a loss that pre-dates the engagement.
What happens if you skip the check
The agency executes the brief faithfully and still misses, because the brief never named the leak. You both end up defending activity instead of pointing at a result.
The standard before the brief
Before the brief is written, the funnel should pass Marketing Due Diligence. RAMMP is a patented quantitative behavioural diagnostic of trust in the buying journey, run before marketing budget is committed. Patent granted in Australia (AU 2021105053); patent pending in the United States. It tells you which of the six ADORE checkpoints is leaking, so the brief instructs the agency to fix the cause.
STOP / KEEP / FIX / PROVE
- —STOP briefing work against a leaking checkpoint.
- —KEEP the elements the data validates.
- —FIX the named milestones, in a finite scope.
- —PROVE the result with a re-score written into the brief as the success measure.
Write the brief when
The funnel has been scored and the leaks named in the brief, the success measure is a re-score, and the agency is pointed at the milestone that needs work.
Optimisation is not governance
A brief that asks for optimisation assumes the structure is sound. Diagnose first, and the brief can say what to fix, not just what to do.
Close
A brief written against an unmeasured funnel is a guess in a nicer format. Measure first, then write.
The standard behind this → Marketing Due Diligence
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