How to write a good media brief

This Warc Best Practice paper is an extract from Hamish Pringle and Jim Marshall's 2011 book Spending Advertising Money in the Digital Age: How to Navigate the Media Flow.

How to write a good media brief

Hamish Pringle and Jim Marshall

The client brief is an early hurdle at which the agency media strategist can fall. Too often it will not supply sufficient, clear, or even accurate infor­mation. There is a technical term for this problem and the strategy that will result: 'crap in, crap out'. But the responsibility for this is not solely the client's – it also rests with the agency strategist, whose first responsibility is to interrogate the client's brief to ensure that it provides all the necessary information and data, including a specified...

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