What to do when a client gives you a bad brief

One of the things I always look forward to as a writer when I get a new client is getting a brief from them. A brief is a written document that outlines the essential details, goals, and requirements of a project. When done well, it serves as a roadmap, ensuring everyone involved is aligned on what needs to be accomplished and how, which, in turn, reduces miscommunication and prevents wasted efforts. 

It goes without saying, essentially, that not every client would give you a good brief. And if you make the mistake of running with a bad brief, you become the waiter who serves pasta when a customer requests “that Italian food”, not knowing that what they actually want is pizza.

The good news is, getting a bad brief every now and then is like a rite of passage for writers, and knowing what to do when the brief falls short will save you a lot of trouble.

The five types of bad brief

Before you can fix a bad brief, it helps to name what you're dealing with. A marketing agency, Design Inc., has spent a lot of years collecting bad client briefs and divided them into 5 broad categories, which translate well to freelance writing.

1. The Closed Book

This is a brief so prescriptive that there’s no room to actually write or put your creative spin on it. The client has decided everything in advance, from the intro down to the conclusion, and just needs someone to fill in the sentences (most times, they end up rewriting your sentences too). It’s the kind of brief that makes you wonder why you were hired in the first place, when they could have just gone ahead to write the article themselves.

2. The 360

Compared to The Closed Book, this is the opposite problem. This brief has no direction at all. The client doesn’t know what they want and can’t offer anything beyond a topic or a vague direction.  I know this one personally because a client once asked me to write a YouTube script and sent nothing but links to other people’s videos as a reference. I pushed back and asked for an actual brief.

This client promised to send an outline after that email, but instead, they sent more links to unrelated articles online, YouTube videos and a Spotify podcast playlist. Somehow, they leave all options open to you, which only makes it harder for you to pin down what exactly they think they want.

3. The Chameleon

This might be the worst one yet, because it keeps changing. They get new inspiration every few days. They make you think you’re on your way to scoring a goal, only to end up shifting the goalpost. 

4. The Collision

Here, the brief is contradictory from the start. It reads as if two different people wrote it without speaking to each other, because they probably did.

5. The Dreamer

This is also a problematic type of client because the briefs they give all have one thing in common: sky-high expectations, very little budget, and yesterday as the deadline.

What do you do when a client gives you a bad brief?

To be fair, clients don’t always send bad briefs on purpose. But it will definitely be your fault if you work from it, because as the Latin maxim goes, Nemo dat quod non habet, meaning, you cannot give what you do not have, or in this context, you cannot build something on nothing, and expect it to stand.

1. Don’t start writing immediately

The temptation is usually to push through and figure things out as you go. Only on rare occasions does this work. More often, you write in the wrong direction and spend twice as long fixing it.

Before you start, do a quick audit. Do you know who this is for? Do you know what problem the piece is supposed to solve? Do you have a sense of tone, or examples of what they’ve published before? If you’re answering no to most of those questions, then you shouldn’t just jump into the writing part. It’s the professional thing to do. 

According to the BetterBriefs Project, roughly 90% of marketers fail to brief freelancers and agencies effectively. The knock-on effect is enormous: an estimated $200 billion in global marketing spend is wasted annually on misdirected work. 

The next time you’re faced with this problem, do this:

2. Ask the right questions

It’s called reverse briefing. You don’t have to ask them twenty questions. Three or four, phrased well, and sent in one message, so the client doesn’t feel interrogated, or worse, overwhelmed.

Here’s what I usually ask before starting any piece nowadays, especially if the brief isn’t very clear:

• What’s the main goal of this piece? Not what it should say, I mean, what it should do. “Write blog posts.” Yes, but is it for conversion? Or do you just want to increase your brand authority? This is because, when you’re writing for a business, every piece you write for them has to do something, even if passively. After all, everyone is always aiming for a return on their investment.

  
  

• Who is the reader, specifically? For instance, a piece on alternative tools to Hunter is for sales and marketing professionals, true, but which ones, and at what stage, and dealing with what problem? When you can move from the general to the specific, only then can you write to that one person the piece is meant for.

  
  

• What tone are you going for, and can you point me to something you’ve already published that got it right? This is a little steep when you’re dealing with a new client, but you can just ask them to share a relevant reference of what they’d like to see in your piece.

  
  

• Who has final approval, and is there anyone else in the sign-off chain? This is extremely important. I once worked within a team where about 5 different people would leave feedback on my drafts. And yes, you guessed right, the feedback would often conflict. Nothing derails a project faster than this.

3. Ensure you both align

If they’ve answered the above questions, and the brief still isn’t clear enough, rephrase what you’ve understood so far in plain terms and check for alignment before you write anything. Something like: “Based on what you’ve shared, here’s what I think we’re making, is this right?”

It might feel slightly awkward the first time. But after that, it becomes second nature. And it gives you something in writing that both parties have agreed on.

4. Write the brief yourself

Sometimes you ask all the right questions, but the client still can’t answer them, and this is not because they’re being difficult, but because they genuinely haven’t worked it out yet. They know they need content, but they haven’t figured out why. This is where you take the wheel.

Write the brief yourself. Here’s the audience I’m writing for, here’s the angle I’m taking, here’s what the piece will and won’t cover, and why. Send it to them before you write a word.

Most clients will be relieved, and even add a few things that can help you understand the direction more. A few will correct you, which is actually useful too, because it means you’ve surfaced something that needed to come out anyway. Either way, you now have an agreed direction in writing, and that shifts the entire dynamic if things get messy later.

One of the best briefs I ever received was so thorough that I had no questions. Clear audience, clear goal, examples of what good looked like, examples of what to avoid, previously published works and how to meet the tone and brand style, examples of memes to insert. I met the brief on the first try, with minimal feedback, and we ended up working together for months.

5. Walk away

This is a last resort, and one I usually do not like to advise on. However, you will meet some clients who would give you really bad briefs and still frustrate you with them. Some of them are also very abusive and close-minded. It might be a budget disagreement or something else with which you do not align. Sometimes it’s even communication. 

I once worked with a client who would ghost me for weeks after assigning vague briefs, then come back without responding to any of my clarifying questions or apologising, yet expecting my submissions. Sometimes I had to chase him for payment, too. I had to give myself some advice and fire him for my peace of mind.

You do not have to ignore the red flags. The only downside is that they’ll take their business elsewhere, which is most likely to an unsuspecting and soon-to-be-frustrated freelancer.

Why a good brief is worth fighting for

It’s easy to treat brief problems as the client’s fault, but as freelancers, we sometimes share some responsibility for the pattern continuing, especially with repeat clients, where it’s already become normal.

But think about what a solid creative brief gives you:

• Fewer revision cycles, which translates to more hours for your paid work.

• Faster approvals, which means more clients who trust your process. They tend to stick around and spread the word.

• A much higher chance that the final piece actually does what it was supposed to.

  
  

You can also take some steps to protect yourself for next time, because most brief problems start upstream, i.e., in how you set up new client relationships before any work begins.

One practical fix is a simple intake form, where you ask the essentials: project goal, target audience, tone, key messages, content they like, content they don’t, deadline, and who has final sign-off, etc. Frame it as something that helps them get better results, rather than just something that helps you, but watch it do both.

For instance, Fiverr has this feature. When you create a gig, you can ask the client relevant questions so you’re both clear on expectations.

A good brief tells you everything you need and nothing you don’t. It also gives you enough to work from while leaving room for your own judgment. 

But even with all of this in place, a bad brief might still find you sometimes. They’re the occupational hazard in freelancing. But what you need is to have a process, and that process turns a would-be problem into a conversation, which is a much better place to work from.

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