How To Brief A PR Team So They Can Actually Do Their Job

The single biggest predictor of a good outcome from a PR engagement isn't the size of the budget or the seniority of the team — it's the quality of the brief a client is willing to give. A vague brief produces vague coverage, no matter how skilled the team executing it.

The most useful briefs are specific about audience before they're specific about message. "We want to reach enterprise buyers evaluating procurement software in the next two quarters" gives a team something to plan around. "We want more visibility" does not — visibility with whom, for what purpose, is a question that has to be answered before any strategy can be built.

The second thing a good brief includes is what not to say. Companies are often more comfortable describing their ambitions than their constraints, but a PR team that doesn't know which topics are off-limits, which competitors shouldn't be named, or which numbers can't yet be shared publicly will eventually make a mistake that a five-minute conversation could have prevented.

The last, and most commonly skipped, ingredient is access. A communications team can only tell a story as well as the access they're given to the people and information behind it — the founder's actual reasoning, not just the polished version; the customer who'll speak candidly, not just the one prepared for a case study. Clients who treat their PR team as a fully briefed extension of the company, rather than an outside vendor working from a press kit, consistently get better coverage, faster.