In marketing, there’s an old saying: garbage in, garbage out. If the brief is vague, misaligned or incomplete, the work that follows rarely hits the mark. Agencies have lived this reality for decades. Now AI is proving the rule in an even more visible, ubiquitous way.
Anyone who has played with generative AI knows this: the quality of your output is only as good as the clarity of your input. Write a vague prompt and you’ll get vague, inconsistent results, often getting stuck in a repetitive cycle of reverts and frustration. However, take the time to think through your request, test and refine it, and suddenly the system delivers something remarkable.
A prompt is just a new kind of brief. And it exposes the importance of clarity in real time.
This is especially true as we move into what many are calling the “vibe coding” era, where you don’t write syntax, you describe intent, mood and outcomes. Here the human skill isn’t in the keystrokes, but in creating a detailed project spec upfront. The more precisely you can describe what success looks like, the more powerful the machine becomes in helping you get there.
A clear vision produces better outputs. A vague idea produces noise, bugs and endless reverts. In a recent talk at Harvard (well worth a watch here) Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Inflection AI, described vibe coding as “describing what you want, not how to do it”.
That’s a profound shift. It means the art of briefing is no longer just a skill for agencies and creatives, it’s becoming a fundamental capability for anyone who wants to harness AI.
The art of briefing is no longer just a skill for agencies and creatives, it’s becoming a fundamental capability for anyone who wants to harness AI
AI has become a kind of mirror for the marketing industry. If the outcome isn’t what you hoped, maybe it’s not your agency, your creative team or even the AI that got it wrong. Maybe it’s the brief. That’s uncomfortable but also liberating. Because it shifts the responsibility back to where it should be — clarity of thought, clarity of strategy, clarity of expression.
As marketers continue to adopt AI for image generation, campaign ideas, automation or vibe coding, this discipline will only grow more critical. We have seen huge improvements at VML when using AI to test, adapt and enhance briefs. It is able to clarify the ask and quickly identify gaps, and reduces the number of reverts.
Marketers should see this as an opportunity to put their experience and expertise where it counts most: into crafting the best possible brief. All the strategy, insight and creative instinct that once got diluted in layers of execution can now be channelled into the starting point. And with AI itself able to act as a thinking partner (testing, refining and even enhancing the brief) marketers can maximise the quality of outputs before a single asset is created. In this new landscape, the brief isn’t just a document; it’s the most valuable tool you have to shape the work that follows.
The age-old marketing challenge of the brief has gone mainstream. AI has made the following obvious to anyone, anywhere:
Clarity matters — the more precise and thoughtful your input, the more accurate and useful the output becomes.
Iteration is part of the process — refining, testing and adjusting prompts is no different from refining creative briefs until they land.
Good outcomes start with good inputs — the quality of your strategy, context and detail directly determines the quality of the work AI or an agency can deliver.
The difference is that now we can see the results instantly. So the next time you find yourself frustrated with an AI output, or an agency output for that matter, ask yourself: was it the execution that failed, or the brief that set it up to fail?
Because in the age of AI, the brief isn’t just important. The brief is the work.
Matthew Arnold is chief innovation officer at VML South Africa.
The big take-out: In the age of AI, the brief isn’t just important. It is the work.
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