One can always tell when a brief was written by a committee. Page one says we need to increase brand awareness. Page two says we need to drive sales. Page three says we need to shift perception.
Those are three different briefs pretending to be one. And the creative team is expected to solve all three with a single campaign.
It never works.
Because brand awareness needs reach and frequency. Sales needs conversion and urgency. Perception shift needs time and consistency. One can't optimize for all three simultaneously. One can only choose one and hope the others benefit indirectly.
But, nobody wants to choose. The client doesn't want to choose because every stakeholder has a different priority. The account team doesn't want to choose because it means telling someone their priority isn't the priority. So everyone agrees to chase everything. And the brief becomes a wish list, not a strategy.
I've seen fifteen-objective briefs. Fifteen. Each one perfectly valid in isolation. Each one impossible to achieve with the others present.
The best briefs I've seen are brutally focused. One problem. One audience. On One page or less. One thing we need them to think, feel, or do. Everything else is context, not objective.
Volkswagen's original brief for "Think Small" was essentially: Americans think VW is too small. Make small the advantage. That's it. One problem. One solution. One creative territory. The result defined advertising for a generation.
Compare that to most briefs today: "Increase awareness among millennials while driving consideration among Gen X and maintaining loyalty among boomers and shifting perception from price-focused to value-driven while increasing share of voice and improving sentiment on social media and driving foot traffic and..."
Most briefs are three briefs pretending to be one. Good briefs are one brief brave enough to exclude the other two.