Stop Saying 'Make It Pop': The Briefing Problem Bleeding UK Businesses Dry
Every designer in the UK has a horror story. The client who wanted something 'clean but edgy.' The stakeholder who said the homepage needed to 'feel more premium' — after the fifth round of revisions. The decision-maker who approved a direction on Monday and reversed it entirely on Thursday because their spouse thought the blue was 'a bit cold.'
These aren't just amusing anecdotes shared over coffee at digital agency socials. They represent a genuine, measurable financial problem that is quietly draining money from both sides of the client-agency relationship — and producing worse work in the process.
Let's talk about it honestly.
The Real Cost of a Vague Brief
When a client walks into a project without a clear, structured brief, the agency doesn't suddenly develop psychic abilities. Instead, designers make educated guesses, project managers build contingencies on top of contingencies, and developers hold off on committing to architecture because the strategic direction keeps shifting.
The result? Revision cycles that should span two rounds stretch to seven. Timelines that were quoted at six weeks bleed into four months. Budgets that seemed comfortable at sign-off start haemorrhaging money — often in ways that are difficult to attribute clearly, which makes them even harder to address.
Industry estimates vary, but experienced agency principals will tell you that poorly briefed projects routinely consume 30 to 50 per cent more resource than well-briefed ones. On a £15,000 website project, that's potentially £7,500 in absorbed cost, delayed opportunity, and creative energy spent on work that never sees the light of day.
And that's before you factor in the human cost: designers who lose confidence in their instincts, account managers who spend their days firefighting rather than facilitating, and clients who end up with a website they're lukewarm about — because it was built to satisfy contradictory feedback rather than a clear vision.
What a Bad Brief Actually Looks Like
The phrase 'make it pop' has become something of a shorthand in the industry — a gentle mockery of the tendency to describe desired outcomes in purely emotional, entirely unactionable terms. But it's worth being precise about the patterns that actually derail projects.
Outcome-free objectives. 'We want a new website' is not a brief. Neither is 'we want something modern.' What does the website need to do? Who needs to use it, and what should they do when they get there? Without answers to these questions, there's no north star to design toward.
Contradictory reference points. 'We like this competitor's site, but also this completely different brand, and we want something that feels like neither but also both.' This is more common than you'd think, and it signals that the client hasn't yet done the internal work of deciding what they actually stand for.
Stakeholder soup. When six different people have sign-off authority and no single decision-maker exists, feedback becomes a negotiation between competing aesthetic preferences rather than a strategic evaluation. Design by committee rarely produces great work.
Scope creep disguised as refinement. 'While we're in there, could we also add...' is the phrase that launches a thousand budget overruns. If it wasn't in the brief, it isn't a refinement — it's a new requirement, and it should be treated as one.
Why Clients Brief Badly (It's Not Entirely Their Fault)
Here's where we'll say something that might surprise you: most clients aren't bad at briefing because they're careless or difficult. They're bad at briefing because nobody ever taught them how to do it well, and many agencies — including some well-regarded ones — have never insisted on it.
For a lot of UK businesses, commissioning a website is a relatively infrequent exercise. They might do it once every three to five years. They don't have a muscle memory for it. They turn up to the first meeting with enthusiasm, a few screenshots of sites they like, and a genuine desire to do something good — but without the structural framework to translate that enthusiasm into something an agency can actually work with.
The fix, then, isn't to criticise clients. It's to build better processes that draw out the right information before creative work begins.
A Framework That Actually Works
At CreativWeb, we've learned — sometimes the hard way — that the quality of what we build is almost entirely determined by the quality of the conversation that happens before we build it. Here's the framework we use to get projects off on the right foot.
Start with commercial outcomes, not aesthetics. Before anyone talks about colours or fonts, we want to know: what does success look like in 12 months? Is it a 25% increase in inbound enquiries? A reduction in customer service calls? A new revenue stream from an underserved audience? These anchors keep the entire project honest.
Define your audience with specificity. 'Our customers are businesses' is not enough. Who within those businesses? What do they care about? What are they anxious about? What do they need to believe before they'll take action? The more precise the audience definition, the more purposeful the design decisions become.
Establish a single decision-maker. We're not being precious about this — it's genuinely in the client's interest. Projects move faster, feedback is more coherent, and the final product reflects a genuine point of view rather than a compromise between six different ones.
Articulate what you don't want. This is underrated. Showing an agency three websites you actively dislike, and explaining why, often communicates more about your brand sensibility than a mood board ever could.
Agree a change management process upfront. What happens when scope changes? How are new requirements logged, costed, and approved? Having this conversation before it becomes necessary saves enormous amounts of friction later.
The Agencies Getting This Right
The best digital agencies in the UK have essentially turned briefing into a product. They charge for discovery. They run structured workshops. They produce written strategy documents that both parties sign off before a single design file is opened.
This isn't gatekeeping — it's quality control. And the clients who engage properly with that process consistently get better websites, smoother projects, and a clearer sense of what they're investing in and why.
The alternative — jumping straight to mockups based on a 30-minute call and a Pinterest board — might feel faster. It rarely is. The hours saved at the start are almost always paid back with interest in revisions, rework, and the quiet frustration of a final product that doesn't quite hit the mark.
A Final Word on 'Making It Pop'
For what it's worth: we know what clients mean when they say it. They mean they want their brand to feel alive, distinctive, and confident. They want something that stops people scrolling and makes them feel something.
That's a completely legitimate ambition. It's also entirely achievable — when it's grounded in a clear understanding of who the audience is, what the brand stands for, and what the site needs to do.
So keep the ambition. Ditch the vague language. And let's build something that actually works.
