For many people in public relations or marketing in-house the biggest decision they will face will be their choice of PR agency.

It’s a critical and possibly career-defining moment and the difference between success and failure – or the difference between an effective and long-term relationship with a PR agency rather than a difficult and short-lived one – can come down to how well prospective agencies are briefed right at the beginning of the selection process.

While there is a lot of general advice around on how to select an agency, there is surprisingly little on what should go into a brief, so we set out to do something about it with a new whitepaper entitled How to write a PR brief.

Written by independent PR consultant Scott McLean, the seven-page document examines how you will benefit from a thorough brief, how many agencies to brief, the best ways of briefing agencies and what ‘could’ go in a brief.

Accepting that “there is no single rightway to brief PR agencies”, Scott explains in the whitepaper that a comprehensive brief is critical. He says: “The agency you end up selecting is not simply a supplier but the custodian of your external reputation with the ability to provide genuine commercial value. Get it wrong and time, effort and your investment will be wasted.”

Download the whitepaper here.