# What belongs in a pitch briefing?

**Short answer.** Besides the assignment: the budget, the decision criteria with their weights, who decides, the calendar, and what happens to the work shown. Leaving out the budget costs you comparability, not money.

A pitch briefing is an ordinary briefing plus four chapters about the procedure. Those four get forgotten most often and cause the most argument afterwards.

## First the substance

The situation with numbers, the goal, the audience, your positioning, what is fixed and what is free, and how you will know it worked. See [how to write a good briefing](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/hoe-schrijf-ik-een-briefing).

## Then the four procedure chapters

**1. The budget.** Give the amount or the range. Leaving it out feels like preserving negotiating room and produces three proposals at three different scales that you cannot line up. You lose comparability, not money.

**2. The criteria with their weights.** Which five axes, and how much each counts. That forces you to decide in advance what matters, and it tells the agencies where to put their time.

**3. Who decides, and how it runs.** Names or at least roles, the number of rounds, the dates, and when you will respond. An agency that knows eight people will be in the room builds a different proposal than one expecting two.

**4. What happens to the work.** Who holds the rights to what is shown, whether there is a fee, and what happens to the proposals not chosen. This is the chapter that saves you a conflict later. See [may I use the work from a pitch](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/werk-uit-een-pitch-gebruiken).

## Three practical rules

- **One document, one question round, answers to everyone at once.** Answering one agency separately gives it a head start you cannot subtract later.
- **Say how many agencies are taking part.** It determines how much they invest, and it is a normal question.
- **Put in what you do not want to see.** Five channels in a proposal when you wanted two costs everyone time.

## The check beforehand

Read the briefing yourself and ask whether you could answer it without knowing the company from the inside. If not, information is missing, and the agency that guessed best will win.

The substance half can be checked for free with IKAg's [briefing analysis](https://www.ikag.be/briefing), which walks a briefing through these points.

See also: [how to judge pitch presentations fairly](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/pitchpresentaties-beoordelen).

## Related questions

- [How do I write a good briefing?](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/hoe-schrijf-ik-een-briefing): Write down what has to change and how you will know it worked, not what the agency should produce. A briefing that already describes the solution buys execution, not thinking.
- [May I use the work from a pitch if I do not pick that agency?](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/werk-uit-een-pitch-gebruiken): Not without an agreement: copyright stays with the maker until it is transferred in writing, and a pitch fee buys participation, not rights. Settle it in the briefing.
- [How do I judge pitch presentations fairly?](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/pitchpresentaties-beoordelen): Fix the grid and the weights before the first presentation, have everyone score alone before the discussion, and only then talk. Otherwise you are measuring persuasiveness in the room, not the proposal.

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IKAg is the business consultant for marketing and agencies in Belgium and the Netherlands. Market figures come from the Agency Barometer, calculated on the annual accounts agencies filed with the National Bank themselves. Figures on pitches and satisfaction come from IKAg-guided processes, and are always presented as such.

- All questions: https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq
- Last updated: 2026-08-19