Before you hire a CPG creative agency, write the rulebook it has to follow

A CPG creative agency can only make your brand look like itself if someone wrote down what itself means. Most food and beverage founders skip that step, and the 2021 BetterBriefs study of more than 1,700 marketers and agency staff found 80% of marketers rate their briefs good while only 10% of agencies agree. Write the rulebook, then hire.

Updated October 29, 2026.

The short version

• In the 2021 BetterBriefs study, 78% of marketers said their briefs gave clear strategic direction and 5% of agencies agreed.
• The same study put the waste from poor briefs and misdirected work at up to 33% of marketing budgets.
• I wrote one rulebook for every agency touching Topo Chico, starting with the RFP I drafted on December 7, 2018. The May 2023 edition ran 92 pages.
• A rulebook outlives any single brief. It tells the next agency, the next intern and the next field rep what the brand sounds like before anybody opens a design file.

Why does a CPG creative agency send back work that looks like every other brand in the aisle?

Because the brief gave it nothing to stand on, so it reached for what already works in the category. That's how you get the cold-brew can with a mountain on it, the granola bag with a hand-lettered "small batch," and the committee-approved paragraph about passion and quality that could sit on any box in the store.

BetterBriefs is an Australian brief-training firm. Its 2021 global report, run with research firm Flood + Partners and released with the IPA (the UK trade body for ad agencies), surveyed more than 1,700 people in over 70 countries. The numbers are rough reading for anyone who has ever signed off on a brief. 80% of marketers think they write good briefs and 10% of creative agencies agree. 78% of marketers think their briefs give clear strategic direction. 5% of agencies agree with that one.

The agency isn't lying to you and you aren't lying to it. You're each reading a different document. You read the brief with ten years of your brand in your head. The agency reads the words on the page, and if those words could describe your competitor, the work will look like your competitor.

The study also found rebriefs are common, with 69% of marketers and 73% of agencies saying so. Every rebrief is a week and an invoice. For a food brand with one launch window at a regional grocer, a lost week is a lost reset.

What happened when one beverage brand gave every agency the same rulebook?

For years one person wrote all of it. That's why the work stopped drifting. The brand kept sounding like one voice, because it was.

Topo Chico is a sparkling mineral water bottled in Monterrey, Mexico, since 1895. Coca-Cola North America announced it was buying the brand on October 2, 2017. I launched its US social accounts in 2013, from zero followers, and I was the only person creating content and running those accounts from 2013 through the years after the acquisition. By May 2023 the Instagram account had 142,000 followers.

A small brand gets away with no rulebook while the founder writes every post. Topo Chico stopped being small. After 2017 there was a new corporate parent, regional field teams and a growing list of agencies working on events, PR, design and media. Every one of them had an opinion about what a yellow-label bottle should say. Some of those opinions were good. Most of them were different from each other.

So on December 7, 2018, I drafted the RFP and scope of work for what became the brand's Digital Playbook. I ran weekly reviews with the design agency through December 2019, and I kept the playbook alive across editions dated May 2021, September 2021 and May 2023. The May 2023 edition ran 92 pages and went to the agencies.

What it held was plain. A short purpose line. Who the audience was. One job for each channel, written next to the channel name. A do and do-not list that ruled out politics, drunkenness, competitor brands and plastic-bottle photos. Content themes. And benchmarks for what a best, average and weak post looked like on each platform, so nobody had to argue about whether a post had worked.

The benchmark page cut more meetings than anything else in the doc. An agency pitching a concept could check it before the call. A field rep in another state could pull the do-not list before posting from a sampling table. Nobody had to call me to ask if a photo was on brand. Some still did. That's how you find out where the next edition needs a sentence.

The rule I'd written in my own 2015 deck for the brand was "post like a fan, not a marketer." The playbook was the version of that sentence that a fourteenth person could follow without ever meeting me.

What goes in the rulebook before a CPG creative agency sees it?

Six parts, and none of them needs a designer. A founder and one marketing lead can draft all six in a couple of working sessions, and a strategist can tighten them in a week.

1. Write the one-sentence reason the brand exists, in words a shopper would use. Done when someone outside the company can repeat it back after one read.
2. Name the buyer in plain detail: where they shop, what else is in their cart, what they're annoyed about. Done when the description rules out at least one customer you'd be tempted to chase.
3. Give every channel one job. Instagram might be the community room and the website the formal record. Done when each channel has a single sentence next to it and no two sentences match.
4. Write the do and do-not list. Include the photos you never want to see, the words you never want on pack or in a caption, and the subjects that stay off the feed. Done when a new hire could reject a bad draft without asking you.
5. Pick three to five content themes that only your brand can own. Done when each theme would sound wrong coming from your nearest competitor.
6. Set benchmarks for a best, average and weak post on each platform, using your own past numbers. Done when anyone on the account can say whether last week's post beat the average.

That's version one. The whole document. Mine hit 92 pages over five years because a national brand under a corporate parent collects edge cases. Yours can start at six.

Brief, brand book or rulebook: which one fixes the problem?

Only one of those three should exist before the agency search starts. You'll need all three eventually. They answer different questions.

| Document | What it answers | Who should write it | How long it lives | What breaks without it | |---|---|---|---|---| | Creative brief | What this one project has to do | You, for each project | One campaign | The agency guesses the goal and you pay for rebriefs | | Brand book | What the logo, type and color look like | Usually a CPG creative agency or designer | Until the next rebrand | Assets drift on pack and on the shelf | | Brand rulebook | How the brand talks, who it's for, what each channel does, what a good post looks like | You or an independent strategist, before hiring | Years, updated by edition | Every agency invents its own version of your voice |

The brand book is the one people already have, often from the packaging agency, and it's the one founders point to when asked about brand standards. It tells an agency which yellow to use. It says nothing about what the brand would never say. I wrote about that gap in what happens the week after the brand book ships.

How should a food or beverage founder hire a CPG creative agency once the rulebook exists?

Send the rulebook with the RFP. Judge every agency by what it does with it. The good ones push back on parts. The weak ones paste your words back into a deck with nicer fonts.

Hiring help for this usually looks like a project first and a retainer second. A packaging refresh, a launch campaign or a content sprint lets both sides find out if the fit is real before anybody signs for a year. Pricing swings with scope, so I won't hang a number on it here. I laid out the common models and what each one buys you in what a CPG creative agency does, what it costs, and when a food brand needs one.

Questions worth asking on the first call:

• Which part of our rulebook would you change, and why?
• Show me a client whose work still sounded like the client two years in.
• Who on your team writes captions and who approves them?
• How will you report against our benchmark page, using our numbers?
• What do you do when our field team posts something off brand?

Red flags are easy to spot once the rulebook is on the table. An agency that never mentions it in the pitch. A first concept that would work just as well for the brand next to you on the shelf. A team that wants to rewrite your voice before it has posted once. I've seen agencies dilute a brand's essence in under a quarter, usually with the best intentions and a strong font budget.

Watch what happens after launch, too. Plenty of brands look great on post one and lose the thread by post fifteen. The rulebook is how you catch the drift early, because you have something written to hold the work against. And if you're choosing between agencies on portfolio alone, read what to look for beyond the portfolio first.

FAQ

What is a CPG agency?

Search "CPG agency" and the results come back noisy. A CPG agency is a marketing or creative firm built for consumer packaged goods: the food, drinks, snacks, and household products that move through grocery, convenience, and online stores. Some lock onto packaging and branding. Some run social and content. Some own retail and shopper marketing. An events company carries the same name, which is why the feed gets mixed.

What does a CPG company do?

A CPG company makes and sells consumer packaged goods, products people buy often and use up fast, like sparkling water, chips, coffee or cleaning supplies. Most sell through retailers and distributors, not direct, so their marketing has to win twice: once with the retail buyer who grants shelf space and again with the shopper standing in front of that shelf deciding in a few seconds.

How much does a CPG creative agency cost?

It depends on scope, and anyone quoting a flat number before seeing your brand is guessing. Project work like a packaging refresh is usually priced as a fixed fee, while ongoing content and social is usually a monthly retainer with a minimum term. Ask each agency to price the same scope, built from your rulebook, so the quotes compare like for like instead of deck to deck.

Should the CPG creative agency write the rulebook for us?

Not the first version. A rulebook written by the agency you're about to hire describes the brand the agency would like to work on, and it makes switching agencies harder later. Write version one yourself or with an independent strategist, then invite the agency you hire to mark it up. Their edits will tell you a lot about how they think.

How long does a brand rulebook take to write?

A usable first version takes a founder and one marketing lead about two working sessions, plus a week for a strategist to tighten the language and set the benchmarks from your own past posts. It does not need to be long. Six pages that people read beat ninety that sit in a shared drive, and you add pages as real edge cases show up.

What to do before the first agency call

Pull your last 90 days of posts, mark the five that sounded most like you and the five that sounded least like you, and write down why. That page is the first draft of your do and do-not list. Then write the one-sentence reason the brand exists and give each channel its job. You'll walk into the agency search with something every candidate has to answer to, and the committee-approved paragraph never gets a chance to show up in round one.

This is the food and beverage brand strategy work I do now, and the rulebook is the first thing I build in a new engagement.

If you want yours written before the agency pitches start, message me on LinkedIn.