Turn campaign results into a decision-ready meeting brief

Results decks report what happened; a meeting brief asks for a decision. A six-section, two-page format that gets leadership to a clear choice.

A campaign ends and a results deck follows: forty slides of reach, clicks and charts. Leadership skims it, asks two questions and moves on. Nothing is decided.

The problem is the format. A results deck reports what happened. A meeting brief asks for a decision.

This article shows how to turn campaign results into a brief that leads to one.

Why decks fail

Slides break reasoning into fragments. Readers see numbers without the argument that connects them.

Amazon is the best-known company to move away from slide presentations. In his 2017 letter to shareholders, Jeff Bezos wrote: “We don’t do PowerPoint (or any other slide-oriented) presentations at Amazon. Instead, we write narratively structured six-page memos.”

He described meetings that begin with attendees reading the memo silently. He also admitted that the quality of these memos “varies widely”.

You do not need six pages. For most campaign reviews, one or two pages are enough. The principle is the same: write the argument in full sentences, so gaps in logic are visible.

The pressure on CMOs

The need for clear decisions is growing. Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey found that marketing budgets were effectively flat at 7.8% of company revenue, and 56% of CMOs said they lacked the budget to deliver their strategy.

When budgets are tight, every review should end with a clear choice about where money goes next.

The structure of a decision-ready brief

Use six short sections.

1. The decision

State it in one sentence at the top. For example: “Should we extend the spring campaign to two more markets in Q3, at a cost of €180,000?”

If there is no decision, ask why the meeting is needed.

2. The recommendation

Say what you recommend and why, in two or three sentences. Leaders read the top first. Put the answer there.

3. What happened

Summarise results against the objectives set before the campaign. Use three to five numbers, not thirty.

Compare with a baseline: the previous period, a control group or the plan.

4. What we learned

Explain why the results came out as they did. Name what worked, what did not and what surprised you.

Label each point as measured, estimated or judgement. That distinction matters when attribution is incomplete.

5. Options and trade-offs

Set out two or three realistic options, including doing nothing. For each, give the cost, the expected effect and the main risk.

6. What we still do not know

List open questions and how you would answer them, such as a test, more data or a deadline for review.

Write for reading, not presenting

Use short paragraphs and plain language. Avoid jargon that finance or operations colleagues will not know.

Put detailed charts and tables in an appendix. The main brief should make sense without them.

Send it at least a day ahead, or follow Amazon’s practice and allow reading time at the start of the meeting.

An illustrative example

The following example is hypothetical, and the figures are illustrative.

A Czech engineering services firm ran a three-month LinkedIn and events campaign aimed at plant managers in Germany and Austria.

Decision: Should we continue in Germany and stop in Austria?

Recommendation: Yes. Germany produced 14 qualified opportunities against a target of 10. Austria produced 2 against a target of 6.

Learned: German leads came mainly from two trade events. LinkedIn ads produced clicks in both countries but few qualified leads. This is measured from CRM data.

Options: Continue in both (€120,000), Germany only (€80,000), or pause both.

Unknown: Whether Austria failed because of the market or the timing. A small test of one event next spring would answer that.

The meeting took twenty minutes. The decision was made.

Common mistakes

Burying the recommendation. If it appears on page three, many readers will never reach it.

Reporting every metric. More numbers create more questions, not more clarity.

Hiding bad news. Underperformance reported clearly builds trust. Hidden underperformance destroys it when found.

Skipping the options. A single recommendation without alternatives looks like a request for approval, not a decision.

Close the loop

End every brief with a short record of what was decided, who owns the next step and when results will be reviewed.

At the next review, start by checking that record. Did the decision happen? Did it work as expected? Over time, this builds a history of marketing decisions and their outcomes, which is far more persuasive to a board than any single campaign report.

A habit worth building

Ask every campaign owner to submit a two-page brief, not a deck, for each review. The first few will be hard to write. That difficulty is the point.

Clear writing exposes unclear thinking. Better to find it before the meeting than during it.

The test

At the end of the meeting, can everyone state the decision that was made and who owns it? If not, the brief did not do its job.