Creative review process question

[AndrilitaRo1]

For marketing teams with tight timelines, how do you get leadership approval and alignment on creative feedback quickly and efficiently?

Background: We have 1 day to get leadership approval from 3 key leaders across the business (leaders from creative, merchandising and campaigns). These 3 leaders have a very busy schedule, typically have very limited availability and don't review creative on their own successfully or sometimes contradict each other if they do review in a silo. If the creative team has questions about the feedback, responses are delayed due to their limited availability. We would like to avoid stretching out the timelines needed for projects in order to meet the quick turn needs of the business.

What we do currently: We have a 1 hr meeting every day with the 3 leaders to review all creative that is ready for them that day. Stakeholders, requestors, creative team and leadership are all present to discuss the feedback, provide background on the project and align on next steps. However, we've had feedback that about 50% of our stakeholders don't like this review process.

Goal: I'm hoping to get ideas from other creative service teams on what works for them to get leadership approval and alignment on creative feedback quickly and efficiently. 

[Kiersten_K]

Have you thought about using Proof to eliminate the meetings?

We use Proof and have our top leaders on the creative proofs. Leaders do go into proofs daily and leave feedback and ask questions of their teams. Our teams also operate on super quick turn timelines and without Proof in place, we add a lot of time to our process.

[RandyRoberts]

I agree with Kiersten. Meetings in general waste a lot of time, especially for time strapped people. Having said that, there is sometimes no good technical solution for a management and/or training problem.

Have they said what they don't like about the current process?

If the approvers don't have time to approve, nothing you can do is gonna change that. I think the key here is making the process as easy and no-brainer as possible. Also making sure that doing it right is easier than doing it wrong. Let us know what you come up with.

[AndrilitaRo1]

Thank you both for the feedback. We use proofs for first pass reviews with marketing managers/stakeholders, but at the leadership level, we've found meetings are far more efficient for aligning the 3 leadership reviewers with each other since offline proof reviews are sometimes contradictory amongst the leadership reviewers and getting quick answers to questions either about their feedback or questions in general on the job. 

Proof reviews also typically lead to delays in the project which impact the timeline, but we have a high success rate of keeping projects on track with our review meeting since it's time leadership has carved out to review creative, which they wouldn't have otherwise. 

So far we haven't found any revolutionary change to our process that would be an improvement on what we do today. We are optimizing the meeting agenda to be more efficient instead. 

[Lyndsy-Denk]

I have found that the regular, frequent standups you describe can sometimes be the best approach so long as all parties play by the rules. The one rule I'm specifically thinking of is commitment to moving fast through the agenda. If you find that people are contradicting each other or going down rabbit holes too often, standups might not be the solution. Proofs might also become a bottleneck because the asynchronous format is great for either quick decisions or more casual discussion—not something in between.

Ultimately, if you continue to hit bottlenecks with these folks, that indicates a few possibilities:

• People need to recommit to the rules of review (see above) or creative standards. If you have these types of things documented (ex. brand guidelines), you can bring it back to the team to say, "Remember this? We're asking you to recommit to these standards so we can streamline reviews OR raise the flag now if you're not aligned in general." In short, have an intervention.
• The people making decisions are too bogged down in other responsibilities and could benefit from delegating. They could delegate the creative decision-making itself or delegate other responsibilities so they have the capacity to more appropriately look at the creative work.
• Limit the types of items this team needs to review. Some creative activities could/should be operational in that they derive from a template or are low risk. If your reviewers agree to let these things go without their oversight, it can reduce everyone's load.
• Tighten the rigor of reviews prior to the sign-off stage. I often coach proof users to limit their use of proof to when you believe the asset is ready or darn near ready to deploy. In other words, your proof should require proof participants to merely identify errors or confirm that previous feedback is in place. You know your proof wasn't ready for this stage if you receive a mass of feedback. Adjust your process accordingly.
• Agree to relax your timelines to accommodate the time it takes to provide feedback and decide.