Creating content is usually thought of as the major time outlay for a marketing or creative department. But ask anyone who’s ever managed the review and approval process, and they can tell you that’s frequently the source of many delays. Simply collecting clear, actionable feedback from reviewers can bring up these common, but often unanticipated, headaches:
- Difficulty communicating
Often, reviewers are looking at their content in one window while typing up their feedback in an email. This disconnect between the content and the feedback means that reviewers have to describe what they want changed, and designers have to decipher the reviewer’s intent. Reviews and revisions take longer, and change requests get lost in translation. - Cumbersome email threads
Content gets emailed to a reviewer and the reviewer then reply with their feedback, and that feedback is forwarded onto the content creator. Not so bad. Start adding in additional reviewers, exchanging email responses, or sharing revised versions, and these email threads become convoluted pretty quickly. - Review information isn’t transparent
Sharing content for review over email or FTP can feel like throwing a message in a bottle into the ocean. You’re unsure what’s happening to it after it leaves your hand. Did your reviewers receive your content? Have they looked at it yet? And once all of the feedback and sign-offs come back, it’s often difficult to access them later without digging through your inbox.
This is the second of a 3-part series taking a closer look at the issue with the status quo, and why a Creative Production Management solution is essential to an efficiently functioning marketing or media department.