Fill in the tables below once, as a team. The rest of the page describes how the process runs regardless of who you put in them.
What needs approval
Not everything does. Approving everything is how approval becomes a rubber stamp, and how the things that genuinely need scrutiny get the same three seconds as a social caption.
The pattern worth keeping: approve the thing that is new. Reusing cleared claims and approved assets inside an existing brief is production, not a new decision.
Who approves what
A named backup matters more than it looks. A single approver with no backup means every holiday is a freeze.
The order
1
1. Approve the brief, not the output
The cheapest approval is on the brief, before anything is produced. A concept rejected at brief stage costs a conversation. The same concept rejected after production costs the production.
2
2. Produce
No approvals happen during production. If the brief changes mid-flight, the brief gets updated and re-approved, rather than the change being carried in someone’s memory.
3
3. Run the specialist reviews in parallel
Brand and legal review the same version at the same time. Running them in sequence doubles the wait for no benefit, since they check different things.
4
4. Consolidate feedback into one round
One person collects every reviewer’s notes, resolves contradictions between them, and sends a single set back. Reviewers do not brief the producer directly.
5
5. Final ship approval
One named person confirms the final version is the approved version. This is the step that catches the file that was revised after approval.
Revision rounds
Agree the number in the brief. Two rounds is a common default: one substantive, one for corrections. Rounds are consumed by feedback, not by time. Work that comes back with contradictory notes from three reviewers has not used a round; it has failed step 4.When an approver doesn’t respond
Silence is the most common failure in any approval process, and it needs a stated answer rather than a norm people guess at. E.g. If a reviewer doesn’t respond within the turnaround above, the campaign owner escalates to the backup. If the backup doesn’t respond, brand and budget approvals default to approved and the campaign owner notes the exception on the brief. Legal review never defaults to approved.What gets recorded
- Who approved, and which version they approved.
- The date.
- Any condition attached to the approval.
- Any exception taken, and why.
Exceptions
Urgent work still goes through the same reviews, compressed. What changes is the turnaround, not the list of reviewers. Skipping legal because something is urgent is the case that costs the most.Related resources
- Brand approval process What the brand review checks.
- Legal review process What triggers legal review and what it checks.
- Creative review checklist The pass that happens before approval.
- Campaign launch checklist Where approvals get confirmed before spend.
- Creative brief process Where brief-stage approval sits.