Streamlining Creative Project Request Processes

On average, it takes 8 days and 3.2 rounds of review to get a project deliverable approved. 7 in 10 project managers say chasing stakeholders for approvals slows down their teams significantly. This explains why projects fall behind schedule, resources are wasted, and deadlines become a constant source of stress. But… Because of these delays, project managers face constant roadblocks like: Endless email chains and follow-ups. Teams waiting idly for approvals that don’t come on time. Budget overruns caused by rework or missed timelines. Chasing approvals isn’t just time-consuming—it derails the entire project. When feedback or sign-offs are delayed, the ripple effect impacts everything: Planned resources go unused. Project milestones are missed. Team morale drops because of constant last-minute changes. Imagine this: You’ve coordinated with multiple stakeholders, only to spend days waiting for someone’s approval. Meanwhile: Your team is idle, wasting valuable hours. You’re scrambling to keep stakeholders aligned. Timelines are collapsing, and you’re stuck fixing the mess. This endless cycle of chasing approvals leaves you overwhelmed and exhausted. So, how do you take back control? The answer lies in streamlined approval workflows. Here are 3 actionable tips to get faster project approvals: 1. Set non-negotiable deadlines: Assign clear due dates for every review stage and automate reminders to keep stakeholders accountable. 2. Be specific in your requests: Specify exactly what needs to be approved whether it's a project charter, timeline, or deliverables so stakeholders know where to focus. 3. Centralize approvals: Use a single tool or platform for feedback and sign-offs to eliminate confusion and back-and-forth emails. The next time you’re stuck waiting for project approvals, ask yourself: • Have I communicated clear deadlines? • Am I specific about the feedback I need? • Is my approval process centralized and easy to follow? Take these steps, and you’ll not only stop chasing approvals but also keep your projects on track, under budget, and stress-free.

Creative isn’t just about creating anymore. It's about building efficiency into repeatable processes. Back when Dmitry Shamis was at HubSpot, his team made thousands of assets for the Inbound conference. A lot of it was repetitive. These days? AI can do most of it. THE OLD WAY Signage, speaker announcements, webpages…Dmitry’s team did it all for 100+ speakers. The teams were essentially using templates since they wanted consistency across the event. Each speaker’s webpage, for example, needed to have the same event branding. But they had to manually swap out the headshots, bios, room info, and social links for each speaker. Basically, they were making the same 10-20 pieces of collateral again and again. It took a long time, it was tedious—and frankly, not what Hubspot’s top creative minds should be thinking about. People were literally pulling their hair out. THE NEW WAY Creative used to be about creating things in a literal way. Designing the graphic, writing the copy, filming the video. And it still is. But it’s no longer JUST about creating—it’s using AI and automation to create at scale. These days, instead of doing it manually, Dmitry’s team could make a spreadsheet and use a tool to update all the speakers’ assets. Hundreds of hours of frustrating busywork cut down to...maybe 5 hours. A whole team freed up to work on more interesting work that drives growth. Things are even progressing so quickly, that you might not even need to triage anymore. With an AI tool plugged into your intake form and your PM tool, new requests could automatically be prioritized and slotted into where the team has bandwidth. Creative is about to get a lot more strategic. Teams that want to stay ahead of the curve need to implement operations practices and AI/automation tools that let their teams move fast—without breaking anything.

💡 Nearly all acquisition teams cite a "creative" problem -- namely creating assets for paid ads. While this seems true on the surface — it’s rarely about creativity or a lack of media assets It's actually a *shipping* problem. Much like the saying "you ship your org chart," with creative, you ship your workflow. The reality is, most brands already have tons of creative assets—just scattered across different teams (user research, product, marketing). The problem is, there’s no streamlined process for turning those assets into ads. Here’s a fast fix to get your creative engine shipping at scale: 1️⃣ Mine your existing assets and categorize them: Product-centric: demos, people using the product, etc. Emotion-centric: testimonials, customer reactions, etc. Other: B-roll, behind-the-scenes footage. 2️⃣ Map these assets to proven creative concepts: Before/after comparisons. Testimonials or customer stories. Product use in unexpected contexts. Problem/solution scenarios. User-generated content. 3️⃣ Layer in copy and overlays that speak to one or more of these: Urgency (e.g., "Limited time only!") Scarcity (e.g., "Only 5 left in stock.") Trust (e.g., customer ratings, awards). Social proof (e.g., "Used by 100,000+ customers.") Value proposition (e.g., "Save time, save money.") 4️⃣ Leverage tools like Sovran to generate creative permutations programmatically. This enables you to test variations without draining your team’s bandwidth. (h/t: Manson Chen) 5️⃣ Use platforms like Motion (Creative Analytics) to extract valuable creative insights from real-time performance. 6️⃣ Automate over time by building a content repository and leveraging AI to tag and categorize assets—creating a searchable database that makes scaling content production seamless. 7️⃣ Lastly, “creative” doesn’t always mean visually stunning. In fact, "ugly ads" and "transactional creatives" often outperform their polished counterparts. Don't be afraid to prioritize clarity over aesthetics in performance marketing. If you're still unsure about your team's creative capacity, here's one of my favorite "ugly ads." 👇🏾

Content marketing chaos looks like this: ➡️ CEO: can you write this ebook? ➡️ Product team: can I get a blog post series on this? ➡️ Customer success team: I have four customer stories for you to write THIS WEEK. This is no way to work. The writers get buried in ad hoc requests and end up scrambling to get work done. Details are slim, they're stressed, they spin wheels, you're wasting $, and there's no prioritization. The answer? A job request process. Most PM tools have form features you can use to collect information. Otherwise, there are standalone form tools you can use. In those forms you can ask questions like: • content type (drop down - blog, case study, ebook...?) • target audience (your specific buyer) • goal of content (awareness, book calls...) • how it will be used (email outreach? in a campaign?) • the customer question or problem it's answering 👎 Don't throw around terms like TOFU/BOFU and 'buyer persona' or make this resemble a content brief, because only a marketer can fill these out. Once you get the form: ✅ The requests can be reviewed, clarified, and assigned based on project details. ✅ You can start a back/forth to clarify or have a call if it requires a conversation. (And in some cases, the request goes away because it didn't make sense or there is a piece out there that will work). You can also create a PM board where people can just log and park ideas that can be explored later. No more ideas on post-it notes, mentioned offhandedly and forgotten, or buried in emails or Slack chats. This structured approach protects the team's time, allows for the right details to come to light, and results in content with purpose.

Struggling with Web Design Project Requirements? This One Framework Helps! Let’s face it – as a new web designer, tackling project requirements can be overwhelming. You’ve got client requests, user needs, and design goals to balance. If you're finding it tricky to connect all the dots, there's a simple framework that can change everything: (5W1H) This classic method (Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How) turns those confusing project requirements into a clear, manageable checklist. Here’s how it can help: ✔ Who Identify the end-users. Who is the website for? Understanding their needs ensures every design choice connects with the audience. ✔ What Define what the website aims to achieve. Is it selling a product, building a brand, or sharing information? This guides everything from layout to features. ✔ When Consider any timelines or specific events. Is it for a campaign launch or seasonal sale? Knowing this helps you prioritize features and updates. ✔ Where Think about where the site will be accessed – desktop, mobile, tablet? This affects layout, font sizes, and user experience. ✔ Why Ask why the client wants this project. Knowing the motivation clarifies the purpose, giving you a strong foundation for creative decisions. ✔ How Finally, think about how users will interact with the website. This impacts navigation, CTAs, and design flow. 💡 Using 5W1H might seem simple, but it brings much-needed clarity, helping you decode project requirements and build websites that truly resonate. Ready to try it in your next project?

The marketing curse 😂 The fix: Dara Denney's 5 step framework that brings data and creatives team together, battle tested with over $100M of ad spend. Dara's take: Creative freedom is a myth. “You need to attack the sources of ambiguity within the creative process. This is the secret to building high performing creative teams" 1. Remove ambiguity with SOPs "The most ambiguous parts of the creating process have the biggest impact on performance" Think of all the ambiguity that exists in your creative production workflow: Research: Who is conducting competitor research? Where is the team documenting customer reviews, and how are you using the performance data you’ve collected? Roadmap: Is everyone clear about the goals and tasks in your creative production pipeline? Or does every new request feel chaotic? Performance: Does your designer know why the last ad bombed? Is data on performance understood or locked in some spreadsheet? To remove ambiguity, Dara suggests formalizing the creative project lifecycle stages research, execution, review, client submission, and launch—for streamlined creation. She calls these stages Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). 2. Hire a dedicated Creative Strategist Creative strategists remove ambiguity from the creative process by doing the hard work of understanding customer psychology, the competitor landscape, deep s of performance data, and uncovering the strategic problems that ads need to solve. Without a creative strategist, your growth and creative teams become disconnected. For in house teams, this leads to internal politics, mistrust between teams, and low output. 3. Make data accessible AND exciting Not sure which metrics to narrow down on? Focus on your primary KPIs, such as spend, purchases, and cost per lead. These metrics will give you a good understanding of your campaign's performance. Additionally, look at storytelling KPIs, like drop off rates, average video watch time, hook and hold rates, and CTRs. Use a visual analytics platforms to make the data accessible and interesting for your creatives (that's what Motion (Creative Analytics) does btw) 4. Roll out a sprint structure Here's a simple structure you can start with: - Monthly roadmaps, metric checkpoints, bi-weekly retros - Keep the process on track with daily stand-ups Regularly analyze ad formats and metrics as a team during your live sessions and set up a Slack channel for sharing high and low performing ads where you can chat async on what you're seeing 5. Build a data driven creative culture You need to embed Creative Strategy into your org culture. Start all brainstorms with a data download. Ex: share CI research, customer insights, past performance but make sure you start from data or bring it into how you operate. To keep momentum up, create a "win" Slack channel to celebrate learnings and top performing ads and conduct monthly retros to keep the team aligned and engaged with data.

When you’re tasked with building processes for a UX research department from scratch, especially when you have a small team, efficiency becomes key. Often, there are more designers than researchers — it’s rarely a 50-50 split. Ideally, you’d have one researcher for every three designers, but in reality, it’s more like one researcher for 20 or even 40 designers. So how can we work efficiently when the demand far exceeds capacity? Here are three phases I recommend focusing on: 1. Open Doors: This is a simple, weekly walk-in session where people from across the organization (designers, PMs, devs, etc.) can ask quick questions about UX research. It’s a great way to answer small questions without much prep, based on your existing knowledge and expertise. Start small by inviting just the designers, then expand as your team grows. 2. Research Intake Process: For teams that already know they need research, avoid the ad hoc approach by implementing an intake process. Have stakeholders fill out a form detailing their request. This helps you prioritize projects that align with business goals and gives insight into timelines, capacity, and more. After reviewing the form, schedule an intake call to gather additional information before deciding if the project is a go or no-go. 3. Kickoff: Once a project is approved, create a detailed research plan (methods, timeline, budget, and how the insights connect to business goals). Present this plan in a kickoff meeting with the team to ensure alignment before starting. These three steps — Open Doors, Research Intake, and Kickoff — help structure your UX research process and make it more efficient, even if you’re a small team handling multiple requests. How do you handle research workflows with a limited team? #UXR #UXResearch #ResearchOps

Visual automation workflow I’ve been using lately My current flow looks like this: Multi-image inspiration → breakdown → product request → image → video What I’ve added to make this scalable? I created reusable #technique inside FLORA and used Claude to generate prompts instead of writing them manually again and again. This makes the entire workflow reusable across projects and by different designers, saving a lot of time while producing quality. I originally built this to help my team speed up referencing and streamline the overall workflow, and it’s made a noticeable difference. Where the speed comes from? Reusing references instead of starting from scratch Turning inspiration into reusable prompt logic Chaining outputs (image → video, breakdown → prompt) Keeping everything in one connected system The workflow externalizes creative thinking. References, prompts, visuals, and motion all live together which makes it faster to iterate, easier to scale, and much easier to stay consistent.

I built a creative production system that grew our agency by 300% Here’s how I did it in 3 steps: - Step 1: PLS - People LOVE Simple If you're having to slack people for ad creative, you're doing it wrong - I started by building a simple way to request creative - I thought, what would make a strategist's life easier - AHA! A form! Creating a simple form within Monday.com changed the game A busy team doesn't have time for a complex system. If you give them a simple way to request creative, you'll 10X their productivity! Step 2: Automations! Every action in your production system should be automated... For example: - When a request is made, every designer, copywriter and media buyer is assigned to the task - The task (ad creative) should then move through the production process automatically without anybody having to manually move it - Every team member should receive a notification when the status is changed (in design / ready for QA etc.) In theory, the best system should require the least amount of manual work Step 3: Getting Approvals Improving the client experience is just as important as the internal process - Create a notification for when your ad is ready for client review - Link the client to the ad creative & allow them to drop in comments Once they approve the creative, notify the team. - The best part about this is you'll be able to track every single ad creative that comes through and mark it when it goes live on Facebook. PLUS You can add a column for performance KPIs. - This system addresses 3 issues 1. A messy production system 2. Bad client approval experience 3. Zero creative performance tracking - It seems simple but you'd be surprised at how many agencies don't do this. If you're not automating and simplifying your systems, your agency will fall behind. #facebookads #adcreative #projectmanagement #marketingagency

This ad + email framework 10x’ed my productivity. When I told my team that we needed to create 50 ads a week and 14 emails. To say they didn’t respond well…is an understatement. I got comments like: “do you think we are robots?” ”what happened to quality over quantity?” “have you talked to xyz person about this? they will quit” We had been dealing with the same problem for months, everyone agreed we needed more ads + emails to grow, but they kept saying the team didn’t have the capacity for that level of output. Ever heard that before? After doing a bit of damage control, I got the teams buy-in. Bare with me for 1 month…. if my system didnt work, I would stop bugging everyone and we would find another way. BUT, for that month, they had to buy into what I was trying to build. Spoiler: It worked. We were able to generate 100 ads a week, 14 emails, cut out CPA by 25%, and added $10M+ to our yearly revenue numbers in under 3 months. The framework is simple: -Step 1: Everything gets a brief. Literally everything. -Step 2: Nothing gets started before the brief is complete. If you have to spend time tracking down info on a request, your wasting time. -Step 3: Things move clearly through swim lanes with clear owners of each lane. (Idea, Briefing, Brief Done, Creative In Progress, Creative In Review, etc) -Step 4: Most importantly. Dont ask for things you don’t actually need. DO NOT waste your teams time on things that arent mission critical. This thing is a well-oiled machine now, no one is complaining and it gave everyone more time and headspace to focus on being creative.