When I took over as the manager of this process, it was broken, inefficient, and inconsistent. Stakeholders made their own creative requests, drafted their own copy, and fought for the space amongst each other. For brand review and consistency, the marketing team would be brought into the process late (if ever) and cause a time crunch leading to mistakes. It was the corporate house ad equivalent of the Wild West. This wasted stakeholders’ time, our designers’ time, created confusion, and resulted in overall lower quality advertisements in valuable and limited space.

While my manager’s original intent was for me to continue to manage the process as is, I saw issues that I could fix. I built out my plan, meeting with stakeholders to understand what was important to keep and what could be torn down and replaced. I pitched the strategy to my manager, demonstrating the business case for making these changes, and got my plan approved.