We just wrapped a campaign where we needed sign-off from both the US client’s marketing director AND the LATAM team before the briefs went to creators. What should’ve taken 3 days took 10, and it wasn’t even complicated—it was just the coordination nightmare.
The US side wanted everything by end of business Friday. The LATAM team was in the middle of their morning and had other priorities. The client’s legal review was waiting on feedback from a person who was out sick. By the time everyone was actually online and paying attention, the original brief had three different versions floating around.
I know this is a common issue for anyone running campaigns across regions, but I’m curious what actually works in practice. Are you building in buffer time? Using specific project management tools? Or is it more about restructuring who needs to be in the approval loop?
What I’m realizing is that the workflow matters way more than the actual approval criteria. If people know exactly when they need to review something, in what format, with what level of detail—sign-off happens way faster.
How are you actually managing this without losing momentum or creating bottlenecks?
This is such a people problem masquerading as a scheduling problem. What I started doing is routing approvals differently based on the decision type. Strategic decisions (overall campaign concept, messaging) need everyone. Tactical decisions (specific creator selections, ad copy variations) go to the regional teams. This cuts the approval loop by like 60%. I also set a “decision deadline” that’s earlier than the actual deadline—tells people when they need to be done thinking, not when they should start looking. And honestly? I loop in one person from each region as the “approval owner” who has authority to make final calls. Takes pressure off waiting for three different people to wake up.
We implemented a tiered review system based on data impact. If a decision affects campaign performance metrics (creator selection, content guidelines), it needs approval from both regions. If it’s aesthetic or local flavor (specific hashtags, regional references), the regional team decides independently. The process got way faster because we stopped treating everything as equally important. We also use tracked documents (Google Docs with version history) instead of email chains—everyone can see exactly what changed and who needs to weigh in. The accountability is way better, and turnaround time dropped from days to hours.
I restructured my team so there’s one person accountable for sign-off in each region, and they have decision-making authority. Not consensus-building—authority. That was the game changer. They consult internally if they need to, but a single person is on the hook for yes or no by a certain time. I also moved approvals into a synchronous format when timing is tight—15-minute calls instead of email chains. Sounds counterintuitive, but it’s actually faster because there’s no context switching. People aren’t in their inbox thinking about it; they’re all focused for 15 minutes and done.
When we scaled across Russia and Europe, we learned the hard way that async approval just doesn’t work for campaign launches. We switched to a fixed integration window—every Monday at 2pm UTC, everyone syncs on anything that needs approval that week. Async docs are ready beforehand, we spend 30 minutes discussing, 30 minutes deciding. It sounds rigid, but it actually freed everyone up because they knew exactly when they needed to be available. Otherwise, people were context-switching all week. The consistency and speed improved dramatically once we made the approval window predictable.
This is a governance problem, not a scheduling one. We solved it by creating separate approval matrices for creative vs. performance decisions. Creative decisions (briefs, messaging tone) need LATAM lead + US lead signing off. Performance decisions (KPIs, budget allocation) go through a different chain. This way, when someone comes to the table, they know their specific lane. We also implemented a rule: if you don’t comment within 24 hours of something being posted for review, it auto-approves. Kills the passive blockade effect. People suddenly get very engaged when they know silence = automatic approval.
From where I sit as a creator waiting for briefs—please figure this out internally before it gets to creators. I’ve had campaigns delayed a week because two approval teams couldn’t sync. What helped me when I worked with an agency that got it right: they had ONE point person per region who could make YES/NO calls without consulting five people. Made everything so much faster. And they built in actual buffer time in their timeline instead of pretending approvals would be instant. Just being realistic about the process helped. The agencies that act like approvals take 2 hours are always the ones missing deadlines.