Your Audience Doesn't Care That Everyone Internally Is Aligned

There’s a trend happening.

It’s perfect for your brand.

Actually perfect.

Not:

“Hello fellow kids, we too have discovered this trending audio.”

Genuinely relevant.

Someone on the social team spots it Tuesday morning.

“We should do this.”

Great.

How quickly can we get it live?

“We’ll need to loop everyone in.”

Ah.

See you in six weeks.

First, We Need to Align

Okay.

Who needs to be involved?

Social.

Obviously.

Brand.

Makes sense.

Comms.

Sure.

Legal.

Fine.

The Marketing Director.

Yep.

The GM.

Why?

“Just for visibility.”

Of course.

Wouldn’t want the General Manager to discover we posted something on Instagram without receiving a 14-slide pre-read.

Let’s get everyone together.

How’s Thursday?

Brand can’t do Thursday.

Friday?

Comms has an offsite.

Monday?

Marketing Director is in Sydney.

Tuesday afternoon?

Legal can do 3:30.

Perfect.

We’ve found a time.

The trend died on Friday.

But the meeting is alive and well.

Your Customer Wasn’t Invited to the Alignment Workshop

This is the strange bit.

We spend enormous amounts of time getting marketing to work internally.

Everyone understands it.

Everyone has seen it.

Everyone has contributed.

Everyone has had the opportunity to make the headline slightly worse.

Everyone is aligned.

Beautiful.

There’s just one person missing.

The customer.

They weren’t in the meeting.

They didn’t read the deck.

They don’t know that Legal had concerns about Slide 17.

They don’t know this is Version 23.

They don’t know three departments had to compromise.

They don’t know the Marketing Director fought incredibly hard to keep the word “bloody”.

They just see the thing.

For approximately 1.7 seconds.

And decide whether they give a shit.

Internal Alignment Is Not a Customer Benefit

This should probably be printed above every marketing department’s door.

Your audience does not care that everyone internally is aligned.

They don’t care how difficult the campaign was to approve.

They don’t care how many stakeholders were involved.

They don’t care that Procurement came in late.

They don’t care that the CEO had a thought.

They don’t care that the Head of Brand initially preferred Concept B but eventually “came around”.

They definitely don’t care that the final execution reflects a compromise everyone can live with.

Actually, that last one they might notice.

Just not in the way you hoped.

This Is How Interesting Things Become Fine

A good idea enters the approval process.

It has a point of view.

A sharp edge.

Something unusual.

Maybe even something slightly uncomfortable.

Then the feedback starts.

“I love it.”

Dangerous opening.

“But…”

Here we go.

“Could we make it a little broader?”

Sure.

“Could we make sure it speaks to our secondary audience?”

Okay.

“Can we bring the product benefit forward?”

Yep.

“Can we make the joke slightly less…”

Funny?

“Polarising.”

Right.

“Legal would like this sentence added.”

Of course they would.

“Could the logo come in earlier?”

Naturally.

“And management would feel more comfortable if…”

There it is.

Eventually, everyone is aligned.

Unfortunately, they’re aligned around something nobody outside the company would voluntarily watch.

The Approval Process Has Quietly Become the Creative Process

This is where things go wrong.

Approval is supposed to check the work.

Is it accurate?

Is it legal?

Is it strategically right?

Does it represent the brand?

Are we about to accidentally promise every Australian a free Toyota?

Useful questions.

But somewhere along the way, approval became collaborative creative development.

Now everyone who approves the work also gets to improve the work.

Brand has a line.

Legal has a line.

Comms has a thought.

Sales wants a benefit added.

The GM wants the joke explained.

The CEO’s daughter didn’t get it.

And because all feedback arrives with roughly equal visual weight inside a PowerPoint deck, the creative team dutifully starts incorporating it.

This is how you end up with an ad written by 14 people.

Which is strange.

Because nobody has ever said:

“You know what made that line brilliant? Fourteen authors.”

“But We Need Stakeholder Buy-In”

Of course you do.

This isn’t an argument for locking the Creative Director in a room, giving them the company credit card and changing their phone number.

Businesses have responsibilities.

Marketing has consequences.

There are things Legal genuinely needs to see.

There are claims that need checking.

There are brand decisions that require senior approval.

The problem isn’t approval.

It’s approval without hierarchy.

Not every opinion is equally useful.

Not every stakeholder needs to be involved at every stage.

And not everyone who needs to approve something needs to rewrite it.

There is an enormous difference between:

“This claim creates a legal risk.”

and:

“Personally, I wouldn’t say it like that.”

Thank you, Martin.

Luckily, the campaign isn’t targeted at you.

Speed Is Part of the Creative

This becomes even more obvious on social.

Sometimes the idea has an expiry date.

Something happens.

The internet reacts.

There’s a moment.

You either participate while the moment is alive or you arrive later wearing a party hat while someone stacks chairs around you.

And yet brands will apply a campaign approval process to a piece of reactive content.

Someone spots the opportunity.

Great.

Let’s make something.

First, can we develop a concept deck?

Then align internally.

Then send to Brand.

Then Legal.

Then senior management.

Can we also prepare some context explaining the trend?

Management hasn’t seen it.

Maybe include some examples.

And audience demographics.

Could we add a slide on potential risks?

Fantastic.

Approved.

The internet has moved on to a capybara.

You Cannot Trendjack Six Weeks Later

This one seems worth saying clearly.

You cannot be culturally responsive on an approval timeline designed for a television campaign.

By the time everyone is comfortable, the thing that made the idea relevant may no longer exist.

And then brands wonder why their social feels corporate.

It’s not necessarily because the social team doesn’t understand social.

Sometimes it’s because they understood it perfectly on Tuesday.

Then the company published it on October 14.

The problem wasn't the idea.

The organisation had a slower refresh rate than culture.

Alignment Has a Cost

We tend to talk about internal alignment as though more is automatically better.

More stakeholders.

More consultation.

More confidence.

Less risk.

But every additional approval has a cost.

Time.

Compromise.

Complexity.

Creative dilution.

And occasionally the complete death of the opportunity.

That doesn't mean fewer people is always better.

It means the value of another stakeholder should be greater than the cost of involving them.

If Legal can prevent a lawsuit?

Worth it.

If your product expert catches a factual error?

Excellent.

If someone three levels removed from the customer wants the talent to wear a different shirt because they “just don't love green”?

Maybe we can survive without that.

The Safest Feedback Wins

There’s another problem with large approval groups.

They naturally optimise towards the most conservative person in the room.

Imagine ten people reviewing an idea.

Nine like it.

One says:

“I’m slightly uncomfortable.”

What happens?

Nobody says:

“Great. Nine to one. Ship it.”

No.

The meeting stops.

Why are you uncomfortable?

Can we unpack the discomfort?

Should we explore an alternative?

Maybe Creative can come back with another option.

And now the entire campaign is being redesigned around the person who likes it least.

This happens because complaints are visible.

Discomfort is visible.

Risk is visible.

You know what isn’t visible?

The million people who will scroll straight past the safer version.

Nobody sends an email about feeling absolutely nothing.

There is no customer complaint form with:

Reason for complaint: Your marketing was so forgettable I cannot remember what I'm complaining about.

So organisations systematically protect themselves against visible internal risk while ignoring invisible external indifference.

And indifference is fucking expensive.

Alignment Can Be a Fancy Word for Nobody Owning the Decision

Sometimes “we need alignment” means something else.

Nobody wants to be the person who says yes.

Because saying yes creates responsibility.

If it works?

Great job, team.

If it fails?

Who approved this?

So we spread the decision around.

More meetings.

More stakeholders.

More signatures.

Until no individual person really owns it.

Everyone participated.

Everyone approved.

Nobody decided.

This is wonderful risk management.

It’s not always wonderful marketing.

At some point, somebody needs to have enough taste, context and authority to say:

“Yep. This is the one. Go.”

Design the Approval Process for the Work You Want

If you want safe, slow, perfectly controlled marketing, build a safe, slow, perfectly controlled approval process.

It will deliver exactly that.

If you want culturally relevant social, you need a process capable of producing culturally relevant social.

That might mean agreeing on the boundaries before something happens.

What can the social team approve themselves?

What actually needs Legal?

Which subjects are off limits?

What level of spend needs senior sign-off?

Who is the one person who can make a fast call?

What does “just post the fucking thing” look like operationally?

Give people a field to play in.

Then let them play.

You don’t need to convene the United Nations every time someone wants to make a Reel.

Management Is Important. It Is Not the Audience.

This is perhaps the easiest test.

When you’re reviewing creative, ask:

Who are we trying to make this better for?

The customer?

Good.

The platform?

Potentially useful.

The brand?

Absolutely.

Legal compliance?

Quite important.

The person at the top of the organisational chart who doesn’t personally like the joke?

Hmm.

Because every time we optimise the work for somebody internally, we risk moving it further away from somebody externally.

And eventually you get the strangest outcome of all:

Marketing everyone inside the company understands.

Marketing everyone inside the company approves.

Marketing everyone inside the company is comfortable with.

Marketing nobody outside the company notices.

But at least everyone’s aligned.

Get Aligned on Something Better

Internal alignment isn’t bad.

It’s necessary.

But it’s a means.

Not the objective.

The objective is making marketing that works.

So align on the strategy.

Align on the audience.

Align on what the brand stands for.

Align on the risks you will and won’t take.

Align on who gets to make which decisions.

Align on the fact that sometimes speed matters more than another meeting.

Then give the people making the work enough room to actually make it.

Because your customer will never know how beautifully aligned everyone was internally.

They’ll only know what you eventually put in front of them.

And if it took six weeks, 14 stakeholders and three alignment workshops to get there?

It had better be fucking interesting.