Your creative team is brilliant, your workflow isn’t. Here's how to fix it

It starts with a product launch. The campaign is ready, the messaging is crisp, and the deadline is tight. But somewhere between the creative brief and the final email blast, things go sideways.

The designer can’t find the right version of the product image with their graphic design software. The social team uses an old tagline. An agency partner requests access to files that had already been delivered (twice). Internal Slack channels fill with file requests, updated links and confused handoffs. By the time the new campaign goes live, no one is proud of it and everyone is exhausted.

That story is more common than most marketing content and creative leaders care to admit. It also doesn’t need to happen as often as it does.

The problem isn’t creativity, it’s infrastructure

Creative and marketing teams are producing more content than ever, and they’re doing it under tighter timelines and with higher expectations for personalisation, brand precision and real-time responsiveness.

AI has amplified both the pace and scale of this demand, generating assets faster while also introducing new layers of complexity, from compliance and versioning to brand alignment (See here how AI is impacting graphic design). Most marketing and creative teams, though, are still operating with infrastructure that lags far behind that reality.

Files live across different tools, campaign assets get stored in temporary folders, and review and approval workflows are cobbled together with email, chat and spreadsheets.

New hires then inherit folder structures that only make sense to the person who created them. Even in well-resourced organizations, content is often scattered and disconnected from the systems that need it. The work still gets done, but it gets done inefficiently. Over time, the cracks start to show.

Burnout begins at the file level

Most teams do not measure the cost of disorganisation because it rarely announces itself in a single failure. Instead, it accumulates in small, friction-filled moments. A marketer spends fifteen minutes looking for an approved logo, or a designer fields yet another Slack asking for the same images they uploaded last week.

An asset is edited, renamed, and sent around so many times that no one is sure which version is final (or even who signed off on it). The result is duplicate work, rework, and a constant drag on creative momentum.

Without a clear, centralised approval process, this fragmented workflow becomes the norm. That’s why operationally mature teams are investing in systems that streamline reviews and approvals from the start, which can reduce rework, improve accountability, and get content to market faster (here are some great productivity tools).

Creatives then end up spending a significant portion of their time on tasks that have nothing to do with design, while marketers are constantly chasing down files and approvals instead of running campaigns. These small inefficiencies erode productivity, sap morale, and lead to burnout.

More meetings aren’t fixing the problem

When creative operations break down, the default response is to communicate more. Here come your project check-ins, feedback clarification mechanisms, and asset trackers.

There is definitely a push for teams to try harder, but trying harder is not the same as solving the problem. Most marketing and creative organisations are not struggling because their people are unmotivated. They are struggling because their systems do not support the way modern content is created, reviewed, distributed, and reused.

Or said another way: you cannot scale creative output by throwing more communication at a broken process, you actually need to fix the process.

Creative operations need structure

The solution isn’t more folders, it’s smarter systems. Creative teams need infrastructure that makes it easy to find what they need, approve what they create, and ensure that every piece of content aligns with brand standards, usage rights, and campaign timelines.

That starts with a centralised asset library connected to the tools teams already use. Approved content should be easy to access without routing every request through a designer. Smart systems can auto-tag and organise assets behind the scenes, helping teams avoid the drag of manual sorting.

And when it’s time to find something, search should be fast and intuitive (whether the user is filtering by campaign metadata, scanning for specific text, or locating faces within a photo set).

The risk of getting it wrong is growing

Branded content campaigns are complex, with assets adapted for regional use, personalised for segments, and often created at high speed through AI or outsourced teams. Each asset comes with its own context, be it expiration dates, compliance rules, and performance expectations.

When infrastructure is weak, the margin for error grows. Teams use expired assets, old logos resurface in public channels, licensing terms are violated, and campaigns then miss the mark not because of bad ideas, but because the delivery mechanism is brittle. As any marketer knows, every one of these mistakes chisels away at brand trust, slows down future projects, and increases risk.

Operational maturity is a competitive advantage

The best marketing and creative teams are not just faster, but also better organised. To be successful, the best adapt quickly, deliver consistently, and reuse what they create without confusion or delay.

They do not get bogged down by requests for files, nor waste hours hunting for assets, nor re-create work that already exists. Instead, they have systems that give them time back, reduce the noise, and allow creativity to thrive.

Operational maturity is now table stakes for scale. It protects brand integrity, accelerates delivery, and shields teams from the fatigue that builds when high-output work relies on low-visibility tools.

Creativity needs structure to thrive

More than ever, creativity needs structure. Without it, content production becomes a grind. With it, teams can move faster, deliver better, and build systems that support both the brand and the people behind it – from clear approvals to effortless access to the right assets.