Approval Workflow for Creator Content Under Review

The number that decides whether a creator program works is the review clock, so mine is contractual: 48 business hours on a concept, 72 on a cut, and silence counts as approval. Programs die in the gap between a creator delivering a file and a brand deciding what it thinks. Everything below exists to make that gap short and predictable rather than to add another gate. The pipeline: Two gates, never more. Concept, then cut. Each gate has one named approver per discipline, and a discipline can only comment inside its own lane: regulatory comments on claims, brand comments on safety and trademark, nobody comments on wording, humour or edit rhythm. Comments arrive timecoded, in Frame.io or whatever your video review tool already is, and the clock runs in the system your team already lives in. I do not introduce a new tool for this; a workflow that needs a new subscription is a workflow nobody will use in month four. The locking rule: A note not raised at concept cannot be raised at cut. This one rule does more than every other part of the build. It stops the pattern where a stakeholder who skipped the concept gate surfaces at the cut with a structural objection, and the brand pays a reshoot for its own scheduling failure. Late notes are logged, routed to the next placement, and the current one ships. Regulated routing: Where clearance is required, the campaign calendar is built backwards from it rather than forwards from the shoot date. Prescription files route through your MLR process and PAAB with submission windows placed on the calendar as fixed points. Over-the-counter and natural health product reads route through Ad Standards clearance. The workflow states which changes trigger a resubmission and which do not, because that single distinction is where most of the lost weeks sit. Approved files, their claim sources and their clearance numbers are retained together, so a complaint can be answered in a day rather than reconstructed from Slack. Disclosure at upload: Payment release is tied to a disclosure check, not to a delivery date. Before funds move, someone on your side confirms the paid partnership label is live, the spoken disclosure is where the brief said it would be, and the description carries what it needs to carry. This is a two-minute step that removes most of your regulatory exposure, and almost nobody does it. What this workflow refuses to carry: Taste. A comment that is a preference gets returned by the process itself with the lane it failed. Round three. Approval by committee call, where nobody is accountable and the creator gets a summary written by whoever took notes. Kill decisions made after a cut is delivered without a kill fee already scheduled in the contract. Not for you if: Your approvers cannot be named individuals, or your organisation genuinely needs more than two gates for reasons I cannot argue you out of. Also not for you if you are looking for someone to run the reviews as a coordinator; I build the pipeline, train the people in it and audit it, but I am not the person moving files through it every week. What you get: The workflow map with gates, lanes and named owners. The comment standard, written as rules an approver can be held to. The calendar template built backwards from clearance. The disclosure checklist tied to payment release. The retention structure for approved files and their sources. Training sessions for approvers and for whoever runs the process day to day. On the retainer, I audit the log monthly and tell you which gate is leaking.