Approved by Everyone. Remembered by No One.

Most marketing content does not begin bland. It becomes bland.

It starts with a clear audience, a useful idea and a point of view. Then the approvals begin. One stakeholder changes the opening. Another adds detail. Someone wants a shorter version, while someone else wants every feature retained. By the time the content is approved, it is technically accurate, internally acceptable and difficult to remember.

I experienced this while developing an introductory video for a newly added service. The brief was straightforward: create a self-explanatory video that would help clients quickly understand what the service offered and why it mattered.

Then the review circle widened.

Colleagues from sales, product, marketing and other functions became involved. The opening had to change. Then the length. Then the ending. We were also asked to create three versions of different durations.

None of these requests was unreasonable in isolation.

Sales wanted the video to support client conversations. Product teams wanted the service represented completely and accurately. Leadership wanted it to reflect the larger business narrative. Marketing wanted the content to remain clear, engaging and relevant.

Everyone was looking at the same video through a different measure of success.

That was the real challenge.

A shorter video can be useful. But shortening is not simply removing a few seconds. It requires a new information hierarchy. If every message, feature and stakeholder preference remains non-negotiable, the shorter version becomes a faster and more confusing version of the original.

The request for multiple versions was not the problem. The assumption that the same narrative could be compressed repeatedly without making any messaging choices was.

Having worked across agency and in-house communications roles, I have seen how content ownership changes within organizations. Functional expertise is essential, but ownership can become diffused. Everyone has a valid contribution, yet the audience can gradually disappear from the discussion.

The conventional belief is that more stakeholders create stronger content. In practice, more reviewers without clearly defined roles often create content designed to satisfy the organization, not the audience.

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The problem is not collaboration. It is the absence of editorial ownership.

Marketing is held accountable for attention, engagement and brand consistency, yet it is not always given the authority to protect the central narrative. Everyone can contribute valuable context, but that should not mean everyone rewrites the story.

A simple structure for better approvals

The lesson I took from this experience was that approvals need a simple structure: 

1. Agree on the audience and objective. Establish who the content is for, what it must communicate and what people should remember.
2. Define each reviewer’s role. Product validates accuracy, sales assesses customer relevance, leadership ensures strategic alignment and marketing protects the narrative and audience experience.
3. Separate essential changes from preferences. Factual, risk-related and strategic corrections must be addressed. Personal preferences should not automatically become part of the content.
4. Give one-person final editorial ownership. Someone must consolidate conflicting feedback and ensure the final version still serves its original purpose.

Marketing does not need to reject cross-functional inputs. It needs to interpret, prioritize and convert them into a coherent audience experience.

When everyone is allowed to rewrite the story, content becomes organizational consensus dressed as marketing. It may pass every internal test and still fail the only one that matters: does the audience care?

So, when version twelve lands in your inbox, ask: is the approval process improving the content or slowly erasing the reason it was created?

– Written by Karan Jodhani, Head of Content and Communications at Datamatics Business Solutions Ltd. (DBSL). With more than 15 years of experience across agency and in-house roles, he works across corporate communications, content, public relations, executive positioning, reputation management and digital marketing.