Everyone approved it.Nobody noticed it.

Here’s a radio script worth fighting for, an illustrative one. It opens in a restaurant kitchen at full tilt. Knives on boards, pans on burners, the low hum of the coolroom. The hum cuts out. A chef says, very quietly, “Oh, no.”

Anyone who’s run a kitchen knows the rest. There’s room for the name of a refrigeration business that answers after-hours calls, and a reason to remember it next time a kitchen goes quiet.

Then the script does a lap of the building. Sales wants the maintenance plans in. The founder wants the year the company started. Someone remembers they also do air conditioning. Every addition is true. By the time it gets to the station, the kitchen’s gone and a voice-over has 30 seconds to read out a website.

Seven sensible people. Seven good notes. One directory listing with music.

The decision nobody named

The problem wasn’t the notes. It started a step earlier. Nobody said what decision the room was there to make, so everyone generously answered a different question.

That’s the industry norm, not an exception. The BetterIdeas Project, run by BetterBriefs with the IPA and the WFA, surveyed 1,034 agency, marketer and in-house people across 54 countries. Only 10% said ideas in their organisation are always evaluated against clearly defined criteria. It typically takes five rounds of development to reach a signed-off idea. And 89% of agencies and 84% of marketers agreed personal opinion has a big impact on the decision.

The IPA’s Laurence Green summed it up: “search all the parks in all the cities, and you’ll find no statues of committees.”

Set the job before the work comes back

Fix it before anyone sees a script. Finish one sentence out loud: we need this person, in this situation, to remember, believe or do this one thing.

For the refrigeration firm: when a restaurant manager needs emergency repairs after hours, we want our name to come to mind. That still leaves plenty of room for a better idea than a silent kitchen. It also makes the air conditioning easy to say no to.

If the real priority is filling next month’s maintenance calendar, say so before anyone writes a word. That’s a different job, and it needs a different ad.

Meet the work the way a customer does

Play the spot once, without its creator explaining it first. Look at the poster from across the room. Open the mobile ad on your phone, wedged between a group chat and the weather. Then everyone writes down three things: what they noticed, who it’s for and which business made it. Do it before the most senior person speaks, because once they have, everyone else’s notes quietly rearrange themselves.

Good feedback names a problem. “I noticed the fridge but couldn’t tell who fixes it” gives the writer something to solve. “Say the company name four times” is one solution delivered as an order, and it shuts down the better ones.

Some feedback should stop everything. If operations says the after-hours number goes to voicemail, the campaign’s off until that’s fixed. No sound design on earth puts a technician on the end of that call.

Advice isn’t a vote

In a bigger business, more people need a say. The product team checks claims. A regional manager flags language customers don’t use. Legal spots promises the business can’t make. All useful. None of it is a vote on the idea.

Decide in advance who can stop the work, on what grounds, and who has the final call. Three people can own three facts. One person has to own the ad.

My view, and some clients won’t enjoy it: if more than two people can say no to an idea, it’ll be approved in its least interesting form.

Judge the work and the media together

Creative quality and media spend have to be read together. The Creative Dividend, from System1 and Effie, draws on 1,265 campaigns and responses from more than 200,000 people. It finds creativity and media, planned together, account for 60.1% of campaign business results on average.

So diagnose the right half. A brilliant spot on a station the restaurant manager never hears has a media problem. Weak recall among people who did hear it has a creative problem. Fix the wrong half and you’ll pay twice.

What to do on Monday

1. Before the next brief goes out, write the one-sentence job and get the decision-maker to sign it.

2. Name who can stop the work and on what grounds: claims, legal, operations. Everyone else advises.

3. Name the one person who makes the final call. Write it on the brief.

4. At the next review, experience the work once, at real size, with no explanation. Everyone writes their three notes before anyone senior speaks.

5. End the meeting with one of three outcomes: approve, fix one named problem, or change the brief. Nothing else.

“Everybody signed off on Tuesday” tells you exactly one thing about the work. It was ready on Tuesday.

Sources & notes

• IPA, “Global study highlights issues obstructing the development of creative ideas”, 4 March 2025 (The BetterIdeas Project: 1,034 respondents, 54 countries; Laurence Green quote). This is a self-reported industry survey.

• System1 and Effie, The Creative Dividend (1,265 campaigns; 200,000+ consumer responses; 60.1% figure)

• The refrigeration radio ad is illustrative.

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