Too many decision makers, spoil the broth?

Did you ever share a feedback that is responded by “This was never agreed upon” or “It’s too late to make this change now” If yes, maybe you want to self-introspect a little.

Working with marketing agencies has taught me one very important lesson, the need to lock a script before you commence production.

Yes, client feedback is extremely important but a #loop of changes, one after the other, is not a situation you want to get in.

Having said that, chances are you still can never avoid it.

Consider this: you received the video from your production team and shared it ahead with your client. The client decides to share it with their entire team as an impromptu test run to gather feedback. More the eyes, more the brains, more the thoughts. People who are giving feedback have no idea of the story or the guidelines agreed upon before production , and rightly so. But this feedback also somehow makes the client relook at their brief, and voila, hence starts the chain of “inputs” and “thoughts”.

Of course, their feedback matters and should definitely be considered, but you can and should tell them that you’ll be mindful of it from the next video. Only a written approval on your original script can let you take a stand in such cases while maintaining the relationship with your client.

It’s only professional that you define a mechanism and provide simple tools for feedback on an already agreed upon script – “already agreed upon” being the key words here.

Here’s hoping that this video was helpful and if it was, don’t forget to share this with your colleagues - it might just save them a long chain of feedback. But all said and done, there’s no way to escape the endless and sometimes the very abrupt feedback from clients.