The symptom you notice first
Feedback that contradicts itself between rounds. Sales wants the price on screen for longer, brand marketing wants restraint, and both are technically the client.
In the Frontify and D&AD research, roughly 67% of creative leaders said their company or their client lacks one shared view of the brand. The contradictory feedback is not rudeness. It is the org chart talking.
What it costs
Rounds. Every unresolved internal disagreement becomes a revision that the production budget pays for.
Consistency. Assets made under different assumptions drift, and by the third campaign the audience is looking at three different companies.
Seniority. Directors stop directing and start mediating, which is the most expensive form of admin in the building.
The fix is boring and it works
Force a written brand position before the creative brief. One page: what we are, what we are not, the single thing a viewer should feel.
Put the assets, fonts and rules in one place everyone can reach without asking permission.
Require the client to nominate one decision-maker who can overrule the others. Not a committee lead. A person.