Why AI Makes the Approval Process More Important Than Ever, with Meredith Bailey [Full Transcript]

This is the full transcript of episode 16 of Creative Ops Compass, “Why AI Makes the Approval Process More Important Than Ever, with Meredith Bailey.” Meredith is the founder and CEO of StreamWork, a proofing and approval platform built for creative and marketing teams. In this conversation, we talk about why AI raises the stakes for the review and approval process instead of replacing it, why creative teams got a head start figuring out how to respond to AI, and what separates creatives who are irreplaceable from those who are just executing a brief. Jesse also references a recent webinar he led with StreamWork on making the business case for creative tools, which comes up partway through the conversation.

You can listen to the full episode here.

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Intro

Jesse Krinsky: Welcome to Creative Ops Compass, the podcast for in-house creative leaders who want to run tighter operations, improve stakeholder relationships, and position their teams as genuine strategic partners. I'm Jesse Krinsky, a Creative Operations consultant and the founder of In Focus Consulting.

Meredith Bailey: The final sign-off that a stakeholder gives is truly uniquely human. If you're the steward of your brand, you need to ensure that whatever you put out into the market is aligned with that and is directionally correct.

Jesse Krinsky: Today I'm talking with Meredith Bailey. She's the founder and CEO of StreamWork, a proofing and approval platform built for creative and marketing teams. She launched StreamWork because everywhere she worked, she saw that the review and approval process was broken, and it was eating into time that should have gone to the actual creative work. AI keeps getting better at producing content. Volume is up, speed is up, and for some leaders, that raises questions about what a creative team actually contributes beyond execution. Meredith and I talked about why the answer to that question isn't as complicated as it might seem. We also discussed why a human-centered approval process matters more than ever, and how being one of the first industries disrupted by AI gave creatives a first-mover advantage. I recently led a webinar with StreamWork on making the business case for creative tools. Meredith references that in the conversation, so I wanted to give you that context up front.

Thanks so much for joining me today. I wanted to have you on the podcast because we've talked a number of times, and in one conversation you pointed out that creative teams were among the first industries that were genuinely disrupted by AI. The benefit of that is that a lot of them are ahead of other industries in figuring out how to respond. AI moves very quickly, and as the CEO of StreamWork, you work directly with a lot of in-house creative teams every day, so you have a front-row seat to how that disruption is playing out. So why don't we start there, and get your perspective on this?

Why AI Is an Opportunity, Not a Threat, for Creative Teams

Meredith Bailey: Well, first off, thank you for having me, Jesse. I'm really excited to be here and thrilled to be chatting about creative and AI. It's definitely top of mind at the moment, for our industry and for us at StreamWork. It's a major theme. AI really is a big opportunity. You could take any perspective on it: you could see it as a negative thing or a positive thing. I choose to look at it as a positive thing, because what it really does is unlock the ability for teams to up-level what they're doing. When we talk about creative in general, it's a novel idea. It's thinking outside the box. It's something that doesn't already exist. So when we're talking about teams, their jobs, and how the creative sector is evolving with AI, the real opportunity is that creatives can step into a role where they have the time to think and come up with great novel ideas. AI can help eliminate the process work that they're spending so much of their time on today. Teams might be spending their time on versioning, status updates, or sitting in meetings. They can eliminate a lot of that with AI, so they can go back to what the purpose of their job actually was: creating great creative. I think it's a big opportunity.

Jesse Krinsky: I agree with all that, but I'm going to play devil's advocate here a little bit. What creative is supposed to be is true, but it's also a bit of an ideal from the inside of creative, because stakeholders who aren't necessarily creative aren't always looking for something new or novel. They're often looking for something they can understand and wrap their heads around, something they've already seen: “I want something that looks like this, feels like this, this worked last time, give me something like that.” For non-creatives, especially stakeholders and company leadership, it seems obvious that AI makes sense for creative design, because you can see what's already worked, what's proven to work, as opposed to what will possibly work from the creative team's perspective. With that in mind, how should creative teams counter that mindset?

Why Stakeholders Still Want What's Already Proven

Meredith Bailey: That's a great question. I think you're right that a lot of stakeholders know what they know and what they're comfortable with. They're the stewards of the brand, and so is the creative team. They're both trying to protect the brand and its reputation, and make sure it's positioned and appears correctly in market. That's a lot of the role. So if we even take AI out of this and just look at creative development in general, that's always a factor: a stakeholder is trying to be the steward of the brand, and the creative team is helping to do that with them. AI doesn't necessarily change that conversation at its core. But the big thing to consider with AI is the speed and volume of creative that can be developed. If you have a really strong prompt, a very solid, clear idea, you can develop a concept extremely quickly that's aligned with the brand guidelines you might already have uploaded, and put it in front of a stakeholder to get their feedback in a way you may not have been able to do previously. That's one of the really great things about AI: you can develop and experiment more quickly. So if you have stakeholders pushing back on new ideas, you could take an hour, take your idea, and drop it into your organization's AI tool, making sure it has your brand style guide, and spin up something that shows your idea in a remarkable way. Put it in front of a stakeholder, get their fast feedback, and you might be able to change their mind. That wasn't really an option before. If you had a great creative idea, it might get killed at the creative brief stage because it took so long to execute and show to the stakeholder. Now you can take that idea, put it in front of the stakeholder, and get their quick feedback. And if it works, you move it into the arena of creating volume around it, then reviewing, approving, and getting it to market.

Why the Final Sign-Off Is a Uniquely Human Job

Jesse Krinsky: I've heard you say before that stakeholder approvals are a uniquely human thing. Why is that uniquely human, and what does it say about where human judgment still matters most?

Meredith Bailey: When it comes to developing creative, we've talked a little about how AI has lowered the barrier to developing it. Now creative teams, as well as other teams across organizations, can quickly spin up creative. When you lower the barrier like that, the review and approval cycle only becomes more important.

Because now we're talking about a lot of different types of creative being developed, potentially across teams that don't specialize in it, and about the sheer volume and increase in the amount of creative being made. That's where review and approval becomes more and more important. At the end of the day, you can automate most of the review and approval process. That's what we're focused on; that's what we spend our entire day thinking about, how we can help teams do that. But the final sign-off that a stakeholder gives is truly uniquely human, because if you're the steward of your brand, you need to ensure that whatever you put out into the market is aligned with that and is directionally correct.

AI can tell you some of that. It can help you check off boxes, like whether something aligns with the brand guidelines. But there's nuance within that, and there's the institutional knowledge of what's going to resonate with the customer, what's going to land correctly, or what could create a total PR nightmare. Stakeholders know that. That's why they need to continue to have that final sign-off on creative.

The Difference Between Executing a Brief and Being Irreplaceable

Jesse Krinsky: I've made the case many times that creatives who just take a brief and execute it, no matter how closely they execute it or how beautiful and impressive the result is, aren't much more valuable than an AI tool. What AI is great at doing is giving you what you asked for, which isn't necessarily what you need. But creatives who are able to push back, who can make connections across the organization, and who can think more strategically, that's irreplaceable. How have you seen that dynamic play out with the teams you work with?

Meredith Bailey: Yeah, it's interesting. When we're talking about creative being developed today with AI, it's almost like the new creative brief is the power of the prompt. If you have an extremely powerful prompt, you're going to have a stronger creative brief and a stronger output. Anyone can go in, drop a couple of questions into a prompt, and create a brief. That's becoming commoditized. But the difference is the next step up: the strategic brief, the strategy behind it. It's coming up with prompts that push the boundaries, that are compelling, that align with a clear idea you're trying to develop. If you get those prompts right, you're creating something much more strategic. The best creatives out there are going to have prompts that you and I can't even imagine, and AI is going to 10x their abilities. I don't see AI taking over the creative industry in isolation and running with it. You need people to guide where it's going, and creatives are at the helm of that. It's a really cool time for creatives. It can seem scary, with all the different tools available to create content so quickly, and there's also a shift in perception where stakeholders might think that if it's easy to create content, it's worth less. But it's a creative team's job, it's all of our jobs, to show that's not actually the case. It's extremely difficult to create high-value creative that actually works in service of what you're trying to accomplish. AI is one of the tools that can enable that, rather than detract from it.

How Creative Teams Got a Head Start on AI Disruption

Jesse Krinsky: Earlier on you said the creative industry was one of the first to be truly disrupted by AI. Because of that, creatives have something of a leg up on other industries: they've spent the past few years figuring out how to clarify what their value is, how to respond to AI, how to make use of it, and how to explain to stakeholders, clients, and leadership what its limits are. How have you seen creatives staying ahead of the game in responding to and using AI?

Meredith Bailey: It's been pretty incredible. What we've seen at StreamWork is that the volume of content has certainly increased, because teams are able to use AI tools to create more content. To give you an example, they might have an image they've created and need to cut it into different sizes very quickly, or create different templates from it, upload it to StreamWork, and run it through reviews and approvals. Across our customers, we're seeing a massive increase in the amount of content, and more cycles of review, because that content needs to be reviewed and approved before it's pushed out the door. So we're seeing an increase in versioning and an increase in review cycles, and everything still needs that final stamp of approval by a human before it's deployed. One of the biggest differences is just the sheer volume of work being created. But when you have more content being made, you also need to be more thoughtful about what's being created. You don't want it to go off the guardrails, especially if you're creating it for your brand; it needs to stay on brand. That's another area where review and approval is becoming more important, especially as teams beyond creative and marketing start creating content too, which is one more reason you need more review and approval in the process. Our goal is to reduce that process, take the admin out of creatives' lives, so they can focus on creating great creative instead of focusing on the process. And what we're constantly thinking about is how we can make that process even easier and more streamlined for teams, so they don't have to worry about it. It's all taken care of for them.

Why the AI Creative Approval Process Is the Last Line of Defense

Jesse Krinsky: It sounds like you're saying the review and approval process is essential because it's the final step in creative production, the last chance creatives and their stakeholders have to make sure what they're delivering is what was actually intended and needed. During any creative process, there are a million distractions, a million things that can pull you in different directions, so it's important to have that last step to check: is this what we needed? Is this what we were expecting? Is this on brand? I think you're right that offloading that to AI would be myopic, wrongheaded, and detrimental. I can see how that's a part of the creative process where the human element and human judgment are essential.

Meredith Bailey: It's so important. We're all familiar with brand missteps, like the Pepsi commercial with Kendall Jenner a few years ago, or campaigns that have gone live with a mistake, or without the proper approval process in place, where all the considerations weren't there before it went live. That final approval is so important. AI can help with elements of it, but when it comes down to what you're actually putting out in the market, how it will be perceived, and whether it will help you reach your intended goal or KPI, that's something you have to know from the strategy of your organization. You need that knowledge and strategy to make the final decision. I really believe it's a uniquely human thing, and I don't think it's something companies are going to willingly hand off to AI anytime soon.

The Risk of Adopting AI Tools Without Asking Why

Jesse Krinsky: I think if they did, plenty might consider it, and those are also the kind of companies that think AI-first. A lot of teams are under pressure to allocate budget toward AI tools, which I think is wrongheaded, because it's putting the cart before the horse. Very often it's the idea that this bright, shiny, exciting object is going to help, and everyone starts asking: how can we use this? How can we use AI to do whatever we need to do? I've heard from a number of companies that have made quick, myopic decisions based on a perceived need to adopt AI tools, without carefully thinking through the why, the how, and how the resulting work will be perceived by end users. And when I call it myopic, I mean it's focused on the immediacy of the outputs, but not enough on the outcomes associated with those outputs. What are your thoughts on that?

Meredith Bailey: We're increasingly hearing from teams, and seeing it across software in general, that a growing portion of budget is going toward AI-enabled tools. That's something we're seeing more of as an industry. I don't know that I agree it's a bad idea for creatives; there are a number of tools that can help creative teams produce more, faster, and on brand. But your point about the why is the really important piece. Nothing should be done without asking why. Adopting a tool just for the sake of adopting it isn't a good strategic decision. There are so many other elements that go into adopting a tool for your organization, and it's really about thinking through how it will benefit your org and what value you can gain from it. Regardless of whether the tool has AI in it or not, those considerations should be taken into account. When it comes to developing creative, creative will always be constrained by time and money. So it's about thinking through which tools will help you alleviate that, save time, save money, and reduce headache. If you're adopting a tool, you should be asking: how does this save our organization time? How can it save us money? And how can it reduce headache or improve morale across the creative team? Thinking about it that way helps you get to the why.

Part of this conversation is making me think of the webinar we just did together, Jesse, about proving out the value of that investment. I loved how you talked about the fact that if you're adopting a tool and you go to your CFO and say, “we need to spend fifty thousand dollars to purchase this tool,” they see it as a budget ask, and it's framed as a negative in their mind. And the default is going to be no.

Making the Business Case for AI and Creative Tools

Meredith Bailey: Whereas you were recommending, and I thought it was so smart, that you reframe the conversation around the value the tool brings to the organization. So it's really about saying: if we were to invest in this tool, it would help us reduce the amount of time spent on creative projects and help us save this cost. The tool might cost fifty grand, but we're actually going to save a million dollars over the course of a year, as an example.

Jesse Krinsky: Meredith, it's been great talking to you about this. It's not something I talk about very much, frankly, and not because I'm bearish on it. I'm not a Luddite at all; I use it all the time. When it comes to creative production and strategy, the human element is not only not currently genuinely threatened by AI, at least not when you want to do it well, but I don't see that happening anytime in the near future. So it's great to hear your perspective on that, and to see how it connects to approvals and reviews. Thanks so much.

Meredith Bailey: Thank you, Jesse. Thank you for having me.

Key Takeaways

Jesse Krinsky: Let's recap the key insights from today's conversation.

First, as AI helps generate more content faster, the final approval matters more than ever. When the barrier to producing creative goes down, volume goes up, which means more assets in the pipeline and more chances for something to go wrong. The final human sign-off requires something AI just can't replicate yet: institutional knowledge of what will land with your audience, what will protect your brand, and what might become a crisis if it ships. AI can check whether an asset is on brand, but it can't tell you whether your campaign is going to embarrass the company. That judgment still belongs to your team.

Second, creative was one of the first industries genuinely disrupted by AI, and that's an advantage. It's forced creative leaders to clarify what they actually contribute, to make the case for their value, and to figure out how to work alongside AI instead of being eliminated by short-sighted leaders. The teams that started earlier are further along than they might realize.

And third, creatives who just execute the brief are competing on AI's terms. The value that's hard to replace belongs to the creatives who push back on the brief, who ask the questions that weren't in it, and who make connections across the organization that nobody else is making. That's what makes a creative team irreplaceable.

If you're wondering whether your team is irreplaceable in the age of AI, you can find out with my free Creative Ops assessment. It takes three minutes and will show you exactly where you're reactive and where you're already operating strategically. You can find it at InFocusConsulting.net/assessment. The link is also in the show notes.

Thanks for listening.