Guest Column: The Approval Loop Is Killing Indian Advertising And Everyone Calls It “Process”

The brief comes in on a Tuesday. By Friday, a sharp idea sits in a deck. By the following Tuesday, that idea is dead, not because it was wrong, but because someone's uncle at the board level "felt it was a bit too bold."

This is not a one-company story. This is Indian advertising's most consistent operating procedure.

Talk to any creative director who has worked across Indian markets for more than five years, and somewhere between the second and third cup of chai, you will hear a version of the same confession: the work that won awards was the work that almost didn't survive the client review.

The campaign that went viral was approved on the fourth version, after three rounds of "just make it safer." The idea that actually moved business numbers was initially rejected because someone in procurement thought it "didn't look premium enough."

Nobody calls it what it is. It gets filed under "stakeholder alignment" or "brand consistency" or the professionally acceptable euphemism: process.

"The most dangerous person in any brand review is not the skeptic. It's the person who says 'I like it, but let's just tone it down a little.'"

Here is what that "little toning down" actually costs. A Dentsu report from 2023 estimated that Indian brands collectively lose anywhere between 18 and 30 percent of a campaign's intended impact through revision cycles that dilute the original creative intent.

The final output that reaches the consumer is often the fourth or fifth compromise, a version that no one in the room actually loves, but everyone in the room has stopped arguing about.

That is the creative output Indian consumers are receiving. A collective shrug dressed up in a media budget.

The structure of the problem is not mysterious. Most Indian companies, even those that claim to be modern and founder-led, run their marketing approvals through a chain that was designed for an era of print cycles and quarterly reviews.

Campaigns that need to respond to cultural moments in 48 hours are being routed through five-person approval chains that take nine days. By the time the post goes live, the moment has moved on, and the joke has been explained three times over in the copy to make sure nobody misunderstands it.

Even India’s most memorable advertising jingles, the ones that stayed in public memory for decades, would probably struggle to survive today’s approval culture without being “made safer” first

The irony is that India's advertising industry is not short of talent. It is possibly overflowing with it. What it is desperately short of is institutional trust, the willingness of a CMO to say to a creative partner: "I hired you because you know something I don't. Let's run with it."

There is also a structural incentive problem nobody wants to name openly. Inside large brand organisations, the safest career move is to be the person who raised a concern in the review, not the person who championed the risk. Caution is promotable. Boldness, when it fails, is a career liability. So entire review teams have been quietly incentivised to find the thing that could go wrong, not the thing that could break through.

Agencies have adapted to survive this reality, which makes the problem worse. The best creative shops in the country have learned to present "the safe version" first, knowing it will be approved, and occasionally slip in the brave idea as an alternative in slide fourteen, hoping someone in the room has had enough coffee to choose it. This is not creative strategy. It is managed disappointment.

What would it actually take to break this? Three things that are structurally uncomfortable.

First, briefs need owners, not committees. A single accountable person who has the authority to say yes and who will be measured on the campaign's outcome, not its internal consensus. Second, review cycles need hard deadlines.

Not "by end of week" but "by 11am Thursday, after which the agency proceeds." Third, failure needs to be budgeted for. Companies that say they want brave advertising but have zero tolerance for a campaign that doesn't land are lying to themselves and their agencies.

The brands that are breaking through in India right now and if you watch closely, you can see them, are not the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones where someone in a leadership position made a decision and let it breathe.

The approval loop will keep killing good work for as long as the industry treats it as a feature. It is not a feature. It is the most expensive creative tax in the business, and it does not show up on any P&L.

(Shiva Bhavani  ·  Founder & Director, Wing Communications)