“Review by Committee” Comes with Hidden Costs.

You might assume that inviting more people to review a video will lead to a better final product. Understandably, the additional layers of review can feel like a safety net to ensure nothing is overlooked. However, when you expand the reviewers beyond the marketing team to legal, sales, the accounting department, and so on, you’re building a review committee that will be difficult to manage.

While it’s important to have the right people in the room and to ensure a diverse panel of input is represented, a review-by-committee approach often leads to unintended consequences. Rather than creating a more refined or successful project, it can quietly increase costs by diluting the message, delaying timelines, and draining resources through endless revisions.

Dilution

When multiple stakeholders provide feedback, each with their own priorities and preferences, it can be challenging to maintain a clear, unified vision for the project. Of course, different areas need to have input on the content, but things can get a little dicey if these opinions don’t consider how the project fits into the overall marketing plan.

For example, the initial concept may have been bold, creative, and specific, but when dozens of voices chime in, the project can start to shift toward a generic compromise. The message may get muddied, and the powerful, focused narrative that made the video stand out can get lost in translation. The result? A less memorable piece that doesn’t move the needle as much as desired.

Delays

With more voices to consider, each decision takes longer to resolve. While a typical feedback turnaround time is about a week, the more people there are, the harder it is to collect everyone’s thoughts. The various feedback can also be questioning or collaborative rather than specific and directive. Feedback such as “Should we include the graphic from our annual meeting?” or “Photos from the last volunteer event would be great to add here, if they exist” doesn’t provide a clear path forward, meaning the production team has to spend additional time tracking down details and making sense of all the input.

When your production team needs to step away from the projects for days, weeks, or even months at a time while the committee reviews, it will likely take them longer to get the ball rolling again, as they have to remember where things left off. Over time, this lag adds up, resulting in unexpected hours on post-production timelogs.

Drain

When there are too many cooks in the kitchen, it’s easy to get sucked into revision loops that don’t meaningfully improve the work but still consume time and resources. This is especially detrimental to the project if previously approved decisions come into question. This leads to duplicative work, such as repeatedly editing the same section or refilming interviews and b-roll to accommodate feedback.

This can easily happen if a new team member is added to the review process after it has already begun. If they aren’t aware of the discussions that have led to the creative decisions, they may suggest changes that have already been ruled out for one reason or another. For example, suggesting the use of the brand’s primary color for on-screen text when it has already proven to be too difficult to read.

There is a better way.

Without structure, a committee of reviewers can often work against the very outcomes they’re meant to protect—but it doesn’t have to be this way!

At Render Studios, we have tried-and-true processes in place to protect your project from these pitfalls. We understand there may be several parties who need to weigh in on your video production, so we suggest beginning by defining who will provide input and what they’re responsible for reviewing. For example, you may decide that legal should focus on accuracy, required disclaimers, and compliance, not the creative approach, as that’s the responsibility of marketing. This clarity around the who and what provides a specific lens for every party to view the video through, eliminating superfluous comments that muddy the waters.

Our production team has a similarly structured process on our end, as well. We provide specific details about what to focus on when we share videos with your team for review: starting with content lock of the narrative pieces, then picture lock of all visual elements, and lastly, final approval of all the finishing touches. This clear, structured review process maintains clarity and keeps things moving forward smoothly.

The proper structure and planning enable your team to benefit from collaboration without incurring the hidden costs associated with the review-by-committee model. Most importantly, it gets you a better final product that helps your organization achieve its goals!