These are the ten questions I ask any marketing team before anything else.
Most leaders can answer a few of them easily. The ones that are hard to answer are usually where the work is getting stuck, and where the biggest savings tend to be.
For each one, here's why it matters, and what to do if the answer is hard to find.
Ask three people why they're working on what they're working on. If the answers don't trace back to the business strategy, the strategy is stopping somewhere between the leadership team and the people doing the work.
Your team doesn't need the whole strategy. Each person needs the part their work serves. Without it, people make reasonable decisions that point in different directions, and the work takes more rounds of review to bring back in line.
Most leaders know the agency invoice. Few know the internal hours: the briefs, reviews, meetings and rework. Without that number, you don't know the true return on a campaign or initiative, and you can't plan capacity against a benchmark.
This doesn't require timesheets. A rough estimate of hours per campaign, a few times a year, is enough to see the pattern. Agencies already do this. It's how they price your work.
Usually it's the bridge between the idea and pre-production. The idea gets approved, then sits while budget, scope and logistics catch up. The clearer the approval path, the less time and money gets lost, in-house and at your agencies.
If it isn't, that's often why the work stalls in question 3. Feedback arrives late, from people who weren't part of the original brief, and the work goes back a step.
Senior leaders will sometimes weigh in late. Plan for it: bring them in at the brief instead of the final review. Feedback is cheap at the start of a project and expensive at the end.
The test isn't what you've licensed. It's whether people's jobs have changed. If AI is doing the repetitive work, your team should be spending more time on higher-impact work. If their job descriptions look the same as two years ago, it hasn't really changed anything.
If it's still early, start smaller: which tasks take less time than a year ago, and what does the team do with the time it saved?
The questions your reporting can't answer show where your team is working without the right information. Most reports show activity: output, impressions, clicks. Fewer connect it back to the goals in question 1.
You don't need perfect attribution. You need each team's measures to connect to a company goal. Directional is enough to make better decisions.
A scope is a staffing plan with a price on it. When the work changes and the scope doesn't, someone absorbs the difference, through overages, burnout or quality.
A scope that's too rich costs you money. One that's too thin costs you quality. Review scopes against the real work at least once a year, and both sides benefit.
Strategy, planning, meetings and coordination are necessary. But if they're growing faster than the work itself, ask why, and whether that work is run as efficiently as it could be.
This isn't an argument to cut planning. Good planning is what lowers production costs, which is question 9.
Every production carries one-off costs such as shoot days, pre-production and wrap labor. Combine the shoots, and you pay those costs fewer times.
Combining shoots doesn't mean giving up speed. Most of a year's content is predictable: launches, seasons, offers. Batch that, and keep part of the budget free for real-time moments that deserve a fast response.
It's the simplest measure of whether the operation is getting more efficient. If you can't calculate it, start there. If it's rising while the work stays the same, something in questions 2 through 9 is the reason.
The goal isn't cheaper work. It's the same quality for less, so the savings go back into the work that matters. Track it alongside performance, not instead of it.
You don't need perfect answers to all ten. Start with the ones that took the longest to answer, or where your team would answer differently than you would. That's usually where the next fix is.
For brands: answer these before 2027 planning locks. The hard ones show you where to look first.
For agencies: ask your clients these early. The answers will tell you more about how the work will go than the brief will.
If you'd like to work through them with someone who's seen them from the brand, agency and production side, I'm glad to talk.
Whether the strategy reaches the work, what a campaign costs all-in including internal time, where campaigns stall, who can approve an idea, what AI has really changed, what reporting can't answer, whether scopes match the work, how much of the budget goes to customer-facing assets, which shoots could be combined, and whether cost per finished asset is going up or down.
Add the agency and production invoices to an estimate of your own team's time: briefs, reviews, meetings and rework. A rough estimate of hours per campaign, done a few times a year, is enough to see the pattern and plan capacity.
Most often between the approved idea and pre-production, while budget, scope and logistics catch up. Unclear approval rights make it worse, because late feedback from people outside the original brief sends the work back a step.
Every production carries one-off costs such as shoot days, pre-production and wrap labor. Combining shoots means paying those costs fewer times, while keeping part of the budget free for real-time content.