Processes can seem to get in the way but.......

Are you within branding guidelines? Are you engaging the right vendor/s? Have you identified your stakeholders? Has your manager approved your campaign budget? I could keep going on and on but the bottom line to ask yourself is, "are you following the process?" The reason I bring this up is that managing an integrated marketing campaign can cause many different forks in the road than a simple advertising only campaign and a lot of it has to do with process. Let me give you an example.
A product marketing manager came to me last week all excited about a new idea to promote his product. Objective: Create awareness and buzz with the end goal being to generate sales. He came to me with a theme already decided upon and some marketing tactics thought through. I started asking him things like, "have you gotten this approved by branding?" "Have you gotten senior management (stakeholders) buy in?" "What vendor are you using for the DM portion?" "Who will be developing your online banners?" "Who is your target audience?" "Where are you getting your database?" Blah Blah Blah. You get the picture. At the end of the conversation this person's head was spinning and all because of processes that he was not familiar with. Engaging the right people at the right time is critical. Had this marketing manager engaged the Mar Com team earlier he would have understood some of the processes and not felt so overwhelmed. After all, dealing with over five vendors for an integrated marketing campaign might seem unmanageable to some but when you have the right processes in place it makes all the difference in the world. I am not one to follow process (at times) but there is a reason that we have them so don't let them get in your way.