Why do campaigns stall when the marketing head changes?

Because the approvals were arguments made to a specific person. When that person leaves, the agency holds an approved idea with nobody in the room who remembers why it was approved.

Do new marketing heads usually kill inherited campaigns?

More often they delay them. A new marketing head needs a visible early win, and work launching in the first ninety days counts as their predecessor’s success rather than their own.

What protects a campaign through a leadership change?

A short written record of what the campaign is for, what was ruled out and why, and the results it is measured against, prepared before the handover and readable without the agency present.

Creative Room

How A Campaign Survives A Change Of Marketing Head

Meghana50 mins ago2 min read

A blank desk nameplate stands squarely in the centre of a black frame edged with teal and coral

Nothing empties a creative floor faster than the sentence that begins, the new marketing head would like to see the thinking again.

A change of marketing head is the most common way a signed off campaign dies in India, and it almost never looks like a rejection. The work is not criticised. It is simply reopened.

What a change of marketing head actually resets

Not the strategy document, which usually survives, and not the media plan, which has money committed against it. What resets is the argument. Every approval the campaign collected was an argument made to a person, and that person has left.

The agency is holding an approved idea with no one in the room who remembers why it was approved.

Why the first ninety days decide it

A new marketing head needs a visible early win, and inherited work cannot be one. Anything launching inside that window is someone else's success. Anything launching after it can be theirs, which is why campaigns are so often delayed rather than killed.

Agencies that read this correctly stop defending the old approval and start offering the new person a decision to make.

The handover that protects the work

The best protection is written, and it is written before anyone leaves. A one page record of what the campaign is for, what was ruled out and why, and which results it is being measured against. Not a deck. A document the new person can read alone, at speed, without the agency present.

What the agency should not do

Reopen its own work. There is a strong temptation to arrive with fresh routes, as a courtesy. It reads as an admission that the approved idea was never the strongest one, and it invites a full re-pitch of a brief that has already been paid for.

The Advertising Agencies Association of India has long pushed for clearer scope and remuneration terms between agencies and brands, and a leadership change is exactly where loose terms are felt.

Present the work as decided. Offer the new person authorship of what happens next.