By Joost Narraina, Strategic Creative Director
Last month, I watched a company spend €45,000 on content that could have cost them €25,000 and been twice as effective.
Here's what happened: Marketing spent €15,000 on a brand campaign. Three weeks later, HR spent €12,000 on recruitment videos. Then Sales spent €8,000 on presentation materials. Finally, Leadership spent €10,000 on thought leadership content.
Four separate shoots. Four separate strategies. Zero coordination.
They paid for the same creative thinking four times while missing massive amplification opportunities.
Every department creates content in isolation. Marketing develops brand messaging. HR creates employer brand content. Sales builds presentation materials. Leadership develops thought leadership.
Result: Four content strategies when one integrated approach would be more effective and cost-efficient.
I see this everywhere. Departments operating like separate companies instead of parts of the same organization.
Three months ago, I worked with a manufacturing client who was making the same mistake.
Instead of four separate shoots, we planned one strategic shoot day:
Morning: Leadership interviews and behind-the-scenes Afternoon: Employee testimonials and workplace culture
From that single day, we created:
Cost: €25,000 instead of their usual €45,000 across separate shoots. Quality: Better, because everything had consistent messaging and visual style. Impact: Higher, because content reinforced itself across touchpoints.
Every quarter, bring Marketing, HR, Sales, and Leadership together for 2 hours.
Not another pointless meeting. A strategic content alignment session.
First hour: Each department shares quarterly objectives and content needs. Look for overlapping goals and shared messaging opportunities.
Second hour: Plan integrated content shoots that serve multiple departments. Allocate budget efficiently. Set timeline and success metrics.
That's it. Two hours quarterly saves dozens of coordination meetings and prevents expensive content duplication.
"We don't have time for more meetings." This replaces multiple smaller meetings. Two hours quarterly saves 8-12 hours of coordination throughout the quarter.
"Different departments have different audiences."
Most B2B audiences overlap more than you think. One piece of content can speak to multiple stakeholders simultaneously.
"Budget approval across departments is complex." Create a shared content pool during annual planning. Each department contributes 20-30% of their content budget to shared initiatives.
What this looks like in practice
Customer success story becomes:
Employee interview becomes:
One shoot. Four departmental objectives served.
Financial: 30-40% reduction in content creation costs through coordinated planning.
Operational: Faster sales cycles due to consistent messaging across touchpoints.
Strategic: Unified brand experience that competitors struggle to replicate.
Coordinating content across departments requires someone who can see connections between business objectives, balance competing priorities, and maintain creative quality while maximizing efficiency.
Most companies try to solve this with project managers or coordinators. That handles logistics but misses strategic opportunities.
Strategic creative directors understand how each department contributes to organizational success. We can facilitate discussions that move beyond tactical execution toward integrated strategy.
Don't try to revolutionize everything at once.
Start with one quarterly meeting. Plan one integrated shoot. Measure the difference.
Track cost savings, message consistency, and cross-departmental impact. Then scale what works.
The biggest content ROI opportunity isn't creating more content. It's connecting the content creation you're already doing.
Companies winning with content strategy have learned that alignment creates exponential value while isolation creates exponential waste.
Your choice: Keep paying for the same creative thinking multiple times, or invest in strategic coordination that multiplies your content investment across your entire organization.
Stay great,
Joost
.png)
