Plan campaign timelines

Build the campaign timeline for the autumn customer acquisition campaign running from September 1 to November 15. Include planning, creative sprint, content production, paid media build, staging, and launch phases with start and end dates: planning Aug 10–Aug 24, creative sprint Aug 25–Sep 8, content production Sep 9–Oct 6, paid media Sep 20–Oct 18, staging Oct 19–Nov 2, and campaign live Nov 3–Nov 15. Assign lead: Sara for creative, Jonah for paid, Lian for analytics. Place dependencies so creative must finish before content production starts.

Before I send this timeline to the marketing director, make approvals obvious: surface the campaign goal and target KPIs at the top, highlight the critical path tasks in red, add estimated resource hours for each phase, and call out any decisions that need sign-off with names and deadlines.

Jonah in paid media just asked for two more weeks to QA templates, which would push our staging and launch back. I have Sara and Lian to consult. I'm worried delaying paid media will hollow out the media test window and miss performance goals; I don't know if paid's QA scope is negotiable. How do I decide whether to grant the two-week delay, shrink other tasks, or negotiate a partial delivery? Offer the fastest way to evaluate options and the recommended choice.

We repeatedly underestimate paid media QA and then compress staging, which erodes test quality and performance. What recurring planning habit or gating rule should we introduce to stop last-minute overlap, who must enforce it, and a one-paragraph set of steps to make it stick for future campaigns?