There's a cost in every global campaign that nobody writes down. It's the cost of making things twice.
A change lands after the work has started. A file turns out to be out of date. A brief gets read three different ways. Each time, finished work goes back to the start and gets paid for again.
Most teams treat this as bad luck. It isn't.
If something happens on every release, it isn't an accident. It's part of how the release is run.
The causes are nearly always the same. Approval comes after adaptation has already begun, so every version has to be redone.
Teams start from old or incorrect source files. Briefs are loose enough that different teams make different things. None of these are anyone's fault. They're the result of a process that allows them to happen.
One late change sounds minor. Now multiply it by every version, every format and every market. A small fix at the centre becomes hundreds of fixes further down the line.
That's why rework on global campaigns is so expensive, and why it's so hard to see. It doesn't land as one cost. It lands as a little extra time and money in every corner of the release.
We've been the team redoing the work. We know what it feels like to finish something properly and then start it again because the input changed. It's the most frustrating part of the job, and it's the part that teaches you the most.
The main lesson: the fix is almost never at the point where the rework happens. It's further back, where it started.
It's tempting to blame rework on whoever made the late change or sent the wrong file. But if it happens every time, the issue isn't the people. It's the design. Change the design and the rework goes with it.
"Teams often accept rework as part of the job because it's always been there. But when you trace it back, most of it comes from a few causes that repeat on every release. Fix those and you don't just save money. You give people back the time they've been spending doing the same work twice."