Creative Asset Quality Assurance Checklist

Pull the locked brief from Workamajig (or wherever it lives) and re-anchor on the single-minded proposition, audience, and KPIs. Round-five drift is the most common reason QA finds creative that no longer answers the brief.

Cross-check every asset against the SOW deliverables matrix — hero film, 15s and 6s cutdowns, 9:16 social, statics, end cards. Any asset added mid-flight without a change order is a scope-creep flag for the AE.

Read every headline, sub-head, body, microcopy, end card, and super against the locked script. Watch for legal-approved language being softened in design (e.g., "Results may vary" dropped from a fitness claim).

USPTO TESS search plus a common-law sweep on any new tagline, character name, or product name. Right-of-publicity risk if a real person is referenced. Loop in client legal for final clearance memo.

Important Safety Information (ISI) must be on-screen long enough to read at typical viewing distance, in legible font, with audio match. FDA warning letters routinely cite ISI that scrolls too fast or sits below the safe area.

Check clear-space, minimum size, on-color vs. on-white version, and that the file came from the current Bynder folder — not a designer's local copy of last year's logo.

Brand color drift is the most common QC catch at color-grade. Reference the brand spec — Pantone for print, hex for digital, broadcast-safe equivalents for TV. Flag for the colorist if grade has pulled away from spec.

Verify licensed weights and styles only — designers occasionally substitute a system font when the licensed file is missing. Confirm web-font license covers the channels the asset will run on.

Pull network specs from Extreme Reach or Adstream and check codec, container, frame rate, resolution, and aspect against each delivery. ProRes 422 HQ at 23.98 for broadcast; H.264 MP4 for OLV; 9:16 vertical for Reels and TikTok. Day-of-air rejections almost always trace to a frame-rate or codec mismatch.

CALM Act requires -24 LKFS ±2 for U.S. broadcast. Run the mix through a loudness meter (Dolby, Nugen, iZotope Insight). Streaming and social platforms have different targets — check the spec sheet per channel.

Use Tag Assistant or Charles Proxy to confirm CM360, GA4, Meta Pixel, and TikTok Pixel fire on click and on conversion. Validate UTM source/medium/campaign naming against the media plan's tagging convention so the trafficker isn't reconciling free-text mismatches in reporting.

Test rich-media units in BrowserStack across the four major browsers plus iOS Safari and Android Chrome. Watch for fallback creative on browsers where the dynamic version fails — a common cause of "why is the static showing?" client escalations.

Walk the Frame.io timeline — every comment marked resolved or explicitly waived by the CD. Open comments at delivery are the most common source of post-launch "I thought we caught that" emails.

CD signs off on creative integrity; account director signs off on client alignment and SOW. Capture the result, any notes, and a digital signature so the audit trail is intact if a deliverable later gets challenged.

Log the failure reason in the change log, route back to the responsible team (creative, edit, color, mix, dev) with specific revision notes, and re-queue the QA pass once revisions are in. Do not let a "Fail" close out without a revision ticket.