How University Marketing Teams Manage Creative Requests Across Departments

Admissions needs materials for an upcoming open house. Alumni relations is preparing an event invitation. A department chair wants a program brochure updated. Advancement has a fundraising campaign approaching launch.

Each request has its own audience, stakeholders, and deadline. For the university marketing team handling all four, the challenge is deciding what happens next—and keeping everyone informed as the work moves forward.

A practical university marketing workflow connects request intake, prioritization, production, review, and delivery. Departments get a clear way to ask for help. Marketing gets the information needed to plan the work. Everyone can see who owns the next step.

Here’s how to build that process, with examples from Point Loma Nazarene University’s use of Hive.

Give departments one place to submit creative requests

Start with Hive Forms as a shared intake process for marketing work. Whether someone needs an email campaign, a web update, or printed collateral, the Form fill should provide enough context for marketing to assess it.

Keep the form focused on information that affects the work, and share it with any departments that might submit a request to your team. The form can be accessed directly via a URL, and the information will be ported right into a Hive project or action.

A request for “a flyer by Friday” leaves the marketing team with several questions. A request explaining the event, audience, distribution plan, and required approval gives the team a basis for deciding what is feasible.

In Hive, Forms can be fully customized to ensure that the marketing team immediately has the information they need to deliver on the work and move it forward. Explore Hive for higher education.

Review requests before committing to a delivery date

Submitting a request via a Form should start a conversation about scope and scheduling.

Teams can automatically assign the action that the form creates to someone on the marketing team. That person (whether its the marketing lead, designer, associate, etc) will review new requests and confirm whether the brief is complete.

A simple review process can answer four questions.

• Does the team have enough information to begin?

• How does the work support the university’s current priorities?

• What must happen before production can start?

• Can the requested deadline be met with the available people and time?

Then give the requester a clear response. The work might be scheduled, returned for missing information, or discussed further to agree on a smaller scope. You can do all of this on the action card in Hive, which will be created after the form is submitted.

For example, if an event is approaching quickly, the team might agree to produce an email and a web update first, with additional materials scheduled separately. Record that in Hive with the request so everyone works from the same agreement.

Plan recurring work before the next request arrives

University marketing includes work that returns with the academic calendar. Recruitment campaigns, orientation materials, alumni events, and annual fundraising initiatives all create opportunities to reuse a proven process.

Create templates for recurring projects that include the deliverables, owners, dependencies, and review steps. Build approval time into the schedule alongside writing and design.

Point Loma Nazarene University works in Hive to support undergraduate admissions, graduate admissions, alumni, and fundraising. The team reported handling 250–500 project requests per quarter, with approximately 60% of its workload made up of cyclical projects and 40% ad hoc work.

The team uses Hive templates with predefined actions, assignees, and timelines to set up projects. Its schedules work backward from the required completion date, helping the team account for the steps needed before delivery. Read the full Point Loma customer story.

Start with a recurring project your team already understands well. After the next delivery, update the template to reflect what actually happened, including review time that was missing from the original plan.

Give each deliverable an owner and each decision an approver

A campaign can involve several departments while still having clear responsibility.

For each deliverable, identify the person responsible for moving it forward. Separately, identify who contributes feedback and who makes the final approval decision. Those people can be assigned as reviewers in Hive directly.

For example:

Your university’s roles may differ, but the important step is agreeing on them before the first draft circulates.

When a project has several reviewers, use Review Templates in Hive to slot out all of the different reviewers, due dates, and potential blockers that could prevent work from moving down the funnel.

In Hive, once one reviewer has given their approval, the template will push it to the next person on the list.

Keep feedback connected to the work

Creative review becomes harder when feedback arrives through email, meetings, chat messages, and separate documents. Hive gives you the central resource and bank for all of the approvals, comments, and feedback.

AI proofing can also take a first pass at documents and proofs before anyone on your team has to dedicate time to reviewing it. This can catch mistakes 72% faster than waiting for the first manual reviewer.

At Point Loma, team members keep project notes in Hive action cards and add outside conversations as comments. The team also uses Hive’s Proofing and Approvals app to move marketing materials through final review. See how Point Loma organizes marketing work.

For your own process, define what happens when feedback changes the original scope. A new audience, additional deliverable, or major change in direction may require a revised deadline. Record the change and confirm the new plan with the requester.

Make progress easy for departments to understand

A requester should be able to tell whether work is waiting for information, in production, or ready for review.

Use Hive statuses that describe the next action clearly.

Using action statuses in conjunction with Proofing & Approvals can give teams an additional layer of insight. The actions themselves can house the proof and approval, as well as any other materials or links you might need.

For larger campaigns, give stakeholders a view of the overall timeline as well as individual deliverables. Hive’s higher-education offering includes timelines, dependencies, reminders, and status reporting to support this coordination. Explore university project management in Hive.

Review where work gets delayed

Once the workflow is in use, look for repeated sources of delay.

Track how long requests wait for missing information, how much time assets spend in review, and how often scope changes after production begins. Separate time spent creating the work from time spent waiting for a decision.

These measures can inform practical changes. Frequent incomplete briefs may call for clearer intake questions. Repeated late feedback may call for earlier agreement on review dates. A recurring campaign that always takes longer than planned may need a revised template.

Choose a few measures your team can maintain consistently, create a Dashboard to track them, and use those insights to improve the process with the departments you support.

Start with one department and one recurring campaign

You can introduce a shared workflow through a manageable pilot.

Choose a department with regular marketing needs and an upcoming project. Agree on the request fields, production owner, reviewers, and deadline.

Use what you learn to improve the process before inviting more departments into it.

Hive brings university marketing requests, project schedules, files, and approvals into a shared workspace. Start with a real campaign and give each stakeholder a clear way to contribute as the work moves toward launch.

Explore Hive for higher-education marketing teams.