The Posting
A $15M skincare brand just posted a "Marketing Coordinator" role on LinkedIn. $55,000/year.
Here's what the job description actually asks for:
- "Manage relationships with 4 freelance content creators"
- "Organize all brand assets in Google Drive"
- "Ensure creative is formatted and uploaded to Meta, TikTok, and Klaviyo"
- "Track creative deliverables and deadlines"
- "Coordinate approval workflow between founder and marketing director"
That's five creative operations functions hidden inside a "coordinator" title.
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Try the Calculator →What's Actually Going to Happen
They're going to hire this person. And that person will become the human router --- the single point of failure in the creative pipeline.
Every asset that needs to move from a creator to an ad platform goes through them. Every file that needs renaming, reformatting, or uploading is their job. Every follow-up with a freelancer who missed a deadline lands on their plate.
When they're on PTO, everything stops. When they leave, everything they kept in their head leaves with them.
The system isn't a system. It's a person. And people leave.
The Real Cost
$55,000 salary. Add benefits, tools, onboarding, and the 6 months it takes them to fully understand the workflow:
$72,000+/year for a person who IS the system --- not someone who runs a system.
Compare that to $5,000/month ($60,000/year) for a creative operations system that runs regardless of who's managing it. A system with documented processes, naming conventions, routing rules, and deployment tracking that doesn't walk out the door.
The Pattern
This isn't one brand. This is every brand.
I see these job listings every week. "Content Coordinator." "Creative Project Manager." "Marketing Operations Specialist." The titles vary. The job descriptions are the same: five creative ops functions duct-taped together and handed to someone who also has seven other responsibilities.
The Function Is Real. The Approach Is Wrong.
Creative operations is a real function --- just like FinOps, supply chain ops, and RevOps. It deserves a real system, not a person you hope sticks around long enough to keep things from falling apart.
The six things every creative ops function handles:
1. Intake --- receiving assets from partners and creators
2. Organization --- naming, tagging, and filing
3. Routing --- getting the right asset to the right channel
4. Coordination --- following up with partners on deliverables
5. Tracking --- knowing what's deployed, what's idle, what's wasted
6. Reporting --- measuring the pipeline's productivity
If your company needs all six and you're hiring a coordinator to do them alongside their other work, you're setting up a single point of failure.
If you want to see where your creative pipeline actually stands, take the free Creative Yield Score. Two minutes. No commitment.