Choose the agency that can deliver campaign assets your team can approve and use, not the one that generates the most variants. Give finalists the same brand brief and ask them to show concept development, source and likeness permissions, claim substantiation, human review, channel adaptation, provenance and the fully loaded cost of a usable asset. AI can speed exploration; named people must still own publication decisions.
The MAKINAI Creative Release Gate: six procurement proofs
- 1. Concept and brand fit — connect the campaign objective, audience and prohibited messages to a rationale for the proposed idea, not just a style gallery.
- 2. Inputs and usage rights — identify every licensed reference, font, photograph, likeness, voice and uploaded brand asset, including use scope and retention.
- 3. Claims and trust — attach evidence and an approver to each objective claim; reject fictitious customer testimonials and synthetic people portrayed as real customers.
- 4. Review and provenance — provide a version history, human edits, tool disclosure and approval log. C2PA records signed assertions about provenance, not a guarantee that underlying content is truthful or licensed.
- 5. Channel-ready delivery — show format, copy and accessibility review for each channel, plus human localization rather than mere machine translation.
- 6. Approved-asset economics — itemize creative direction, generation, retouching, legal review, revisions, storage, testing and source-file handoff.
For each gate, record absent, asserted, demonstrated on a controlled sample, or reproduced in a paid challenge. Treat unlicensed likeness, an unsubstantiated central claim or an undefined final approver as a stop condition regardless of a composite score. This is MAKINAI's editorial buying tool, not a certification or measured industry benchmark.
Run a bounded, paid challenge on identical inputs
Use a fictional, nonclient campaign brief for a hypothetical product, an objective claim that would require substantiation, one unlicensed visual reference and two target channels. Pay each finalist for a small defined proof: concept rationale, two creative directions, one asset from each, source and rights register, claim review, human brand sign-off and channel adaptations. Introduce a late format or messaging change to expose the real revision process. Do not upload confidential customer data or third-party images for this exercise.
For every proposed asset, require a release card with asset ID and version, purpose, channel, owner, source and license, claim and evidence, consent if relevant, human edits, approvers, permitted use and editable handoff. Compare time to approval, rework and cost per asset that is actually cleared for testing—not prompt counts or theoretical output volume. A conventional or hybrid studio may be preferable when exclusive look and defensible rights are central and the AI workflow cannot establish them.
U.S. rights and advertising need separate review
The U.S. Copyright Office's January 2025 report explains that purely AI-generated material lacks protection, while sufficient human-authored expression is assessed case by case; a prompt alone is not assumed to establish authorship. This is a copyrightability question, separate from licenses to inputs, personality rights and contract terms. The FTC's advertising-substantiation policy requires an adequate basis for objective claims. Have counsel check applicable rules and terms for the media, product category and state. NIST's generative AI profile offers a risk-management lens; it does not approve your campaign.
Make release conditions contractual
Specify asset-level acceptance, revision rounds, use by channel/territory/term, editable files, tool and input logs, confidentiality, subcontractor controls and a withdrawal process. For asset rights use https://makinai.co/insights/en/who-owns-code-data-prompts-ai-services-engagement; for value-case scrutiny use https://makinai.co/insights/en/evaluate-ai-consulting-roi-business-case-before-hiring; and compare bids using https://makinai.co/insights/en/how-to-evaluate-ai-consulting-proposals-scorecard. MAKINAI can help frame the brief and a fair selection proof for brand and creative work: https://makinai.co/services/en/branding-creative-digital-experience-agency.