The Consequences of a Poor Approval Workflow, in Three Tiers

To many marketers, the idea that a typo would make its way through your approval workflow on a label appearing on a shelf is impossible. Marketers think: “We have too many people looking at the asset for that to happen,” or “there’s no way I or my team would make such a glaring mistake.” 

The truth is, it does happen, and maybe more often than you’d think. 

And Reddit has the receipts.

For example, a designer misspelled his client's company name in 72-point type, in the headline of a full-page magazine ad. In total, seven people signed off, including the client. In the end, the CEO found it in the published magazine. 

After combing through a litany of examples, we’ve identified these mistakes and grouped them into three categories by severity. 

At the crux of all these mistakes is one core process: your approval workflow. It fails the saw way across all three categories but can vary on the severity.

Tier one: embarrassment

A thread of 218 designers answered one question: how many times have you made a mistake that went to print? In one afternoon:

• A conference sign reading WECLOME, mounted above a staircase. Six people handled that file. Someone spotted it in a photo of the finished install.
• A conference program with ACTIVITITIES on the cover, in 72-point type. Five approvers cleared it. Nobody noticed until 5,000 copies arrived.
• A newspaper correction box with the word error misspelled inside it.
• A half-page ad reading "Visit Your Pubic Library Today!" It ran in the morning edition. Then it ran again that evening.

All mistakes are embarrassing, especially these. It is basic typos and smaller mistakes that should have been caught. A bruised ego, depleted trust with your supervisors or clients, and a mistake that lingers for a few weeks.

Tier two: cost

Tier two is the same error on something you already manufactured.

In July 2025, High Noon recalled vodka seltzer because the cans said Celsius energy drink. A shared supplier had shipped the wrong empty cans. The product reached six states labelled as something you'd hand a child.

The MHRA recalled batches of Inhixa, a blood thinner, over a typographical error on the carton: "12,000 IU (20mg)" instead of "12,000 IU (120mg)". One missing digit, and one big mistake.

Synear Foods added peanut oil to a dumpling recipe and never updated the label. 71,603 pounds. Costco recalled 79,200 pounds of butter because the label left off "Contains: Milk" — with the cream sitting right there in the ingredient list.

A wrong can, a missing digit, a line nobody updated.

And that cost adds up. Almost no company publishes what a recall costs, and the $10 million average everyone quotes traces to a 2010 report containing no cost figure at all. But economists have modelled the direct cost — notification, retrieval, reverse logistics, storage, destruction, the unsalable product, the labor. One published example puts 285,000 boxes worth $1.22 million at a minimum direct cost of $1,393,821.

That's roughly 1.14x. You destroy everything you made, then pay about 14% more to do it.

Costco's butter lands near $203,000. Synear's dumplings near $690,000. Neither figure includes litigation, lost sales or brand damage, which the same economists call the larger costs.

Tier three: harm

Tier three is the same error again. Instead, the missing or misspelled words lead to harm.

Órla Baxendale died on 11 January 2024. The manufacturer had added peanut to the cookie recipe six months earlier. The label still described the old recipe. The FDA ruled the product "misbranded" because "the finished product labels fail to declare the major food allergens, peanuts and egg."

Sometimes the words are there and nobody can find them. Low-dose methotrexate is taken weekly. Taken daily, it can kill. In the 18 months to June 2019, ISMP documented 14 patients who took it daily by mistake. Five died and nine were hospitalised, most in intensive care. The warning existed: ISMP found it "buried in the second page of the Patient Information Leaflet for methotrexate," where it "does not communicate the potentially fatal consequences."

All approved, compliant, and unreadable.

FDA researchers studied 732 food allergen recalls. Label control caused most of them: 26% wrong label or package, 12% terminology problems, 10% where an ingredient's allergen never carried through to the final label. Cross-contact caused about 7%.

What separates the tiers

Nothing in the process separates the tiers, which is a scary thought.

Every tier runs the same play: capable people, a routing sheet, several sign-offs, and everyone assuming the person before them read it properly.

Improving your approval workflow

Seven people looked at that magazine ad. Looking isn't checking. People can't compare an asset against a written standard reliably at volume, especially when the marketing review function is overlooked.

However, with AI, things have changed. Instead of using AI as a software, marketing teams need to look at it as another employee - one that is precise, doesn’t get tired, and always shows up. 

Using AI to automate the mechanical checks, like matching the copy to the approved source, or if the ingredient list was updated after the reformulation. That second question is a database comparison and is the exact check that failed at Órla Baxendale and at Synear. The same discipline keeps artwork proofing and claims substantiation holding up across markets.

Send every genuine risk to a human. Then chase the fix, not the flag, which is usually a comment sitting in an inbox on Friday.

Indeed's team closed that loop. Triage dropped from three days to under two hours, and their review cycle from 4.23 days to 1.83.

Your workflow now stands between a reformulation and a label. It can't tell the difference. Neither can the seventh reviewer.

FAQ

Why do approval workflows fail?

Reviewers recognize familiar artwork instead of reading it. Review is almost never anyone's full-time job, so assets sit. And responsibility dilutes as names join the routing sheet — each person assumes someone earlier checked carefully.

How often do labeling errors cause recalls?

Undeclared allergens caused more FDA food recalls than any other factor in Q1 2026 — 57 events covering 19.26 million units. In an FDA study of 732 allergen recalls, label control explains roughly two-thirds of those with an identifiable cause.

Does adding reviewers fix it?

No. Past a handful, each approver adds delay faster than accuracy. Removing the mechanical checks from human hands works — our 2026 labeling compliance guide covers what that looks like across markets.

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