"I encountered a similar scenario when I worked at XYZ Agency. I was working with both the CEO and the COO on a website improvement project. During the mockup phase, we were on a call to review the photos to be featured on each of the service pages. The COO was really unhappy with the stock photos that the CEOs pre-approved. He thought they were generic-looking and weren't representative of their brand. They asked for time to review on their own further and get back to me as soon as they had a decision.

I thought everything through after we got off the call, and sent them a follow-up email. My concern was that if they sat on this decision longer, it meant the launch date would be delayed, and it was not the first hiccup the client caused during this project. Also, the COO was proposing to schedule a photoshoot for half of the pages, and that would not only be a further delay but additional cost for them. So I proposed to go ahead with the stock photos and launch as we intended. My team was working at a fixed project rate, and delays like this cost us a lot of labor hours. In the meantime, we scheduled the photoshoot and charged the client separately for it. Fortunately, they hired us on a retainer basis after that project, so we were able to swap the photos out ourselves."