And Now, LEAN Advertising.

For most of you out there, the word "Lean" probably puts you in mind of the Will Smith character in the Holiday hit movie "I Am Legend." Too bad. If that is all that came up when you read the word "Lean." Or, too bad if you immediately thought about the credit status of your condo, or the laconic slouch of a Pimp behind the wheel of his Caddy when faced with the term "LEAN". Too bad on all three counts if you came up with anything other than the hottest trend in Manufacturing, Software Development, Healthcare Services and a lot of other businesses and industries.

LEAN is the term given to the industrial culture that grew up as the Toyota Manufacturing Process and has now branched off into such methodologies as TQM, 5S, Six Sigma, and Kaizan. What LEAN means is the total and systematic elimination of wasted, efforts, movement, procedures, materials and time. Lean is based upon the concept of continuous improvement or "Kaizan" in Japanese.

I first came into contact with Kaizan working with Dr. Demming who had been brought in by Phillip Caldwell, the CEO of Ford Motor Company to turn around the quality of Ford's "Found On Road Dead" domestic automobile production. From Dr. Demming's statistical quality control and zero defects programs in 1982 and 1983, we created the Quality Is Job 1 campaign and the first major application of Kaizan or Lean by one of the Big Three.

Since that point, LEAN has caught on like a house on fire with industrial giants and light manufacturing alike. Lean Manufacturing has saved U.S. companies billions in over-stocked inventory, bloated supply channels, sluggish assembly line practices and lack-luster performance metrics. Lean has given us, the concept of the integrated "Value Chain," the godsend of JIT or Just-In-Time inventory control and many other factory floor practices that are now the fabric of modern day manufacturing processes.

But what about the front office? Where does the LEAN movement stand in addressing some of the greatest areas of wasted time, money and effort in Corporate America? Well don't look now but LEAN and its American cousin Six Sigma are inching their way off the factory floor and slowly making themselves heard in the Admin areas. Lean spin-offs like 5S ( Seperating, Sorting, Shine, Standardizing and Sustaining) are being used to do time and motion studies in accounting departments and administrative support areas. Tasks like work space organization and ergonomic workplace standards are making their presence known in the front office.

Six Sigma Black Belt consultants are being brought in by senior management to look over such essential tools as the Value Proposition and Lead Generation and evaluation. They approach the sales function with one basic discipline. One challenge to confront and gain proof of. And that is: What would it take to run a sales effort that the sales prospect would be willing to pay for as a value added component of the product or service offering? This "sales as product benefit" approach is changing the way many organizations are starting to reconfigure as a part of their go-to-market strategy. Today it's sales. Can advertising and marketing be far behind?

Certainly advertising has enough waste ("Muda" in Leanspeak) to go around. I would think that the first thing to go would be the agency client relationship. Why? Because agencies represent outsourcing, a practice the Lean purists are squarely against. According to Toyota (still the ultimate authority on Lean practices) "waste" is defined by the triangle of time+cost+quality. When you put any outsourced task inside that Lean Triangle, although cost beats the Lean internal practices time and quality do not. Which generally means the outsourcing has got to go.

So on the face of it, Lean Advertising will be done by a new generation of in-house agencies. Given most agencies shaky client relationships, this is not to far a stretch to imagine. But what about the so-called arms length relationship that has traditionally defined the reasons for agency-client separation? Well, now that data more than creative is driving the ad bus, that separation of church and state seems more of a throw-back then at any other time in recent history.

And the prospect of Lean Advertising will be even more data-driven as metrics are brought into play to quantify the continuous improvement and ROI of the marketing expenditure.

Which will bring us to media. And in my humble opinion, those sharp-pencil Leaners will put Network Television in their sites first off. And the first casualty on that battlefield will be the voodoo metrics of the Nielsen Ratings.

So hold on to your hats boys and girls. Lean Advertising is a-comin'. And as workers are saying on factory floors all across America. LEAN means Less Employees Are Needed,

Stay strong.

Comments on Mad 169:" The Lost Art of Art Direction "

I am going to have this whole article tattooed to my arm for easy reference (in 12 pt). Thanks for saying it all. - Jim Robinson

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