For the past three years we have been saying that this industry has to change its business model. Lots of head nodding and scalp scratching, but with the exception of a few dozen press releases from Anomaly, nothing has changed. Now we're on a mission to spread the concept of Lean Advertising across the globe. To recap: we offered up the concept of Adaptive Branding last year with the hopes that some brave client organization would take up the cause of building an Adaptive Branding pilot program to put certain very solid practices into play. We took dozens of meetings, but always the same result: give us something we can relate to all this new age thinking, something we know and trust will work. And so it was, back to the drawing board. What we came up with was Lean Advertising, a direct offshoot of the hot production-based philosophy of Lean Manufacturing. For a quick study on Lean Manufacturing, click here. We’ll wait. Last week we provided you with an overlay of how a typical banner ad could be introduced into the Kaizen process that provides the background for Lean Manufacturing. The results made for certain startling revelations for the current Advertising industry. As far as the agency business model where Lean Advertising is concerned, it’s time to change or die. The labor movement snarkily defines Lean as "Less Employees Are Necessary." In some ways this is true. Certainly those employees who are not innovative, flexible and open to new ideas, skills and learning are going to be history in a Lean environment. But Lean is not about head count. Lean is about the empowerment of each employee to maximize his or her contribution to the health and well-being of the entire organization. There are only two ways for the current agency paradigm to go forward in a Lean Advertising scenario: either as Kaizen mentors or as former agency partners. As Kaizen mentors the current agency will have to become a Lean organization itself. This means learning to use less work effort, less work space, less investment in tools and less creative time to develop the new advertising that starts the process all over again. How is this possible? By shifting their priorities from developing, placing and tracking the client’s advertising to teaching the client how to develop, place, track and improve their own advertising. All of you out there who think that Leo Burnett is ready to do that for McDonald’s, signal by raising your hand. Anybody…? Anywhere…? That's what I thought. For the agencies currently serving Lean organizations, this means they will need to become much closer to their client organizations than ever before or face being replaced by a new generation of in-house practitioners. It is just that simple. I have no reservations about my belief that the agency business model has long outlived its usefulness. The antiquated idea that the client is best served by an arm’s length relationship with a somewhat responsive third party is just wrong-headed given today’s business prerogatives. My advice? New page. New start. For your own Lean Advertising White Paper Click Here.
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Let’s start with Toyota. They are the perfect company to put this theory into practice. Sales are slipping. They have two new U.S. factories coming on line. Automotive advertising has been dubbed totally ineffective by every measure imaginable. And they have a new Chief Marketing Officer and a relatively new CEO. How might the company that invented Lean set out to institute a Lean advertising program? First of all, they wouldn’t. It’s just not the Toyota Way. Some low level file clerk in the Georgetown plant would have to read this article and be inspired to shove it into a suggestion box--along with the 140,000 other yearly suggestions that get acted on each year. Within a few months it might make its way to someone in marketing at Toyota USA in Gardena and that minor functionary might just bring it up at a planning meeting for comic relief. “Hey, some team member out in Georgetown has a great Idea about our marketing. Fire Saatchi and do it ourselves. Anybody in here know how to do an ad?” Polite chuckles all around, except from the team leader. Pensive look. Scribbled note. Two years later in another meeting, the team leader, now a manager says, “we should have fired those guys two years ago when Jim-san suggested it.” That’s the Toyota Way. But in the spirit of “continuous improvement” I could be wrong and it could go like this: Right this minute somebody on the fourth floor at Toyota USA headquarters in Gardena could be going over the bills from Saatchi when their phone rings. It’s the boss, telling him to click over to MadisonAveNew.com and get a load of this: We are standing in a huge empty space in the Toyota Plant in Georgetown, KY. There used to be a painting facility parked in this space the size of two basketball courts side by side. Now it’s just highly polished concrete. There are four consultants pacing off the floor space to build Banzai!, the new Toyota advertising studio. Why are they building it in the middle of an automobile assembly plant? Because this team looks at the advertising for Toyota as an extension of each of the cars that rolls off the line here, so why woulnd’t they build the advertising where they build the cars? Within two weeks the two story glass walls that will soundproof the space are up. Within three weeks the steel mezzanine that effectively doubles the floor space is up. Next comes the long winding snake of a work table that will house the work teams that make up the Banzai! creative group of writers, musicians, designers, psychologists, anthropologists, photographers, editors, film makers and interns. Every day their positions along the snake will change. The snake is their assembly line. But first there has to be a “they.” The recruiting process has begun. There is only one requirement to be considered for one of the 200 positions available at Banzai! You have to hate advertising and be willing to move to Georgetown to make it better. Period. And they come to Georgetown by the busload. Now that the mezzanine is up, a second set of windows walls it off. These are black as night. Inside these walls technicians are wiring up the most advanced computer network the world of marketing has ever seen. Every data service is wired in. Every automotive database is wired in. Every media source is wired in. A network of 10,000 “trend reporters” from around the world will be wired in. Dubbed “Hacker Heaven” this will be the digital test track for the ad products that make it through the Snake. This darkness of this floor is divided in half by a wall of light. On one side of the floor cool blue neon proclaims, “Great Advertising.” On the other side hot orange neon states proudly, “Better Advertising” And so will go the work of the brainiacs, 100 research analysts who are charged with quantifying what comes out of the snake. Ads are tested. Ads are run. Results are returned to the snake. Ads are improved. Ads are tested. Ads are run. Results are returned to the snake. Ads are improved. The circle is never broken. The improvements to each ad in each medium are ongoing and continouous. Kaizen. This is our the vision of Lean Advertising at work. It is obviously going to take a new approach from the ground up as did Lean Manufacturing. It’s obviously not going to happen overnight. But it will happen. Slowly, and as surely as night follows day. Stay strong.
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In response to I just finished reading the book "Lean Advertising" hoping to get even more insight on this incredible theory. They missed the boat entirely. I got more out of your two articles then in their entire 144 page book. –G.Moore, NYC I have the feeling that you are just beginning to scratch the surface with this entire line of thinking. The idea of advertising and marketing being migrated to a production paradigm is a quantum leap forward in business theory. Don't stop now. You have the pretenders on the ropes. No wonder they are calling you the most dangerous man in advertising. Keep it up -L. Wyatt. Detroit.
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