Six Sigma Discipline is Good for a Creative Process

I have been promoting Lean Marketing and Six Sigma Marketing for quite a while and have typically been met with steadfast resistance. However, I am seeing more and more mentions of this and it is not coming from the Six Sigma Black Belts. It is being driven by Marketers and Accountants. Listen to one marketer’s view below.

Why a Little Discipline Is Good for the Creative Process by Avi Dan the is CEO of Avidan Strategies. It was published in June, 2010 on Advertising Age.

In the article Avi Dan points out:

Companies that implement a methodical process, such as Procter & Gamble or Microsoft, tend to deliver consistently better communications and business results, and their brands enjoy greater value. They tend to beat competitors on such key attributes as “cycle time” and “speed to market,” and have a higher degree of success when it comes to new-product launches. Most important, a meticulously executed process can deliver savings of more than 30% and improve productivity, as the need for redirects and errors is minimized.

These people believe that creative organizations are often built on the principle of trial and error, and the rigorous confinement to the norm is too stifling. Yet others believe that a disciplined process is essential to optimize the client-agency relationship. I tend to agree with the latter view. Marketing spend is the No. 1 investment for most companies — more even than IT or training. It behooves CMOs to install a precise process to insure that creative development is as effective and efficient as it can be. Yet I believe that while CMOs should adopt the spirit and attitude of Six Sigma, it should be applied with a light hand.

He listed suggestions on how to apply discipline to the creative process with good explanations of each. A list of them follows:

Call it Three Sigma.
Prioritize accuracy.
Move fast.
Avoid the iterative process.
Integrate effectively.
Get involved early.
Engage senior executives.
Speed up cycle time.
Codify standards.
Improve continuously.
Measure ROI.

His suggestion on how to implement

So do what agencies often do with controversial products, or when a client faces a PR nightmare: rebrand. Rebranding it as a more user-friendly process, emphasizing areas that are important to the agency, like better briefs and improved, faster client buy-in, will make for a more pleasing reception when implementing Three Sigma.

I encourage you to read the article, Why a Little Discipline Is Good for the Creative Process and the reactions to it. There is another take on this article from a Kellogg School of Business faculty member, Gad Allon. He titled his blog post Lean Advertising.

Lean and Six Sigma Marketers step forward and start Driving Market Share! Most practitioners of these practices or any other continuous improvement philosophy seldom see the opportunity that exists for them. They just can’t get away from the operational side of things. I hate to say this but I have more hope in the area of Marketing and Accounting to see this bigger picture.

Maybe you’re a Black Belt, Sensei or a Jonah. You have completed projects that saved the company money, improved flow and increased quality. You have done it extremely well but in today’s market place it means little. Fact of the matter; if you are not competitively priced, can’t deliver product and have good quality, you are simply not in business. If you are still talking that game you are out of touch because the problems and constraints are not internal for 90% of the companies. It is external; it is a sales/market constraint.

What stops a Continuous Improvement Practitioner from jumping into marketing?

The first barrier is that you put your foot in your mouth the first time you talk to marketing or management. The words that come out of your mouth are getting rid of waste, reducing cost, standardize, data collection, reports, measures and audits.
The next step is that you start talking about culture change and journeys. You might tell sales not to be so number driven (by the way we need data from you to make this all work).
If you do get your foot in the door, you bring out your toolbox and start trying to quantify, reduce variability and my favorite is bringing the control point to manage this inside the company.

I could go on but the culture and internal part of all this is wrong! Sales and marketing are external functions and if you want to play the game you need to get on their side of the fence.

Your first step is to consider how to increase revenue and drive market share. There is not anything that will perk up the ears of management, sales or the CMO.
Don’t talk about culture, talk about how you can increase a salespersons face time with customers through creating an effective and efficient marketing effort.
Don’t bring out your toolbox. There is ample time for that but truth be known, till you have learned about sales and marketing your toolbox probably won’t work. It works internally developing a call center or an identified problem later on but initially you will bog down the process and loose support.

Promotional Copy: Eric Reidenbach of Six Sigma Marketing Institute has created that bridge between marketing and the Continuous Improvement Practitioner through the development of a new program called the 5Cs of Driving Market Share. It enable the CI Practitioner the necessary marketing knowledge and basic toolset that will provide a path for your organization or if you are a consultant, a client’s organization. On the other side of the bridge, it provides the CMO the necessary knowledge to understand a modified DMAIC approach to marketing and provide real meaning to his data and a way to use it to drive market share.