Marketing Thoughts by Domus Inc.

“Kaizen” (“improvement” in Japanese) is a Japanese philosophy that focuses on continuous improvements throughout all one’s life. Japanese companies have applied this philosophy to the workplace, where they continually search for improvements in all aspects of their business practices. The emphasis is on small continuous changes with monitoring feedback and adjustments as opposed to large-scale overhauls.

Up until recently, most of these improvements have focused on manufacturing and related processes. However, they might well be ready to move into the marketing and advertising area, and American marketers should take note. Toyota just announced that it is creating two internal marketing companies to start focusing on both its Japanese and worldwide advertising efforts. Their goal is not just to save money by bringing advertising and PR functions in-house; rather, they want the kaizen culture imbued in their entire marketing efforts, and they believe they can better do this in-house.

This might be a preface to bringing in-house their more than $1 billion advertising budget. If they are successful and this becomes a trend, Madison Avenue might have more problems than it already thinks it has. But moreover, it’s a valid wake-up call to the entire industry. Although there are many aspects to marketing that are hard to quantify because they are creative in nature, there are also many aspects that are quantifiable and ripe for improvement. Who among us can assuredly say that none of our project lifecycles could not have been completed more quickly with fewer change cycles? Who can say that no mistakes have ever gotten through the cracks? And who currently has in place mechansims to track things like this as well as processes to continually improve them?

Those of us who do not might well find our businesses suffering or even dying. On the other hand, those of us who embrace these ideas might well have new opportunities that we had not realized were available to us. At Domus, we have spent the last few years working on improving what we already considered a lean, effective organization. But we can’t – and won’t – rest from this process. Please click on our web site to find out more about us.

“Just-in-Time” (JIT) is an inventory strategy designed to improve the ROI of a business by reducing inventory and its associated costs. The key to inventory reduction through JIT is the quick communication of stock consumption, which signals the need for new stock to be generated, which leads to savings in both space and costs. Materials are purchased and units are produced only as needed to meet actual customer demand. The philosophy of JIT is simple – sitting inventory is wasteful and unproductive. JIT is all about having the right material, at the right time, at the right place, and in the exact amount, when needed and only when needed.

Now apply this paradigm to service industries in general and the advertising industry in particular. The analogous “inventory”, though, is no longer made up of widgets. Rather, it is people resources – specifically, people skilled in creative, communicative, managerial, technical, and other aspects of marketing communications.

So, for an advertising agency to most effectively service its customers without passing through wasteful overhead, the agency (or PR firm) must have its “inventory” of skilled professionals available at the moment that its clients need them and only at those moments. Moreover, since each situation is different, the skill sets required in each situation will necessarily differ, implying differing available “inventory.”

In other words, an agency needs an extensive network of skilled professionals and specialists from which the right people can be picked for each project. To ensure quality and consistency, the agency will always need a core team of in-house staff to manage these dynamic teams and maintain effective communications with clients.

As the landscape of public relations, advertising, and marketing communications in general continues to change more and more rapidly, resource management models based on this concept are becoming critical to the success and even survival of agencies. Domus, a full-service Philadelphia advertising and marketing communications agency, has been an innovator and champion of JIT since its inception 16 years ago. Our clients have been reaping the benefits ever since. Our business model and ability to engage experts and resources across any category uniquely enable us to deliver strengths in just about any area that our clients might be looking for. Visit our website and give us a call to talk about our model further.