Every other time I sit down with the intention of writing a new blog entry, I find myself diverted by someone else’s witty, insightful, entertaining blog.  Hours of reading pass in the blick of an eye and I find myself left with no time my own blog. This evening the culprit was Joi Ito’s blog at joi.ito.com.  I have no recollection of how I got there, but perusing through his writings consumed my entire evening.  Joi Ito has been blogging for a long time, so I only managed to scrape the surface of his.  At least I found something relevent for this blog’s marketing slant: Lockers lower churn for Japanese love hotels.

Not too long ago, measuring return on advertising spending was a fool’s errand. Then came the internet and the rise of digital media and, suddenly, the impracticalities of tracking advertising spending gave way to a wealth of clickthrough and conversion data. Until now, most of that data has been confined to the online world and advertising campaigns which are in some way linked to online channels.

Before we write off the “bricks-and-mortar” channels as hopeless relics of a bygone mass marketing age, consider that technology may soon re-invent the offline advertising world. Take billboards. In the past, measuring the usage of a billboard required having someone stand near the board and record the number and type of people viewing the advertisement. Now, what if the billboard could recognize who was looking at it? The implications for advertisers are profound, but so are the challenges to privacy.

Mention the words “Six Sigma” around marketing folks and you will likely receive blank stares in response. The few that recognize the terminology will probably attempt to steer the conversation elsewhere, perhaps to a less intimidating topic like the latest logo proposals sent by the branding agency. I don’t think I would be exaggerating to say that most marketers would prefer having their wisdom teeth removed than going through a Six Sigma project.

For those of you still wondering what the fuss is about, Six Sigma is way to improve quality and reduce the number of defects in a process. It is highly analytical, makes use of complicated statistical methods, and follows controlled experiments to improve processes. In other words, its the ultimate nightmare of numbers-adverse marketers who trust their intuition more than any spreadsheet. Clearly, Six Sigma did not come from the mind of some branding guru, but was born in the hell-fires of some engineering lab.

I am sure that someone out there has run or will run a Six Sigma project to figure out why there are so few Six Sigma projects in the marketing department, but, in the meantime, let me offer a few less-than-scientific thoughts on why (many) marketers are allergic to Six Sigma:

1. Its analytical. As mentioned earlier, Six Sigma is a numbers endeavor. Most marketers entered the field on the premise that their inability to master calculus back in college would not be a stumbling block to future career success and those who did survive the odd non-elective statistics course haven’t touched an Excel spreadsheet in ages. When suddenly confronted with long-forgotten terms like “regression analysis” and “control limits”, these math-impaired marketers run for the hills.

2. Its accountable. Most marketers know the quote, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” A department store magnate named John Wanamaker supposedly spoke these words as he lamented the difficulties with calculating a return on marketing spend. Marketers like to share this lament, but the dirty little secret is these same marketers are all too happy with this situation. That oh-so-regretable intransparency also happens to keep the finance people from prying too deeply into coveted marketing budgets. With numbers comes accountability, and suddenly, through Six Sigma, you are able to speak the same language as the CFO.

3. Its actionable. Forgive the consultant-speak for a moment, but Actionable fits exceedingly well with the other two A’s in my list. Actionable, in the management consultant sense, means you can make decisions that will impact your business based on the results of your analyses. Six Sigma is above all actionable, in that a well-conceived Six Sigma project should be short on theories and long on experimentation. Now actionable may not seem such a bad thing, but when pet projects — such as the marketing director’s creative epiphany from last month — start getting closed down in the name of process optimization and Kaizen, that certainly has the potential to bruise a few marketing egos.

To be fair and balanced, not all marketers despise numbers as much as I have suggested here, but there is reason why you rarely see marketers crossing over into financial or accounting positions. Over time, I expect the math-literacy of marketers to increase dramatically, as a new generation of practitioners schooled in search engine marketing, web analytics, CRM, and database marketing start to fill senior management ranks. For the moment though, Six Sigma is definitely a hard sell in traditional marketing circles.

Now comes the interesting part…at least for me and, hopefully, for you as the reader of this blog. I will be embarking on my first Six Sigma project. My opinion is that Six Sigma most definitely belongs in the toolset of any serious marketer, however, I reserve the right to change my mind about Six Sigma down the road. I intend to write more on my experiences with Six Sigma, with the hope of helping fellow marketers who may be considering or already undertaking Six Sigma projects of their own. I won’t be mentioning too many specifics of my project — that is proprietary corporate stuff, you know — but anything else related to Six Sigma in a marketing context is going to be fair game. And, if you are a marketer with a Six Sigma belt to your name, by all means join the conversation…