All this happened, more or less. The line parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I know really lost his job for taking potshots at ideas that weren’t his. Another guy I knew really did threaten to kill competitors with a flood of ads. And so on. I’ve changed all the names.
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It was 1969. General Motors built truck engines at a sprawling assembly plant in Hamtramck, Michigan. Forty-seven people took nearly fourteen hours to build one engine.
The head of the plant dispatched a young engineer to make things go faster. Bryce. Calder, I think. He came down from the management section of the plant, hopped into something akin to a golf cart, and set out on the minutes-long drive to reach the supervisory section football fields away.
He puttered passed the massive machines that conveyed the weighty engines in various states of completion. He saw people using pulleys and other ancient tools to lift and spin blocks of metal orienting them just so. Their job was wiring widgets and placing pins. He realized that even his slow vehicle was faster than the line. He knew he could make things faster.
Bryce had become unstuck in time. He started to think about this process in the future. What would this plant look like in the 70s? In the 80s? Decades from now, how many people would GM need? How quickly could they make an engine? So it goes.
At great expense to GM, Bryce’s plant employed thousands of people. Bryce cared about people. But his job wasn’t to care about people. Not about their salaries. Or their pensions. Or even their families. His job was about efficiencies. GM sold thousands of trucks. Thousands more buses used these same engines. A better process meant a better GM.
Bryce was processtizing. If he could figure out the process he could refine it. Improve it. Make it better. Make it faster. Churn out more engines more quickly. Make GM more money.
In 1987, I went to Hamtramck. I was young. Twenty. The plant was a factory. Fewer people worked there. The process was documented. Young Bryce was old Bryce. The grizzled veteran. He ran the factory. When I arrived, he told me seventeen people could build an engine in four hours. Robots, not pulleys, did the heavy lifting. Robots put the engine blocks in place. People still wired widgets and placed pins.
We drove down the line in a modern golf cart. The line ran a little bit ahead of us. “We can make it faster. I know this process. If you can get the robots to do the fine work, we can go faster.” Bryce dedicated his life to process. There was no reason for creativity. No want for it. It got in the way.
1987 was a long time ago. I don’t program robots anymore. When I did, I helped GM build a truck engine with three people in 19 minutes. So it goes. For about twenty years, I’ve been a media guy. I’ve lived a life learning to see processes and optimize them. I’ve come to think that creativity gets in the way.
Today’s media processes are models of efficiency. If GM wants to run an ad campaign a Bryce from marketing knows how to drive conversion faster than a golf cart can reach the end of a sprawling factory. There’s a playbook. What strategies will work best. Where ads should go. How to optimize for CPM. So it goes.
An executive at an ad agency that prided itself on being creative strolled by the modern desks where people conveyed weighty ideas. Doug. MacKinnon, I know. He saw people using modern apps to spin and orient shapes on screen just so. Their job was to write words and place pictures. Be creative. He didn’t agree with a cookie cutter strategy his firm had just offered a client. He said so. They fired him. So it goes.
Peter. Hampton, I know. Ran a division of a company. “I want all the ads. All of them. It’s not about the customers seeing us. I want our competitors to feel free fear when they open a website or turn a corner or open a magazine. A flood of ads will kill the competition and we will own the market.”
Mostly for larfs a friend asked ChatGPT to create a marketing plan for a lung cancer brand. Kurt. Van Hoof, I know. The output was long. Detailed. It listed the right sites for ads. Listed them in the right order. The best hashtags to use on social media. Online support communities. The works. It took about three seconds and needed no people. The next day, Kurt met with a big lung cancer brand. They shared their agency’s plan. The one that took a team of people weeks to build. It was identical. So it goes. At least that’s what he told me.
I had become unstuck in time. I started to think about this process in the future. What would media look like in the 30s? In the 40s? Decades from now, how many people would agencies need? How quickly could they make a plan?
A few days ago, Google dined with executives from ten leading Australian advertising agencies. “Our AI products are getting better. The role of humans in writing and place certain ads that run on Google could soon be increasingly served by AI and machine learning models. Our AI technology improves both productivity and creativity, freeing people up to focus on work that adds the most value.”
It was 1969. General Motors built truck engines at a sprawling assembly plant in Hamtramck, Michigan. Unstuck in time. So it goes.
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If you got to the end, well done. And. apologies. This one was a little weird. Sometimes they just come out that way. If you’re curious why, hit me up and I’ll try to explain.