Does Fail-Fast Make Sense For Big Brands?

‘Fail-Fast’ is a software development mantra that has slowly permeated into other areas of the commercial world.  However, it doesn’t translate to mainstream marketing – yet.  The term is bandied around a good deal these days but basically refers to a project management style where, instead of excessive pre-planning, an idea is quickly put into practice and monitored closely.  The focus is on the continuous examination of performance and smart, speedy reaction to the marketplace.  In light of poor results, the aim is to iterate, change direction (sometimes euphemistically known as ‘pivoting’) or kill off the project altogether.  Thereby preventing long, drawn-out 'zombie' projects that suck up valuable resources before anyone notices they have joined the walking dead.  Crucially, to work effectively Fail-Fast requires an environment of constant, real-time feedback loops - which is exactly what you get when launching new initiatives, for example applications, onto the web or into purely digital media.  However, most brand marketing environments don’t look anything like this.  They remain approximations of what might be happening, in contrast to networked and digital media that show what is actually happening.  For instance, in the UK, the audience, cost and efficacy of TV advertising is determined by the British Audience Research Board (BARB) and its Television Measurement Service which is a panel composed of 5,100 homes.  Far from being a software-driven mirror of actual events, BARB's panel doesn’t measure...