Advertising Methodology?

The Information Technology world and software industry has the Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC). The SDLC is a standard practice which helps to ensure success in imagining, defining, designing, building, testing, and deploying a new system. Every IT organization in the world has their own flavour of the SDLC. A common thread is that without a well managed SDLC a project is doomed from the outset.

What does the advertising community have? The software industry is rich with engineers and people who like a clearly defined process. The advertising industry is rich with creative people who want the space and place to be random to a fault in order to allow creativity to blossom. Consequently, the advertising community doesn't appear to have any common creative practice like the SDLC which ensures that the business rationale for a campaign is well understood, that the campaign is designed to meet the business rationale, or ultimately that it is ever measured back against the rationale.

Over the next week or more I'm going to layout a framework for an Advertising Development Life Cycle (ADLC). Check back often to find out what that looks like.