A while ago, I bumped into this magnificent Harley Davidson ad planner that allows individual dealers to customize their ads with content specific to their local markets while maintaining the overarching look and feel.
After digging deeper, I found this paper that "reviews how some advertising agencies in the USA and Europe — Ogilvy, McCann Erickson, Grey Worldwide, BBDO, Leo Burnett Worldwide, Euro RSCG, Publicis’ Capps Digital and TracyLocke — chose and implemented a flexible, scalable digital asset management (DAM) system that allows them to collaborate via the internet with hundreds of agency offices and clients, worldwide."
I mean, there must be an intelligent substitute to the network folders, email and FTP.
Update (Jan 31 '06): BrandMuscle provides some of the advertising automation services, much like the Harley's ad planner.
