The Win/Win/Win of Media Procurement
The craft of media procurement is growing and is more important than ever given that media is the largest marketing investment for many companies. In the “old days” procurement was about cutting costs, and particularly agency fees. Now, the role of media procurement is to optimize the media investment to the benefit of the client marketing team, the agency, and procurement — a true triple win.
Start thinking of value in and not cost out.
Katherine Freeley is the global head of media and digital procurement for Novartis, where she oversees traditional and digital media investment globally and optimizes working media budgets to drive brand growth. Previously, Ms. Freeley led global integrated marketing operations and established media procurement for Colgate-Palmolive. She also spent more than a decade working for such agencies as Mindshare, Draft FCB, Publicis, Grey, and JWT.
In the past 15 years, we have focused on the top of the ice-berg — to optimize what we do. We did this through negotiating the media fees. Now we need to partner with our agencies and our marketing colleagues and take advantage of opportunity and take action.
In pondering this new reality and need for a different way of working to create value, Katherine teamed up with Adam Gerhart, the global CEO of Mindshare and together they created the framework and presentation for a way to create a win/win/win for the media category.
Media agencies are a great, efficient planner and buyer of media. Let’s work with them to create a better supply chain for all players. Let’s challenge the walled gardens. They are great partners in innovation and creativity but need to be managed. Let’s focus on diverse media. We have heard a lot of great actions to improve the execution of diverse media. Another imperative focus is green media is key. Digital is the biggest polluters of carbon, and we need to work on reducing this pollution.
Research and surveys from both ANA ,WFA and ISA have shown that there is a gap in the perception of the value that marketing procurement provides. In order to address this, we need to take a closer look at the three Qs.
First we have IQ — this stands for driving the intelligence in marketing. Marketing procurement should operate with a holistic view of the marketing life-cycle. It is important to recognize the complexity of this eco-system, all the partners and who provides what support. Here, marketing procurement can learn from the agencies. They can provide education, insight, industry and brand learnings for procurement to become educated in the specific field.
The next Q is EQ- Emotional intelligence is the understanding and empathy we have for each other as work partners, industry colleagues and competitors. Marketing Procurement needs to support agencies in selling and delivering work at a profit. It is important to provide value to both marketing and agency partners as key stakeholders in the marketing eco-system. By creating common initiatives, you can create and improve trust between all players. Trust helps us become more empathetic and aligned with people, partners and others. Marketing procurement can drive process for the benefit of all and continue to be a valuable partner to marketing, agencies, and other players.
The last (but certainly not least) Q is PQ — which stands for is passion for marketing and the consumer experience. At the end of the day, we all strive to deliver the best consumer experience possible while interacting with the brands we serve. We can do this by training our new and existing talent. We should all have the opportunity to spend time at the agency, learn their process, the value they bring and how they operate. As marketing procurement, we need to stay abreast of innovation, new developments, legal requirements within marketing. We can do that by attending conferences, reading the trade press and speak with our peer group as well as competitors.
At the end, we all need to appreciate changing consumer demands and deliver on them. These will define new measures of success for everyone working at a brand. The consumer will always be our North Star.
The ten commandments for a better relationship with agencies and marketers (a version of the WFA list as introduced in “Project Spring”):
- Align and share goals
- Involve procurement early in the process
- Procurement needs to understand that advertising is unique
- Procurement should stay involved throughout the process
- Procurement should work closer with marketing teams
- Process improvements are an opportunity
- Education is critical
- Procurement should market its value
- Agencies should proactively establish relationships with Procurement
- Reporting of results is part of the over-arching business performance management
The core values of marketing procurement
Trusted, Productive, Curious, Accountable, Collaborative, Skilled, Responsible
