When it comes to Marketing Services sourcing, the short answer is no. Driving costs down is an important element of strategic sourcing but not at the expense of brand building, customer acquisition and revenue growth.
Procurement professionals must take a broader view of their role in the marketing services supply chain if they are to optimize their enterprise value in this important area. Yes, there are a plethora of opportunities for improving an advertiser’s cost basis, streamlining vendor networks and enhancing their agency stewardship controls through the application of sound procurement practices. However, these efforts must be complemented by pragmatic processes designed to leverage an organization’s marketing resource investment in driving the demand side of the business. For example, contracts which provide the organization with the requisite legal, financial and intellectual property controls, creative remuneration systems which incent extraordinary effort, vendor performance monitoring systems which provide transparent reporting on a near real-time basis and the use of an analytics based vendor network benchmarking program to gather intelligence on time and material costs at a task level across the supplier network to inform future resource allocation decisions.
Further, as advertising agencies look to evolve their own procurement efforts, advertiser organizations can realize significant value by providing assistance to their partners in collaborating to determine how strategic sourcing can drive cost efficiencies across the strata of 3rd party vendors that represent an important element of an advertisers marketing supply chain. Remember that while an advertisers marketing services vendor network might number a few to a few dozen agency partners, those agencies represent the advertisers interest to thousands of 3rd party vendors ranging from illustration studios to talent agencies to production houses to media properties. By focusing efforts in these areas Procurement will realize their near-term cost reduction targets and build a system for driving marketing performance for many years to come.
As the old Chinese proverb goes; “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Interested in reading more on this topic? Check out the article by David Rae on the Procurement Leaders Blog.