Client Newsletters

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PROCUREMENT DEPARTMENTS AND AD AGENCIES

If your company has not yet considered the involvement of your procurement department in the client/ad agency relationship, this event signaled the fact that it's coming. And it appears that it's not going to go away. Why has this happened?

Companies are more and more vulnerable to the near-term success or failure of their marketing programs. Marketing - as in bringing goods and/or services to market (via advertising, public relations, sales promotion, and other such tactics) - is generally contracted to outside vendors. These ad agencies, publicists and consultants are entrusted with hard-earned, precious budgets meant to contribute to the success of these companies. Clients assume these vendors are qualified to do that.

Yet in a country where accreditation and licensing is required of doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, engineers, dentists, psychiatrists, CPA's and even

Marketing budgets represent a tremendous expenditure for a company, so the process of selecting a marketing vendor, or "marketing partner," is presumably no longer entrusted only to the marketing department who might search local yellow pages or ask business colleagues or media reps for re-commendations - now procurement wants to bring their precise and meticulous methods to the table. What's appropriate then is the integration of methodical and linear Internet search-engine processes to identify qualified agencies, coupled with compliance and accreditation issues, then high-touch examinations of non-technical essentials including "creative" and "chemistry."

Until some form of testing and accreditation is established in the advertising industry, that makes the selection of an advertising, public relations or marketing firm a critical decision for every company and it means that existing relationships