This last 2 weeks I have mainly been....

attending a breakfast, conference, a local women's forum and 1 CIPS Branch meeting (more of that later!). Bit of a long post here so bear with me.


I attended the Iris Procurement breakfast the week before last. There was a really good turnout and the topic was Payment By Results, with the panelists being from my old company - Orange and ISBA. The debate was lively with some good points being raised but I suggested that perhaps PBR is a bit dated. It has been around for many years and ISBA are about to publish their 4th study I think of their most recent study on PBR at clients. Don't get me wrong, I think it works well where there is a direct measure of the results of the work in place e.g. media savings, increase in sales, a well managed and objective client satisfaction survey. But I quite like some of these new fee models that newer agencies are talking about - areas like revenue share, getting paid xx pence for every new call to the new directory enquiries company. That is both investing in the marketing activity and if it works both the client and the agency get rewarded. I am aware of one agency that didn't charge a new client any fees but took a xx pence model and got a cheque for £1m. That is some incentive as long as the client pays up for course. Let's all try and be a bit braver on both sides and try and find a few areas where we can try a new model and see what the results are.

The ISBA Conference was interesting. There weren't that many purchasing folk there which I was surprised about. Conferences like this really help you understand the categories that we all work in and help you perhaps challenge and provoke debate with existing and may be new agencies on different ways of working to achieve efficiencies etc. Worth attending next year if the training budgets get reinstated. One comment to end on was the lack of women speakers - there was one. Come on Women in Marketing - let's see more of us next year (for once there was a queue at the men's loo not the ladies!)

Following on from the above theme - I am a cynic of all 'wimmin' things but attended a local 'Wimmins' Forum this week. It helped it was at a local chocolate making shop / school. All networking over a chocolate bon bon must be good. As most of my work comes from clients in London I rarely find this of interest but this one was really good. A very relaxed format, encouragement to speak to everyone there, no pressure to stand up and try and explain what you do (my Mother still thinks I buy pencils for a living !) and a genuine interest in what you do. I suggested a few high profile women speakers that live locally to them and hope to attend the next one which is entitled 'The Trials and Tribulations of a Women Entrepreneur' by HSBC - not sure of the HSBC connection.

And now onto my last event the local CIPS (Purchasing body) Branch event. Again I have only been to one before and that was fairly bad. Both in terms of content, attendees and lack of energy in the room. But as I chair the CIPS group on Marketing thought I would give it a good. The topic was of interest and a good speaker. Other attendees were mainly public sector and gave me a bit of up and down look as I was in 'casual advertising dress' e.g. jeans, shirt and my converses !. Everyone was polite but not that open to chatting to everyone, people kept themselves to themselves. But the main issue for me was afterwards with the speaker. Fair enough he had a product to sell - his training. But he then rang me up afterwards as I am sure that he contacted everyone and really kept going on about coming into see me and my company. I am sure that my two cats (Boston and Madsie) would be delighted to serve him tea and cakes if I am out at a client meeting. Mate - it is just me, and no I am not interested in training, no I am not interested in a meeting and no, no, no to everything else. It was a really hard sell and where in the small print did it say that he could contact me ? I have made my feelings known when they asked for feedback this week. So perhaps I won't get another invite but I just felt that the after sales activity as it were, was badly managed. That is my rant over with.

As usual, all comments welcome (and no blatant advertising as the comment was on my last blog post !).