A talk and a new initiative

I attended the Kingston Smith W1 seminar last night where I was presenting my view on 'Is the price right?'. The other presenters were Esther and Mandy from Kingston Smith W1 - superb as ever, plus Mark Lund with his perspective of the COI and Payment by Results, and Paul Graham from Anomaly on the way that they work with clients in terms of their fees.  Despite feeling under the weather, I really enjoyed the event and found the other presentations really interesting.  Worth attending next year if you are interested in the financial study that Kingston Smith W1 produce every year.

Just seen this about the new initiative that the IPA ans ISBA are working on - in looking at the process of ‘reforming’ pitching to save time and money.  It is good to see them working together but wonder if they will make contact with CIPS (the Purchasing body) to see if they want a procurement perspective.  Click here for more details on the IPA website - The-need-for-a-new-pitch-process

IPA Paper - Future of Work study

I was asked to contribute to the above paper that was released at the start of this week.  It was about the IPA looking at the way that agencies engage with Generation Y and what the future ways of working could be about.  The main headings of it (as summarised by Campaign) are:

• The Client is King
• A Faulty Business Model
• Senior Suits getting back involved in client-agency relationships
• The rise of opportunity networks
• Redesign needed of the client/agency contract

It is a really interesting paper to read as it really does give you food for thought as to the future business models that agencies may be looking at (and very interested in this new breakaway from Fallon agency who are promising a 'new commercial model'. Should be interesting when they launch later this year).

IPA Report

The IPA have published a report that says that ads that win awards are 11 times more effective. The report examined 213 case studies of advertising over the last eight years, including campaigns by marketers such as Cadbury, Volkswagen, Budweiser, Honda, Audi and Orange. They claim that there is a direct link between creativity and effectiveness and that this is a good argument for quality over cost. So far so good.

But in the next breath, guess what, Hamish Pringle the DG of the IPA says that by putting all the emphasis on cost and procurement, are marketers reducing their chances of creating campaigns that really work and will drive business growth in the long term?. Yes we have last week's example of the Thomas Cook signing on fee (still no proof on that by the way), but hey don't wave a broad brush at everyone else in the industry. 

Apparently procurement people are paid a significant bonus linked for reducing costs. Where is the evidence of this ?  Sure there may be a bonus in play for the individual or department, but targeted savings may be one of say four measures that the bonus could get paid out on (if at all).

I am disappointed by this as I don't really see any evidence of 'tough' procurement driving out cost at the expense of quality.  It is our job to get and know the balance to get the best result for marketing whilst making sure that a fair commercial proposition in place.  Perhaps the IPA could redo the study and see how many of their successful case studies had procurement people in.  I know one of the answers as I worked at Orange when we won the IPA awards !.

Edinburgh International Marketing Festival

The guys at creativebrief are launching with The Marketing Society and The Assembly the inaugural Edinburgh International Marketing Festival.

Apparently they have developed a unique series of events to demonstrate how marketing permeates and fashions a lot of what we do in our society and how this influence to and from society is ever more prescient as technology, attitude and behaviours change and advance.


This event is a Festival of Marketing , not an industry conference, and as such is appealing to marketers of course, but also to government, educators and students, the media industry and the general public. The other partners include IPA and DMA.

They have kindly offer readers of this blog a discount.  There are around 100 paid seats available.  More details can be found on www.eimfest.com. 

If anyone is interested, just drop me line and I can forward on to make sure you get the discount.

Buzzing news today

Have a look at a story on today's Brand Republic site.  Apparently Thomas Cook Procurement are asking for a £1m signing on fee for their £30m media contract that is up for grabs across 4 agencies.  They are asking for a significant reduction in agencies fees and at least a 10% reduction in media costs.  The IPA are saying that this is very unprofessional procurement and that the agencies should pull together.

First is it true ? (MH @ TC if you read this - would you like to set the record straight?).  Secondly would any other category of spend discuss with suppliers a signing on bonus ?  I am sure I have heard about it before, not in marketing but in another category.  Thirdly I do agree with the IPA (if this is true) that the agencies should say no if they are fundamentally disagree with the requirements of the pitch.

Any comments on this?

Top tips and another Conference..

I mentioned in a recent posting a seminar that I gave for Upfront Business Development.  They asked me to build on the Top Tips section that I presented.  They have put it up on their website so of you want to see my view on the top tips on dealing with procurement; how to respond to a tender and how to negotiate - just click here - Upfront Seminar.

The IPA have their annual Finance Conference on the 8th July.  I used to go when I was agency side and it is always really interesting and good to catch up with mainly agency folks.  You can go if you are an IPA member or a guest of an IPA member.  Here is the link to it - IPA Finance Conference 2010

Are agency proft margins too high?

is the headline on an article on page 19 of this week's Campaign.

It is about the ISBA Paying for Advertising report which came out this week and is always worth a read (along with the Kingston Smith report that I mentioned a few blog postings back).  As the article says "The good news is that agency profit margins remain "remarkable resilient".  The bad news being that advertisers seem to resent the fact".

It is a hard one to comment on as we all want to make sure that the agency is making a decent profit, on the right things and is treating the agency in an open, honest and transparent way.  Still to this day there are agencies making revenue on areas such as production costs and annual insurance premiums.  This often support the fact that the scope of work has increased, the resource on the account has increased but yet there has not been an conversation with the client (marketing and procurement) on making sure that the fees match the work and that everyone is happy with all the ancillary costs.

It is up to all of us to make sure that those regular conversations happen, and we aim to work in a partnership way of working.


I am working with a great client at the moment who really wants to make sure that they are getting a 'good deal' by looking at the way that they work with their main agencies first.  By then looking at the marketing and admin processes, we can then look at the commercial construct of the relationship.