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
Showing posts with label ISBA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ISBA. Show all posts
01 December 2010
26 September 2010
Training
I have just received The Chartered Institute of Marketing's Learning and Development brochure for 2010-11. There is hardly any training around for Marketing Procurement folk (except the very good ISBA courses that is taught by real practitioners). So this brochure was quite interesting as it covers topics such as Digital Marketing, Metrics, Insights and Innovation. Sadly there is no training on procurement (for the marketeers of course). But it is worth a look if you are looking for any category specific training for your procurement teams.
30 May 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.
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.
19 March 2010
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 !).
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 !).
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