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We are now in the final stretch of 2023. We hope you had a wonderful kick off to the holiday season with Thanksgiving with family and friends.
We have been busy with conference season, attending a slew of events meet with many of you while also keeping informed about what is next for marketing procurement.
In short, we will continue to see fast and furious change as retail media continues to be the talk of the town in 2024. Another area of importance is the continued "strategification" of the marketing procurement role. We have worked on this for many years, but with covid and its aftermath, marketing procurement has been able to capitalize on the increased focus on vendor risk, corporate governance and cost increases to become trusted and necessary advisors. We believe this will continue in 2024.
With many clients pitching their business across media, creative and other categories as well as adding dedicated influencer and social media agencies to their roster, we will see an uptick in exit audits across both North America but also in Europe and Asia in 2024.
In terms of media spend for 2024, we will see an increase, despite tighter budgets, due to it being both a US election year and a summer Olympics year. This drives up the media pricing and clients will want to ensure their dollars work for them. This can be managed through media performance audits and we believe these will become more regular in the coming year.
Have a wonderful December 2023!
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5 Key Takeaways From the 2023 ANA Masters of Marketing Conference
by K. O’Brien & J. Notte, AdWeek
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Growth, AI and the economy were all big buzzing topics at the ANA Masters of Marketing conference, which just wrapped up its annual October run at the Rosen Shingle Creek resort in Orlando.
The event is one of the biggest gatherings of brands, marketers and agencies of the year, and its four days of presentations, breakout sessions, dinners and discussions always yield a wealth of information for attendees, who gathered this year more in-person than virtually.
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Why media agencies remain the cornerstone of holding group profitability
By Seb Joseph, Digiday
The more agencies change, the more they stay the same — with media as the backbone of their businesses.
Recent earnings reports from the five largest holding groups underscore this dependence. Even as their creative businesses face challenges, these businesses managed to grow. In fact, most, if not all of them achieved organic growth, with a collective total of 2% over the last quarter.
This growth rate may vary from one business to another, but a robust media buying business was a common factor among all of them.
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Reflections on the ProcureCon US Marketing Conference 2023
by Mitchell Caplan, KPMG US
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From year to year at Procurecon Marketing, there continues to be great progress and innovation within the practice of procurement marketing.
A few key observations:
Procurement’s role continues to evolve into a strategic partnership with marketing.
A few years ago, almost all of the sessions at ProcureCon were about cost cutting. Procurement was stuck in this (while valuable) very functional role. But this year we heard more and more about how the role of procurement has become much more strategic, actively working with marketing and finance to not only help manage cost and spend, but in looking at the business of marketing in a much more holistic manner.
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10 Ways to Prove You’re a Strategic Thinker
by B. Steinberg & M. D. Watkins, Harvard Business Review
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To get ahead in the business world, it’s not enough to think strategically. You also have to effectively communicate those ideas. There are several ways to do this, including elevating the conversation to focus on the big picture and broader context, being forward-looking in your comments, anticipating the effects of potential decisions, connecting disparate concepts, simplifying complex issues, using metaphors and analogies, stimulating dialogue with questions, showing you are informed, actively listening, and seeking feedback.
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How to Achieve Transparency and Trust with Your Agency Partners to Build Partnerships that Deliver the Best Results for Your Business
By Christine Moore, Managing Partner, RAUS Global
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In today’s dynamic and ever-changing business landscape, strong partnerships are more important than ever, particularly in the field of marketing.
These relationships often involve a range of agency partners who specialize in various aspects of marketing, from digital advertising and media to public relation and e-commerce. It is common knowledge that the most effective partnerships are built on a foundation of transparency and trust.
However, Marketing Procurement has been plagued with a perception by agency leaders and marketing colleagues that their only focus is on cost savings and that they do not help drive success and collaboration in their relationships with agencies.
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Identifying diverse marketing partners to drive innovation, business growth, brand success and agency equity
By Christine Moore, RAUS Global
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In many industries, but especially in the advertising and marketing industry, it is very difficult to find agency partners that “fit the bill”, both from a capabilities standpoint and from a diversity standpoint.
It all starts with being more aware of where to look, how to engage and what work diverse agencies are capable of. The conversation with Chris Kenna led me to learn about “Certifiably Diverse” a fully flexible system accessible through APIs or web-based interfaces. In today’s increasingly customer socially conscious markets, businesses, especially Fortune 500, are constantly seeking to better identify and foster meaningful and impactful supplier diversity.
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