Marketing Procurement

ProcureCon Marketing USA 2022: Broderick urges procurement to take control of marketing supply chains

Ensuring Effectiveness

“the purpose of marketing communications is to drive business growth and you can’t be truly effective across your channels if you can’t measure effectiveness accurately, and to measure effectiveness accurately you need to track the money and the data together”

Having attended numerous global marketing procurement events in the past 12 months since Covid, in San Diego, Chicago, New York, London, Amsterdam and Singapore, Stephen Broderick, Senior Partner of Media Marketing Compliance (MMC) explains, in his opening address at ProcureCon Marketing USA 2022, that he has noticed a pattern emerging, and that he says is actually “what is not happening”. He continues “There is a lack of discussion on media and marketing effectiveness”

Regularly discussed at each event, he explains, has been the topics of sustainability, diversity, supply chain and how marketing and procurement can work better together, and rightly so, he adds. But the crux of the issue, he believes, is ensuring marcomm budgets are spent effectively – ultimately making sure media and marketing work. 

In his opening address, he references an article recently published by Nick Manning, who has worked extensively with the ANA and other industry bodies over the past 5 years. Quoting the article, Broderick highlighted, “the purpose of marketing communications is to drive business growth and you can’t be truly effective across your channels if you can’t measure effectiveness accurately, and to measure effectiveness accurately you need to track the money”, he emphasises, “and the data together. In a world rampant with Ad Fraud, one without the other just doesn’t work.” 

He continued to say, “You can’t do any of this if you don’t have full transparency across and within your various supply-chains. It’s important to note that it’s not just media transparency, it’s supply chain transparency”. 

As a result of working with your supply chain partners to drive and encourage transparency, you will also reduce wastage and identify savings. But more importantly, he highlights, you will know what’s working, why and how. “That will help you to make better decisions on your marketing mix”. As such, Broderick considers, the key driver to effectiveness is transparency. 

Broderick continued to explain that, while the ANA and other organisations have been fighting the transparency battle regarding transparency, it is becoming increasingly difficult, he says, “the current ANA transparency project is proof of how difficult it is to overcome the obstacles put in its way, if the ANA is struggling to get the access it needs it makes it even more important that you, as advertisers, are also pushing in the same direction”.

He goes on to say, “part of the problem is that while some agency groups position themselves as part of the team and announce their willingness to help when these projects come around, the reality is the help is restricted”. 

A decade of subliminal change

Broderick went on to reflect that if he had been addressing the delegates 10 years prior, “and announced that in 10 years’ time, you as advertisers wouldn’t know the cost of your media and your agency has no obligation to tell you the cost because they are the ones selling it to you via their own inventory deals, very few of you as procurement professionals would have believed me or accepted it”.

He also adds, “If I stood here 10 years ago and told you that your agencies would only sell you the best priced media if you agreed to waive all your rights to see the cost of that media, very few of you as procurement professionals would have believed me or accepted it”. 

And, Broderick continues, “If I stood here 10 years ago and told you that your agencies would have encouraged the whole industry to spend well over 60% of your total media online without robust and accurate checks and balances in place, you as procurement professionals probably wouldn’t have believed me or allowed it”. 

And finally, Broderick says, “If I stood here 10 years ago and told you that you wouldn’t be able to, or be allowed to, ask how your media partners make their money, you as procurement professionals wouldn’t have believed me or allowed it”. 

“But here we are”, he concludes, with limited transparency to the finances and the data – the two key areas identified as being vital to being able to measure effectiveness.

Although Broderick made it clear that he is pro agency and that clients should and must pay their agencies properly and fairly, and as such, he points out that agencies are rightfully making money today. The issue, he claims, is that advertisers do not know how, where and from whom.  

Closing his address, Broderick urged delegates to “take control and challenge each of the links in the supply chain, not just agencies, and help industry bodies like the ANA and WFA help you”. 

In summary, he said that “marcomms procurement has a vital role to play and you should be thinking about how you get involved in the conversations that tackle the real and existing problems”.