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Marketing Procurement Insights from Procurecon London 2019

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We led a sold-out masterclass on ‘Maximising Your Agency Relationships’, facilitating a great debate resulting in lots of great ideas generously being shared by attendees. It was a very positive, progressive discussion and, critically, it acknowledged the role that agencies play in many company’s success.

Here are our 5 key observations based on what we saw, heard and exchanged during the event:

  1. MORE COLLABORATION FOR BETTER RESULTS: Marketing procurement is less siloed than it once was but it still plays a crucial role to facilitate collaboration with their agencies and marketers. For us at Flock, Procurement is about establishing the right connections and relooking at the overall marketing/agency ecosystem to leverage the power of synergies available from all key stakeholders. The nature of the event and networking demonstrated the willingness of the marketing procurement experts to exchange best practices.
  2. EXPERIMENTING NEW MODELS/UNDERSTANDING THE POWER OF AUTOMATION: There’s an array of initiatives happening around simplifying complex (content/digital/data/scoping) processes but also in-housing certain disciplines And we’ve observed that there are lots of in-housing trials with no single ‘voice of truth’. The need for a bespoke business approach to understanding the overall business implications, the efficiency generated and the risks & benefits was made clear. In addition, specifically in media, programmatic targeting has allowed better use of media investment but also has increased the number of content assets required, subsequently pushing procurement to look at optimising the costs of content. The era of Dynamic Content Optimisation (or ‘DCO’) will continue growing as AI capabilities increase.
  3. CONNECTING ADTECH/MARTECH: More data has led to more tech which has led marketers and marketing procurement to identify AdTech and MarTech as a key connection and spend area. Without a clear layout of their tech stack, brands are inevitably limited in their capabilities to progress towards an aligned customer journey. Without a plan or audit, procurement cannot assess the composition of the advertising supply chain and, critically, the value each component really contributes.
  4. THE Ts BACK IN THE ROOM: Transparency and trust were back on stage and further debated. The introduction of GDPR has not had much impact, but the rise of privacy issues and ad-blockers will impact how marketers go to market and limit some performance marketing tactics. In time, blockchain may well solve some of the transparency and trust issues by installing safety and removing the middlemen, helping to protect consumer privacy.
  5. FORWARD THINKING: In truth, for Flock, we felt there was a lack of discussion around true marketing procurement innovation. Most surprisingly, sustainability, diversity and inclusivity were not a major part of the conversation. We believe this is important and we would’ve liked to have seen more. Sustainability will become a key pillar for any business and it will bring new marketing procurement challenges and metrics. We think that the role of procurement will be paramount to achieve this shift, so get ready!

So, that’s a wrap for another year. If you couldn’t attend but would like further insights from the conference then please let us know.