WFA shares session on global marketing procurement trends

On May 2nd WFA gave a keynote presentation at the ANA's Advertising Financial Management Conference in Phoenix, USA. The annual conference was primarily targeted towards marketing procurement and agency management specialists and brought together over 600 delegates from across the industry.

WFA's session focused on global marketing procurement transformation and how categories of marketing spend may be approached differently in the future. Some of the key points from the presentation are as follows:

Compared to indirect procurement, marketing procurement is light on resources and light on experience. The average "age" of a marketing procurement team is now just 7.5 years.

Marketing procurement is just a name: what the role actually does is governance and financial management of agencies. Is it time for a re-brand?

According to WFA research, 60% of members are considering moving away from silo'd category management approached towards a more cross-category or integrated approach.

Integrated marketing procurement means that rather than looking at Media, Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing as separate entities to be sourced by different people, they could actually be bundled together and considered part of a "Customer Connections" basket.

However procurement teams choose to divide and conquer the terminology, the essential point is that they are reflecting their marketing team's need to deliver holistic, integrated campaigns.

The session also focused on some recommendations for procurement teams who are looking at their own organisational structure right now:

Reflect marketing setup in your own organisation.

Reflect marketing metrics in your KPIs

Decide what type of procurement professional you want to be, but balance that with what marketing needs you to be.

The full presentation is available for members. This work is part of the activity led by WFA's SOURCINGFORUM. For more information or for the full presentation please contact Steve at s.lightfoot@wfanet.org.