Don't keep the elephant (finance) in the dark

 

Brad Dehart, Practice Leader Marketing Services Procurement at ICG Commerce has an excellent article in Adage looking at the "missing" party in most client-agency relationships, the CFO (or more generally finance).

His argument is that during the recession, procurement has been tasked by the CFO to reduce costs and this pressure has come to bear on the advertising agency community, just as with all other categories of supply.

Given in many case the finance department has no direct experience with the subtlety of marketing agency relationships, how can this be addressed?

One solution may be for marketing procurement to discuss with finance the complex nature of the client-agency relationship, and compare it with other high-value, high-complexity providers with which finance may already work. So look at their relationships with professional services providers (e.g. global audit firms or management consulting organizations), where the value of the output is as important as the cost.

Could using examples which are close to heart for the CFO bring some light into the unique working relationship that needs to exist between client and agency, in order to deliver brilliant creative and meaningful results?

Author: Richard Benyon (Decideware)

http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=145246