UM CEO Mat Baxter: ‘Put procurement back in the box where they belong’
From left: Karin Upton Baker, Hermes; Danny Bass, Group M; Mat Baxter, UM and Simon Davies, Bauer Media Group
Powerful marketing chiefs have the ability to “put procurement back in their box where they belong” but too few CMOs are rising up through the ranks to have such influence, UM chief executive Mat Baxter has said.
Speaking at the Publish conference in Sydney today, Baxter said it would be in “everyone’s interest” if procurement departments were only part of the process of selecting agencies “rather than the dominant part they are at the moment”.
The comments came in a wide-ranging panel discussion on the relationships between media buyers, publishers and marketers.
couldn’t have said it better myself
Well said Mat.
And with everyone playing the reach game to get the biggest possible number they all converge to look roughly the same.
A wiser person than me once said ‘the devil is in the detail’.
Show us the detail, tell us how that will work for the brands we advertise and watch the wheels start to turn.
Sadly, this is akin to Chamberlain’s “there will be peace in our time” appeasement. Procurement is global and Australia is the last to see it. It’s global and inevitable. Just ensure it’s the collaborative Procurement 2.0 and not the old procurement 1.0 (aka the purchasing dept).
To say ‘put it back in the box’ is at best naive, at worse ignorant.
To me this still shows there is a real rotten problem is large corporates in communication, ego and a silo approach. It should not be about ‘Marketing’ or ‘Procurement’; those should simply be the departments who specialise in executing the mission on the company. In startups you don’t get ‘this department’ vs that department’ because the vision and leadership is very strong and everyone knows what the company is trying to achieve. If everyone worked with priorities being Company > Department > Team > Self instead o the other way around then maybe everyone could actually work together. The answer? Well CEO’s need to spend more time ensuring that their teams understand the goals of the company are getting them aligned.
Good on you Matt one of the few who actually tells it like it is
I agree with Cub.
Marketing is a large expense for most large corporates and as such, and quite rightly, they will look for best bang for their buck/ best return on their large investment.
Most procurement departments I have worked with have been great – yes they are thorough and time consuming but that is all part of the process.
As much as I would like to put Mat Baxter back in the box (where he usually belongs) on this latest outburst, he is spot on. And if I could add to that, it’s not procurements fault they have become so powerful, it’s actually marketing departments for letting that happen.
Some clients I see, have marketing collaboratively with procurement supporting, and marketing make the end decision. Sadly, this is not the majority.. Many more are more likely to see procurement have a dominant say in the decision
Either/or fights over the right to decide get businesses nowhere. I can understand the argument if you have blinkered procurement who seem to have little interest in the overall business and only want the price to reduce.
However good procurement is much more than that. Finding the best suppliers to work with, who will help you achieve and maintain your decisive competitive edge requires particular skills that rarely exist in other functional specialists. Putting procurement in their box is like having a soccer team without a specialist goalkeeper. Of course other players can play in goal, but if you want world class you are better with an alligned team of experts.
Not either/or, it should be both specialists and a team.
I wonder what kind of Procurement people he’s been working with. This could be just as worrying as Tim’s recommendations, i.e. one bad Marketing-Procurement experience can spoil it for many of the rest of us.
It can come from Procurement generalists coming into the Marketing Services category OR inflexibility from Procurement/CPO in agreeing different or ‘carved out’ KPIs in this spend area.
Thanks for the article.
David