Commentary
IKEA Unleashes Bean Counters For 'Procurement-Led' Agency Review
- by Richard Whitman , Columnist, January 8, 2015
"Procurement-led." Perhaps the last thing any agency participating in an account review wants to hear. And, really, why should any agency have to hear this crap? After all, isn't hiring an agency supposed to be all about the awesome, although admittedly hard to quantify, offering of big ideas?
Oh yes, numbers matter. Budgets matter. Efficiency matters. But should the "who is the cheapest" metric really lead an agency review, let alone anything? No, of course it shouldn't But more and more, it is. And it's sad.
This week IKEA is reaching out to agencies for what it calls a "procurement-led" exploration of agencies. While the brand is said to be perfectly happy with its incumbent agencies, Vizeum and Mother, IKEA UK and Ireland Marketing Manager Peter Wright said: "We continue to work happily with our agencies but, to be expected for a multinational organization, our procurement team occasionally reviews suppliers of marketing services."
In other words, the bean counters now run the show.
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We created this when we told them how great the click through rate on a certain ad was. A meaningless metric, but now it's all about rates, impressions and fudged "engagement," without discussion of real results.
Wow. The implications that the author of this article makes about procurement are quite dated. Saying todays marketing procurement professionals are completely focused on numbers is analogous to saying agencies are still focusing only on offline media. Many of today's procurement professionals actually come from the agency world. They focus on creating value for their stakeholders which many times include better services and not just cutting fees. This article is unbalanced, dated, and insulting to our profession. I recommend sitting down and talking to a marketing procurement professional next time before printing something like this.