The Marketing Sacred Cow

5 comments January 3rd, 2008 David Bush - Iasta

That floor of the company headquarters that no one from procurement has been to..that’s the marketing department. It shares the floor with the legal department and they do not want you talking about their spend, let alone sourcing it! This month there was a very good (and direct) editorial in ELP, written by Kevin Freedman of Freedman International, which tackles this subject with a take no prisoners attitude about marketing spend. The article is not available online with out a subscription but if you receive the magazine, I recommend taking a look and developing your own ideas about this category. I ran a mutli-day series on a similar topic in legal spend, e-Discovery services. There are millions of dollars in every big company in this category and it is usually sourced by a lawyer or a paralegal, which is scary.

Freedman gives excellent advice about strategies to address this area, and of course, he recommends targeting tangible items first, such as printed material. He also has good experience in discussing how to improve the marketing process and efficiency through sourcing since marketing spend typically ranges from 3-10% of company turnover.

This is a really good overview of the topic and one that does not lolly gag around the issue, which is a many times a problem since most people do not like to take risks of rocking the boat. I would not be surprised if Kevin received a few phone calls from companies that wanted to learn more.

Entry Filed under: General, Supply Management Best Practices