'What They Said' at the ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference

By Bill Duggan May 5, 2022

ANA just wrapped up our Advertising Financial Management Conference, our annual event for client-side procurement, agency finance, and other interested parties. The following provides great quotes and insights from some of the conference speakers (in order of appearance).

Matt Miller, President and CEO at Association of Independent Commercial Producers and Tabitha Mason-Elliott Partner, Head of Production at BARK BARK: "The production industry is all-in on supplier diversity. Double the Line is one example. On every commercial production, roles for the project are listed on individual lines in the budget with their associated costs. Agencies and marketers have the opportunity to support inclusion by doubling a line in the bid to cover the costs to hire a BIPOC candidate to work alongside the identified employee."
Ron Busby, President and CEO of U.S. Black Chambers, Jim Winston President of National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters, and Sherman Kizart, Managing Director at Kizart Media Partners: "41 percent of Black-owned businesses were forced to close during the pandemic; meanwhile, Black-owned radio and television stations are seeking increased investment from corporate America. The U.S. Black Chambers and NABOB have now formed a strategic alliance/merger to optimize how their members grow their respective businesses."
Debra Quade, Supplier Diversity Manager at Kellogg Company: "Certification is absolutely vital; it's our brand protection."
Karen Tobler, Supplier Diversity Lead at Target: "Certification opens doors and makes diverse suppliers easier to find."
Christina Tyson, Supplier Diversity Director at PepsiCo: "A key benefit of supplier diversity in the marketing/advertising space is that it helps right a societal wrong."
Bob Liodice, CEO at ANA: "Chief Financial Officers are strongly encouraged to take action and lean into the priorities of the ANA Growth Agenda. One highly relevant area is to measure the value of brands in financial terms."
Kate Short, Chief Procurement Officer at Nestle: "I don't care what the cost is. I care what the value is."
Susan Credle, Global Chair and Global Chief Creative Officer at FCB: "Brands are like gardens. They can be beautiful and produce for you but if you don't tend to them, they'll rot."
Constance Jones, Senior Director at National Minority Supplier Development Council: "Supplier diversity is just as important as workforce diversity. Certification makes a business procurement ready."
Jeff Greenspoon, President, Global Solutions at dentsu International: "There's been a shift from a brand-led world to a consumer-led world. Brand-led is captive audience, forced exposure, and the marketer's agenda. Consumer-led is an opt-in culture, experience focus, and the consumer's agenda."
Keri Bruce, Partner at Reed Smith and Stacy Marcus, Partner at Reed Smith: "Brands need to put a process in place for their influencer marketing. Be aware of the FTC's Notice of Penalty Offenses Concerning Deceptive or Unfair Conduct around Endorsements and Testimonials."
Liliya Rechitsky, Senior Director of Procurement at Best Buy: "As a starting point, marketing procurement has to declare its mission. Marketing spend is an investment into the growth of the business, rather than a cost. Our mission in marketing sourcing must be to help maximize the investment and fuel growth. The mission must explicitly underline going after value versus just savings."
Tracy Allery, Director, Marketing Procurement Business Partner at Nestle: "Align marketing procurement metrics with the metrics brands have."
Jose Gonzalo Bisquerra, VP, Marketing, Sales and Technology Global Procurement at GSK: "Marketing procurement is about both efficiency and effectiveness."
Greg Paull, Principal of R3: "When both sides are unhappy, the fee is fair."
Diane Brady, Assistant Managing Editor at Forbes: "Nobody needs more content. We need better content and more intelligent information."
Ravi Patel, Director Global Customer Transformation at PwC: "The programmatic ecosystem is complex and fragmented. The objective of the ANA programmatic media study is to give brands the knowledge, tools, and approaches to drive greater value from their media dollars."
Douwe Bergsma, CMO at Piedmont Healthcare: "Aligning on KPIs is key. For Piedmont, driving traffic (office visits) helped change everything and became the key KPI."
Dana Maiman, CEO at IPG Health: "EDIBA is good business and is good for business. Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging, Accessibility."
Richard Tan, CFO and Partner at The FIG Agency: "Time is not an indicator of value. Time is an inaccurate way to value intellectual thought as it can incentivize the wrong behavior."
Jennifer Halloran, CMO at MassMutual and Lindsey Slaby, Founder at Sunday Dinner: "MassMutual reimagined how creative work gets made and the best model for creative services. Key to that was a partner management team of specialists that drive agency management and resource allocation across the roster for marketing. The team is unbiased and focused on supporting all parties to drive creative and excellence."
Anne Murray and Dan Wald, Curriculum Facilitators for the ANA Marketing Training and Development Center: "The brief is the most important document between the client and the agency. Briefs are crafted and not written. They require a clear template, standard language, and KPI definitions."
Nicole Apple, Head of Global Strategic Agency Management at Kimberly-Clark and Kerry Kielb, Director, Agency Strategy and Operations at AT&T: "Agency talent is in the driver's seat and clients have a key role in retaining the talent on their business. Partnership, positive reinforcement, listening/asking for feedback all play roles."
Kristen Cavallo, CEO at The Martin Agency: "The most active predictor of sales is relevance and relevance is measured in conversation. The most talked-about brands grow 2.5x faster than the category average."
Ashish Gupta, Group Manager, Global Strategic Sourcing at The Clorox Company: "Procurement has the license to be creative. If marketing is creative, why can procurement also be?"
Dave Beals, CEO at JLB + Partners: "I am a big believer that the world will move more to performance-based compensation."
Tom Browning, President at JLB + Partners: "Fee based compensation methods continue to dominate and have increased to their highest level ever. Commissions have fallen back to levels from ten years ago and other methods (e.g., value-based) decreased. The use of performance incentives is down."
Mitchell Caplan, Managing Director, U.S. Marketing Consulting at KPMG: "All the data you have does no good without insights. The CMO and CFO must work together to build dashboards that matter."
Joe Belliotti, CEO at MassiveMusic: "Sound plays a key role in brand building. Sound resonates in a unique and emotional way. Relevant fun fact – half of all searches on Google last year were voice searches."
Matt Kasindorf, SVP at 4A's: "There are pain points between clients and agencies in the agency search process. Pain points where clients and agencies disagree are: sharing the list of agencies participating in the review; disclosing the budget; direct access to ultimate client decision-makers; sharing an individual agency's questions and associated client answers should with other agencies; and ownership of IP/work product."
Mark Hudson, Procurement Category Senior Manager at the Walgreen Company: "Marketing procurement needs to be resilient. Follow processes and procedures but do things differently to be more marketing and agency friendly."
Jose Molina, Senior Manager Corporate Procurement at Constellation Brands: "We see marketing as an investment so procurement's role is to find ways of maximizing that investment and making dollars stretch further and take headaches away from both marketing stakeholders and agencies."
Evelyn Li, Senior Director at L'Oreal: "For me, a day in the life of marketing procurement includes me thinking about the impact I can make and the value I can bring to my business partners."

Special thanks and recognition to Sherry Ulsh, Director, Indirect Procurement at The Hershey Company for her role in co-hosting the event with me, until I got sidelined with COVID (but that's another story)!

The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the ANA or imply endorsement from the ANA.