Creative Production

It’s time for procurement to get radical

An AI Shift

“The shift to AI-powered marketing isn’t just significant in being able to deliver projects at scale that are tightly matched to a business’s specific needs. AI is also defining how brands perform in the digital space, making value judgements on how appropriate one brand is over another”

The business landscape is tougher than ever. Economic instability, tighter consumer spending, and smaller marketing budgets mean companies must do more with less. Traditionally, procurement teams focused on cutting costs – trimming agency lists, negotiating better deals, and streamlining processes.

Now, according to Chris Woodward, Executive Director at OLIVER, it’s time to get radical.

“Clients need to squeeze a lot of cost out of what they’re doing.

They’ve still got to get work out of the door and hit sales targets, but now they’re being brave.”

Beyond cost savings: The need for smart, strategic procurement

The urge to cut costs often leads to sweeping reductions in marketing and creative agencies. While this may save money short-term, it can hurt long-term brand equity and customer engagement. The challenge is to remove inefficiencies without losing essential business functions.

Success depends on understanding the true value of each marketing component and how it contributes to business goals.

“We go in and map out what all the agencies do, as well as what all the internal teams are looking after, and then design a solution that’s really compelling – we would expect to deliver something like a 30% efficiency saving,” Woodward claims.

This is where in-housing comes in. By looking to consolidate some agency functions into a tailored internal model, businesses can create an efficient marketing engine. Woodward explains:

“This doesn’t mean getting rid of all external agencies; it’s about strategically deciding which tasks to manage internally, which can be managed by an in-house agency, and which to outsource.

Can we do brand TV work? No, speak to Saatchi or BBH. When it comes to the engine room of marketing, integrated agencies and below the line, when you audit what’s going on, there’s a lot of overlap. The alternative is to build a one-team solution.”

The role of in-housing in a smarter procurement strategy

Reducing a roster of 10 agencies to no more than a handful, or even having one in-house agency like OLIVER running the show, sounds radical indeed. But Woodward insists that this is not a ‘slash and dash’ approach. 

“In one year, working with a major, global beauty brand, we generated close to $12 million in savings. Some was headcount but actually, losing people is not a big part of the saving because you’re using more expert teams, therefore they’re more expensive per head. The major saving comes from production cost,” Woodward reveals. 

“The second big saving comes from speed. Time to market is massively reduced with pack shots taking around 60-65% less time than before. But the third benefit is that quality is not diminished.”

Why generic AI isn’t enough: The power of bespoke AI

Many organisations experiment with generative AI in marketing, but success comes from using AI tailored to a company’s needs. Off-the-shelf GenAI tools can automate tasks, but they lack the strategic insights to truly enhance marketing efforts.

Bespoke AI solutions – like those offered by OLIVER’s Pencil—go beyond simple automation. 

Pencil is the world’s number one generative AI marketing platform, named by Fast Company as a Most Innovative Company in 2024. Over three months, it created 235,000 pieces of content for three of the world’s top 10 largest global advertisers, delivering them 62% faster, 55% cheaper, and with a 40% better ROI.

Built on Open AI’s GPT family of large language models (LLMs), in minutes it generates multiple channel-ready ads and copy by looking at a brand’s objectives, assets and preferences.

It also provides a predicted success rate for each iteration and adds a layer of probability-backed inclusivity to prompts through proprietary Bias Breaker technology. 

Filling in the blanks

The shift to AI-powered marketing isn’t just significant in being able to deliver projects at scale that are tightly matched to a business’s specific needs. AI is also defining how brands perform in the digital space, making value judgements on how appropriate one brand is over another. 

“The large language models (LLMs) are ranking and scoring brands based on how those models are learning about them,” Woodward reveals. Jellyfish, also part of The Brandtech Group, has built a Share of Model™ Platform which creates a single view across the LLMs influencing millions of product decisions every single day.

Take Jaguar, for example. LLMs have learned that the company owns the luxury, traditional, safe brand space. But the brand wants to move into innovation, electric, dynamic. Hence the dramatic departure from its heritage in the latest ad campaign that took the marketing community somewhat by surprise. 

“Jaguar had to do something pretty radical, to shift the brand into a new, more innovative mind space.

Now, if I search for innovative, future-facing electric car, Jaguar may start showing up in a way that it didn’t previously. But now they’ve got to follow through and produce the product,” Woodward explains.

The urgency of AI adoption: A 2025 problem

The disruption from generative AI is not a future worry – it’s happening now.

“Whether that’s with OLIVER or someone else, it doesn’t really matter. But we would argue that generative AI technologies configured for you by an in-house team, is particularly powerful,” Woodward suggests. “This is not a 2026 job, it’s a 2025 one. Companies that delay adopting AI risk falling behind competitors already using these technologies for market advantage.”

What this means for procurement teams is that they need to start learning about AI now. Explore what’s available, what it means for your business, how well your business is equipped to adopt it and if it isn’t, how you can get to a place where you can?

As with costs, there’s no more time to be nibbling at the edges. The message is: Be bold, be brave, be radical.