Marketing Procurement

What Does Good Marketing Agency Procurement Actually Look Like?

It sounds like a simple question, yet it remains one of the most debated topics between procurement professionals, marketers and agencies. Unlike many procurement categories, marketing services combine commercial decision-making with creativity, making evaluation inherently more subjective.

That theme was explored at the recent CIPS Thames Valley branch event, Two’s Company, Three’s a Crowd – Marketing and Agency Meets Procurement, hosted by SSE in Reading.

Insights from Tina Fegent FCIPS, Co-Founder of Marketing Procurement Mastery (MPM), Ruth Kieran, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Joe Public, and Suzie Rook, Head of Group Brand and Design at SSE plc, generated a thought-provoking discussion around how organisations can create more effective agency partnerships.

Kavita Cooper, CEO of BuyingStation, raised this very question during the event, prompting me to reflect on what effective marketing agency procurement really looks like in practice. Here are five principles I believe underpin successful marketing agency procurement.

1. Define the Level of Creativity Actually Required

One of the biggest issues in creative agency tenders is misalignment between stakeholders and agencies on the appetite for creative change.

Some agencies get ruled out for staying too close to the brief. Others get ruled out for being “too creative”, resulting in award by default rather than selection through a genuinely competitive process.

This can often be avoided by defining the organisation’s appetite for creative risk at the outset.

For example:

1 = Close to existing campaigns / low-risk evolution.

2 = Incremental creative development with limited change to current positioning.

3 = Significant refresh of messaging, creative approach and audience engagement.

4 = Major repositioning requiring substantial creative change and new ways of reaching audiences.

5 = Complete creative reinvention.

Providing this clarity helps agencies understand expectations and creates a more consistent basis for evaluation.

Keeping the process genuinely competitive for as long as possible is more likely to deliver stronger creative thinking and better value for the organisation.

2. Clearly Define Budget and Score Against It

Some of the best agencies are not necessarily the ones with the biggest production budgets or the most expensive pitch materials.

Where budget is fixed, organisations should be transparent about it from the outset. This changes the evaluation discussion from:

“Who can produce the biggest pitch?” to:

“Who can deliver the smartest, most effective solution within the available budget?” This creates a more meaningful benchmarking exercise and allows evaluators to focus on creativity, effectiveness and value rather than production scale.

It also encourages agencies to invest effort in solving the challenge rather than attempting to outspend competitors during the pitch process.

3. Procurement Needs to Understand Marketing Agency AI Usage

The reality is that most agencies are already using AI-enabled workflows in some form. AI is increasingly being used to support research, content development, concept generation, production workflows and campaign optimisation. In many cases, it is creating significant productivity gains, enabling agencies to deliver projects faster and respond more quickly to client requirements.

The challenge is that many traditional agency pricing models have not evolved at the same pace. Rate cards are often built around assumptions of human effort and time allocation, yet AI usage is rarely referenced explicitly within rate cards, scopes of work or commercial models.

This creates an important question for procurement teams:

If AI is improving efficiency and reducing delivery times, how is that reflected in project timelines, effort assumptions and the rates being charged to clients?

Clients should continue paying for strategic thinking, creativity and expertise. However, procurement teams need greater visibility of where AI is being used, how it affects delivery models and whether productivity gains are being shared fairly between agency and client.

Procurement teams should increasingly understand:

• Which activities are supported by AI
• How AI influences effort assumptions and resource allocation
• Whether rate cards reflect current delivery practices
• How agencies govern AI use, quality assurance and intellectual property risks

As AI adoption accelerates, organisations that understand how work is actually being delivered will be better positioned to create transparent and commercially balanced agency relationships.

4. Presentation Scoring Must Be Evidence-Based

Agency presentations remain one of the most influential stages of any procurement process. I have seen stakeholders suggest awarding contracts to agencies because they were the nicest, because they “clicked” with the team, or because they happened to be geographically close to the organisation.

That is not robust procurement.

Strong marketing procurement requires tangible scoring criteria supported by evidence-based moderation.

The important question is not simply what score has been awarded, but why. Presentation stages should include:

• Clearly defined scoring descriptors
• Structured evaluator notes
• Moderated scoring discussions
• Evidence linked to scoring criteria
• Transparent decision-making records

This creates a more defensible process and helps ensure decisions are based on what was actually presented rather than personal preference.

5. Separate Creative Quality from Pitch Production Quality

One of the biggest weaknesses in agency evaluations is that highly polished presentations can sometimes score disproportionately highly.

However, buyers should remember there is a significant difference between pitch capability and delivery capability.

The key question should be:

“Can the actual delivery team consistently reproduce this quality once the contract starts?” Buyers should be asking:

• Is the team presenting today the same team that will manage the account?
• How many hours will key personnel realistically dedicate to the client?
• Will the same level of creative resource be available after contract award?
• Will every capability presented genuinely form part of the contracted service?

Ultimately, organisations are buying an ongoing service relationship, not a presentation. Evaluating operational delivery capability with the same rigour as creative concepts can significantly improve long-term outcomes.

Conclusion

Good marketing agency procurement is not about controlling creativity; it is about creating the conditions for creativity to thrive whilst ensuring accountability, transparency and commercial discipline.

The most successful agency relationships are built on clarity, trust and a shared understanding of success. Procurement’s role is not to act as a barrier to innovation, but to help organisations make better-informed decisions and extract greater value from their marketing investment.

As agency models continue to evolve through technology, AI and changing client expectations, the organisations that achieve the best outcomes will be those that successfully align marketing ambition with commercial rigour.

About the author

Alex Payne is a Procurement Consultant at BuyingStation, specialising in procurement governance, supplier management and strategic sourcing. He is also the company’s Sustainability Lead, supporting clients in embedding environmental and social considerations into procurement decision-making.

BuyingStation is a procurement intelligence platform that combines technology, AI and human expertise to help organisations make more informed sourcing decisions. Find out more at www.buyingstation.com.