Pat Murphy:

Hi, and welcome to the MCA Prodcast, your fix for everything innovative in advertising production. I’m Pat Murphy and I’ve been working in this industry for more than 35 years now, and I’ve seen a lot of changes, but know that there’s many more around the corner.

Each week on the broadcast, you’ll get to hear from one of the movers and shakers who are shaping the world of production for the future. And we’ll dive into some of the key challenges facing our sector today and how we’re best placed to overcome them.

Today you’re gonna meet Tina Fegent. Tina’s regarded as one of the world’s most respected marketing procurement experts. She’s one of the first to have worked in marketing procurement over 25 years ago, and she established some of the very first marketing procurement teams in the UK for many leading brands. And there isn’t a category of marketing that she hasn’t procured for.

She was then the very first procurement person to work agency side of Grey and then went to Low London as their commercial narrator. She knows both sides of the fence. In 2006, she set up Tina Fegent Consulting to offer a marketing procurement consultancy. And she mentors trains, marketing procurement teams and individuals. She’s chaired the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, or CIPS to you and I, specialist Knowledge Group on marketing and is also a volunteer chair of the Get Shit Done Board for the Conscious Advertising Network, which is trying to make sure that the industry ethics catches up with technology of modern advertising and what’s for someone in procurement. Yes, it’s true. She’s a really quite a nice person too. <Laugh> Tina and I go <laugh>, we go on and on and on and on, but let’s welcome to our podcast today, Tina Fegent everybody. Hi Tina, how are you doing?

Tina Fegent:

Thanks very much, Pat. I’m real nice to see you. Thank you for inviting me onto your podcast.

Pat Murphy:

Absolute pleasure. Now Tina, I know you like to chat, so we, we won’t have any dead air today. We met I think first time going back when you were at Grey and I was a client at Procter and Gamble. At that time, marketing procurement was a, a new function on the client’s site. We’re showing our age a  little bit there I think. But to be honest, in the early days there was a lot of challenge and dare I say criticism of procurement, people trying to buy creative skills in the same way commodities were born and that didn’t help reputation in the industry. Indeed, some people in the industry looked upon procurement as a little bit of a dirty word. Do you think that’s still the same today or have things changed?

Tina Fegent:

Things have changed, but I think, I wouldn’t say a hundred percent. And I think it depends on, you know, the procurement person’s target. You know, procurement invariably do report into the finance department and what do the finance department want? They want cost savings. And you look at procurement in any other role direct procurement. So if you buying tin cans or raw materials, it is about that lowest cost. And especially obviously now with the economic climate we are in, you know, I’ve got a couple of clients and their supply chain costs are going through the roof and dare I say it, with Brexit as well and transport costs, et cetera. So I think it has improved. But I would say you still have got, I’m gonna take a guess, 30% poly procurement people that are cost focused because of where they sit in an organisation.

It could be the, you know, where the organisation wants em delivered on cost savings, but there’s a lot more enlightened procurement people, you know, supported by the lights of WFA and they’re sourcing forum and people like yourselves as well in terms of external consultancy support. So I think we’ve come a long way to quite fat boy slim. You know, as you said, we’ve both been working industry for 30 years and whilst cost is probably always there a lot of them are much more about driving value, value beyond savings. I know we might talking about project spring later, but yeah, no I think we have got a lot better, but you know, we’ve learned but you still do the occasional one. There was a thing before Christmas, Dr. Pepper in the states do a request proposal, 360 days payment terms.

Pat Murphy:

Whoa, you serious? Yeah,

Tina Fegent:

Yeah, for PR as well, which, you know, it’s not a big value contract 300 and you think if I had to buy your Dr Pepper product in the, in the convenience store, it’s not 360 days. Cause you want the money there and then

Pat Murphy:

You want the money there right now, you know? Yeah,

Tina Fegent:

Yeah, yeah. So the short answer is we have come a long way. A lot of people are much more improved. The trick is if you are an agency and you deal with procurement to know where they sit, are they cost focused and gonna be focused on that or are they looking at the bigger picture?

Pat Murphy:

So I suppose those are the things to establish right at the beginning of a relationship, isn’t it? Understanding, yeah. What the agendas are, you know, are the KPIs of marketing and procurement aligned or not? You know, is it a very cost focused exercise?

Tina Fegent:

Yeah. And I think that’s trouble that people dealing with procurement do put their head in the sand. Well, one thought they’re gonna go away. And as I said, well I’ve been doing it for 30 years, so you know, I don’t think we are gonna go away now and there’s many more of us. So yeah, it’s like anything, isn’t it? But just understand who you’re dealing with and I’m still surprised, you know, it’s what, 18 years since I worked agency side, how there’s a few more procurement people agency side, but not many. So I think, you know, know who you’re dealing with, be prepared, you know, preparation, preparation, preparation have you facts and figures. If you haven’t reconciliations on production or on your fee, you’ve gotta be prepared and, you know, from an agency or production company point of view is be prepared.

You know, magic and logic as we know is what 15, 16 years are old and that is still true. You have to balance the magic with the logic and procurement. Not the logic, but I think a bit more involved in the magic as well. But it’s a, it’s a hard line pack. Remember when I was at SmithKline Beecham and there was a Lucosade and it had had she in, it’s probably quite a few years ago now, isn’t it? And the marketing director asked for my view on it. ‘I’m like, oh, I’m procurement. You know, I, I sort of can’t give you, I’m not the target market’ for example. So it is such a fine line because obviously, you know, I love, I love the industry we’re work in. I love seeing the new creative work and you have to really appreciate that. But it is that fine line with understanding what you’re getting involved in, what you’re buying, you know, making sure from a commercial and operation point of view is you’re ticking on the right boxes but you’re not affecting the output.

Pat Murphy:

Yeah. And in many respects we all have the same objective really. It’s about buying things brilliantly that deliver outstanding creative work but also delivers commercially I think and it’s all about alignment at the earliest possible stage, isn’t it?

Tina Fegent:

Yeah. And communication.

Pat Murphy:

And in communication as well.

In my conversation with Sergio at Publicis, we talked about trust. It’s often said that the best relationships are where all partners an inverted commerce partner. But how can clients and agencies alike truly make this work? You know, why is there still a lack of trust? Probably more so now these days than ever before.

Tina Fegent:

The old old story when you get on an air plane, how the creative agency turns left <laugh> and the, and the and the media agency, production come on and the client turn right into the economy, isn’t it? You know? And that does affect those levels of trust.

Pat Murphy:

And it still goes on though. Yeah, I’ve seen it. You know, have you, it still goes on now. Yep.

Tina Fegent:

Yeah, yeah. It’s two of you actually. I did look at production quite not so long ago for an agency and know they flew to South Africa and it’s first class because they needed the flexibility to change the flights but the client’s policy was economy. So yeah, interesting.

But yeah, trust takes time, doesn’t it? And I think for me, as I just quickly you mentioned communication’s the key, you know, and as you rightly said, from procurement point of view, Be open and honest. If you have got to achieve cost savings, or if you have got to look at supplier rationalisation, or if it is about using technology to create content better using AI. Whatever you’ve been targeted with, be open and honest about it. I think trust comes with communication and I’m a huge fan of communication from all sides.

I think sometimes marketters can stand back a bit and let procurement and agencies and production companies sort of fight it out. Because actually I think agencies and production companies and the work that Steve Davis has been doing, the APA have come a long way in saying, well, let’s understand it what they want. Let’s have that communication. I think sometimes it’s quite easy for the marketing clients and sort of say, oh, just stand back and let you get on with it. And actually, as you said about alignment, you then don’t get that. You get a lack of alignment and you get, well, what does the procurement person want? What does the marketing person want? What do the agency doing? And where’s the production company now? And, and where, where’s production consultant in that? That and where does it all fix? Does it is a complicated industry. You know, I’m not, we are not just buying, you know, blackcurrents for drinks… for ribena.

You know, we are, as you said at the beginning, we are buying services, we are buying people and it is different. It is really different. And that’s why things like e-auctions are quite hard to do. Cause you’re not buying a commodity. You are buying a person and an output from that. And as you said, the quality, you know, it could be low, medium, high and that could depend on how that drives sales. So low value, you know, output, TV, ad post add, outdoor radio ad, digital ad, is that gonna drive sales? But if you double the cost of it, is that gonna drive sales? And I think marketing is much more focused on returning investment these days and that really does help, I think, from a procurement point of view to have those conversations.

Pat Murphy:

I agree.

Now you’ve always, from, in my view, you’ve always managed to hit that brilliant fine balance in the way that you’ve built relationships over the years. What do you think is the, the best skills for a procurement person to to learn, to be able to be more effective in their role, do you think?

Tina Fegent:

One is like to chat as you alluded to!

Two, an appreciation of the arts. And I remember years ago I worked for government department and sort of, you know, ‘what’s your favourite TV ad’? ‘Don’t watch tv.’ ‘Okay’. ‘Read books’. Well that’s quite admirable that you read books, but if you are responsible for creative agencies, you know I’m mentoring a girl at the moment and then every Friday I do Tina’s tips though Tina Tina’s, Tina’s view, and I do five things I’ve seen during the week. So last week it was things like ChatGBT, Ryan Reynolds, the Mint Mobile ad what happened at CES in Las Vegas. And then I asked something added in the last minute Ad of the week. I was like, let’s talk about our ad of the week. And actually mine was the McDonald’s one, the Leo with the eyebrows and see, I dunno if you’ve seen it yet, have you? I love it. And then she, hers was a VCP Cadburys one, the dad the girl in the pet.

Pat Murphy:

That’s lovely.

Tina Fegent:

Nice. Yeah, really lovely. So actually, and like this week, the one that I’ve chosen is ITV one – it’s a melting iceberg. It’s to promote the planet, planet Earth equivalent. But I think procurement people don’t appreciate the, the concept of marketing advertsing. So start of lockdown, I actually did Mark Ritz’s mini MBA in Martin. I, I I chickened out. I didn’t do the exam as a photocopies. But actually, you know, my knowledge and experience just learning actually in the 10 modules, how six modules were about prep and research and actually the execution, which is the bit we see both of us is only this, the last two or three steps. But it’s about the research, customer segmentation, you know, the four Ps and then actually then actually gonna find a supplier agency and then gonna do the work. So I think yeah, lack, I think procurement people need to understand the craft they’re buying and a lot of them still don’t and communication.

Pat Murphy:

So on that note then, do you think the best place to find people going into procurement or marketing procurement specifically, do you think that the best place to find those people is from the world of advertising? Should they have done an advertising or a marketing role and then come into marketing procurement? Is that a good place to find them?

Tina Fegent:

Yeah, I chaired a panel on Tuesday. It’s all people from North America, and actually two of them were marketers. And they were really brilliant, enjoyed the procurement role. So I do think it probably is easier to have a marketeer and train them in procurement and the procurement person train them in marketing. I mean, procurement is a, it’s a tough job. You know, I’m not saying here’s our little tiny little violin, but there’s 17, 18 different categories of spend, you know, from advertising, media, direct marketing, market research, print you know, pr with tech, it’s a, is a complicated category with subcategories underneath it. So it does take a long time to know it all. So if you’ve got a marketeer, the other thing about recruiting and marketing to procurement is they’ve got the connections. They know, especially if they’re internally already working for you, say at P&G, they’re already working at P&G so they know how it works. They know the CMO for example. But yeah, I would say probably a mix. I would say if I, if it was, if I was starting to team up as from scratch again, I’ll probably do 50/50 because they’d learn from each other, half the marketing people and the procurement people and then learn from each other. But then they do get support from outside consultants like themselves for example, or media auditors or contract auditors as well.

Pat Murphy:

Now we often hear the use of the term non-working and working spend when it comes to, to client budgets. It also seems like a very procurement bit of terminology. Production is lumped into non-working spend. But in my view, if you don’t get the work right, then it’s all non-working spend, isn’t it? So why isn’t it given more gravitas? The the area of execution production?

Tina Fegent:

It’s a good, it’s a good question, isn’t it? And I think years ago it did have more gravitas. I mean, okay, it was very focused on the 30 or 60 second ad, wasn’t it? I think half the trouble is in this world of integration and in this world of multiple platforms, isn’t it? With increase, obviously focus on digital as well. So I do think it’s been diluted quite a lot because it is more complicated. It is more digital focused and there are many, many multiple more outlets for how you can do what you used to do. You know, there’s Michael Farmer’s book The Manslaughter of Madison Avenue and it’s a really interesting read, isn’t it? And it’s like after the war, yeah. How, you know, let’s invest in TV work. That’s why the Jolly Green Giant got, you know, created agencies were paid 15%.

I mean those were the days their fees of 15%, but it was spend, spend, spend. And you know, the, the Giants of Madison Avenue were sitting up there with the CEOs and directors of the companies and it was do those TV ads. But I think just because, you know, the way the industry has evolved there has been a dilution in not the importance but the, the value of marketing. And I think, you know, there is questions about what is the role of marketing and what is the value, what is the roi? And I think a lot of organisations have struggled to say we what non-working working capital is. We know there was a great article, Simon Walton, who’s the CEO of Next an article about a month ago. He basically said, I’m happy to spend money in advertising through a recession, especially on digital because I know for every pound I can see the result is two pound.

That’s what the ROI he was looking for. And I was talking to one of my clients actually and she said, actually our ROI is three pounds. I said, what’s actually, cuz Next was saying retail of those in the UK was only two pound. But he was, I’m happy to invest marketing spend in digital. Cause I know it works.

But obviously it’s much harder to, if you are own ice cream company and you’ve still a TV campaign, sun shining, well what’s driven those sales? Is it the sun? But those of you in sunny Portugal, Pat and not overhear in cold uk or is it that TV ad? So I think it’s, it’s harder and I think going back to one of the recommendations, magic and logic is lack of investment in measurement. Clients need to release funds to measure the effectiveness of what they’re doing. And I think that would then help that balance of working in non-working and encourage investment.

Pat Murphy:

It’s also about data, isn’t it as well. One of the things that I always talk to people about, which becomes a bit of a sensitive issue is, you know, how do you use data when it comes to briefing creatives? Because creativity and data don’t often kind of make good bedfellows.

But I think it’s a definitely a way for creatives to take the insights from the data and to be able to produce much more effective work. What’s your view on the kind of whole area of data in creativity?

Tina Fegent:

I think data has obviously plays a, a big role. And I, in any pitch, for example, I always encourage the clients to share as much as possible reports, you know, et cetera they’ve done. But for me it probably would go into the planners and then it’s how the planners then interpret that. So I dunno whether I to slightly disagree with you because let the creators be creative. But I suppose your point is they need a degree… Are you saying though, should creators be more number numeric and more commercially focused?

Pat Murphy:

Not necessarily. It’s about the insights rather than the numbers specifically. So the insights that data can give you can be incredibly po werful when, when when you’re kind of being briefed as a creative,

Tina Fegent:

My cousins are creative at London agency, so I need to be careful about, say about the role of a <laugh>. I dunno whether I slightly disagree with you because whether that’s, that is the role, you know, I’m good. I’m a great fan of planners, great planners do a great job of that link from the client. I

Pat Murphy:

I suppose it’s the role of a planner or a strategist to take that data and turn it into something that’s very simple for a creative to understand. It’s simplifying that data and making it much more easy to understand, I suppose.

Tina Fegent:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I agree with you. I mean, it’s great now that you see creatives in pitches, you see, I mean, do you remember years ago they would never go to client meetings, you know, because they just didn’t. And actually, you know, because it’s not, you know, my cousin included, you know, it is, they’re like sitting in, you know, and coming up the great, you know, doing what they’re bloody brilliant at doing. So I think that, I think the client interaction for me is an important step for creatives and a degree of data that, as you rightly said, is managed through the planning and putting in that brief that actually why are they doing that work? Is it to drive the sales? It it’s increased brand effectiveness, is it to win awards? But yeah, I agree they do need a degree of data, you know, that allows them to be creative to, they should be more focused. They need to be focused on what the outputs are gonna be, what the outcomes are gonna be.

Pat Murphy:

Mm-Hmm. Now the world of of advertising and marketing is moving very fast. And indeed there seems to be a huge variety of issues and opportunities when we need to, you know, the things that we need to consider when we are making stuff, including D&I, the advancement of technology like AI, machine learning clients are taking back more control now, like in-housing and programmatic, there’s reuse, repurposing and other an ever expanding channels and asset requirements and proliferation. What, what do you see are the big, big things or indeed the biggest challenge that clients need to solve right now?

Tina Fegent:

I think it’s what, what is priority? Because you’re right Pat, that’s spot on list in terms of what their focuses are. If you are in the states, I mean, D&I is the number one thing.  I went on a call yesterday from the WFA about supply relationship management SRM led by an organisation and it was all the reason they do SRM, supply relationship management. In my back, it’s always been about relationships. It was about D&I measuring D&I. So I think if you are in the states, it’s about D&I over here you can Europe, it’s about sustainability. I mean that’s so key after disappointing results of sort of COP 27. You’re right about technology. I actually shared the Loom escapee slide with someone the other day, which is a list of all the marketed and is it 6,000 suppliers or something like that?

You know, I haven’t counted it, but you know, if you look at the advances in technology you’ve also got things like measurement effectiveness as well. So I think it’s prioritisation. It’s, I think it’s compared to Creative TV with Alan Shearer  20 years ago, I think marketers are now faced with, well I do need to, you know, get the work. But actually where I am in, in Mark Ritz’s 10 steps, you know, I’ve gotta do those six steps first and do all that analysis before I then look at what is the right work to deliver. And hence the rise of, you know, some media planning agencies. Again, you know, after the, the naked days people like Kraft Media for example you know, I’m hearing more clients look at media planning because actually we want to look at what is the right route for us.

It doesn’t have to be that necessarily the output, could be a sponsorship deal, could be events. You know, the IPA bill where the report came out last year, last week, you know, marching spends up by 2.2% compared to a year ago. And it was a big focus on events because people are going face to face. So, you know, marketers are having to juggle the whole time with different priorities, what, you know, in terms of that. So I think that list you said was spot on and I think that the biggest issue is prioritisation. What do we do first? What have we got money for? And I think especially now, you know, we’re, we’re recording this in January, 2023, you know, we are facing a recession, the IPA report and apologies that’s an UK focus, but said it’d be short, short recession. And I’m seeing the clients I’m dealing with, some of them start spending money again quarter three, quarter four.

So at the moment their issue is managing their budgets and again, procurement people, the call with the North America procure people on Tuesday, back that up, we’ve just cut back. We’re not doing any marketing spend, we’re reducing it. But I’m hoping quarter three, quarter four, that’s gonna come back up and all that list will still be there. But I think D&I in the states, sustainability in UK is probably the biggest. In terms of governance. I think you overlay that with tech. I think definitely content creation, repurpose, and then calling on from tech, the role of AI in that. But you have to be a big spender like some of the clients you are dealing with to actually look at that. You know, if you’re only doing one marketing campaign a year, you’re not gonna look at all that. So yeah, I think it’s prioritisation of that, that list and it’s ever changing.

Pat Murphy:

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, now I see many procurement teams, many often quite junior. They try and tackle some often complex technical stuff and they try and do it themselves <laugh> sometimes. Why, why do they do that? Surely, you know, that’s the time when you should be reaching out to, to companies like ourselves and, and we do have all the experts to help.

Tina Fegent:

Yeah, because procurement don’t have any budget. But it’s always been the issue. Pat, I remember when I was at Orange and we first looked at a cost consultant to look at, you know, we were using WCRS, you know, those great orange ads and I didn’t have the knowledge. You know, and I’m still in two minds about, you know, using external consultants even though I’m an external consultant myself.

But procurement don’t have any budgets for stuff. So they try and do it themselves. And they make a hash of it because actually in certain circumstances you know, it is good to use a third party who is working across other sectors, other clients, other markets. So that procurement person could be based in China, that procurement person could be paid, you know, in another market they haven’t got expertise of. And that’s a trouble I think with a lot of procurement organisations is you might have some global roles and you’ve got some regional roles, but they haven’t got the expertise in all those markets.

Plus, as I said, it’s such a wide ranging category with 17, 18 different subcategories, print, etc. They can’t get to know i plus they’ve got to do all the personal plus they’ve gotta do all the contracts. So, and there’s a resource issues. So, you know, I know quite a few client marketing procure clients, you know, and they’re managing millions and billions worth of euros worth of spend. There’s two people, you know, it’s like, why isn’t there six? Why? I mean obviously there are bigger companies, a lot of people you deal with that do have bigger departments that are global and more established. But for still they’re short of resource. So I think the short of resource, don’t have any money and have got a lot on, so try and do it themselves. Well actually they just stuck back and said, ‘right, okay, what are our priorities? What are our top three? Who do we need to deliver that? Do we make a case of going to marketing for the budget’? Because it’s always having to go to marketing to pay for the project. Yeah. But they’re missing out on innovation.

Pat Murphy:

Totally agree. We’re seeing this all the time still today.

Now I was really impressed by the launch of Project Spring by the WFA, the World Federation of Advertisers. It’s a great read, actually. Much of it just makes good common sense. But we are often not seeing evidence of those characteristics that lead to successful marketing procurement relationships day on day.

Project Spring identified 10 trays of successful marketing procurement teams. I’m just gonna pick one or two of those from the list. Number one on my list, procurement and marketing have shared business metrics for success. That’s number one. I’ve got another one here, which is procurement leaders have regular conversations with marketing and finance on how to jointly drive value for the business. And there’s another one, marketing and procurement provide honest feedback to each other on how they can improve their ways of working. There’s a whole load of others as well. Yeah. What’s, what’s your sense of the areas that have really moved forward, do you think?

Tina Fegent:

I think the communication, the metrics that the communication with procurement, finance and marketing. I mean on the procurement calls on this call on Tuesday, we actually has access to the finance system. So I think that has really moved on. I think from an internal point of view is that’s for me post covid. You know, when Covid hit we talked to, I spoke to the CPO of Marks & Spencers and ASOS and they were like when Covid hit, you know who they came knocking, you know, the CEO, the FD, like, oh, we’ve got an issue with suppliers, agencies, we’ve got issue with contracts who know, I mean whilst, you know, obviously it’s tough, tough for everybody, but who do we need to call who can help us? So I think post covid, there’s been a great internal alignment and that’s always been a bit of an issue I think is, you know, procurement report to finance.

It’s about cost savings, marketeers playing procurement off with the agency. So I do think that has come a long way in terms of that sort of greater alignment.

Metrics I think is sort of getting there. What is disappointing when you see it in fees, you know, you want clients to have say performance related fees in your fee elements. So something say the agency, ‘okay, these are our targets, here’s some hold soft effective measures, increase in sales, increasing our share price, increasing brand awareness’. And you know, it’s still hard sometimes to get that off marketing people and then for them to be brave enough to say, ‘actually I’m gonna put x percent of micro fee at risk’ because I don’t wanna do it one way. Often risk, but you want don’t want the reward side. And you know, if an agency delivers great work that works like the old days in commission,

Pat Murphy:

Absolutely reward them.

Tina Fegent:

Exactly. That’s five 15% commission worked again in Michael Farmer’s book, the great work you did got rewarded cause you spent more money. And actually in non procurement person, I say, well that’s great, that is that effectiveness. So I think metrics have come a longer way, but there’s still work to be done on it. And it comes back to budget, you know, again, magic and logic is spending the money on investment. But again, times of recession, times of profit cuts, what gets cut?

Pat Murphy:

Although saying that some clients are quite smart, so in the recessions they actually spend more on marketing in, in recessions to to, to get better market share. So I think those are, I know certainly Proctor and Gamble used to do that when I was there.

Tina Fegent:

Yeah, they were known for it I think, weren’t they? Yeah, yeah. Spend your, I think Mark Ritz always says that, is it spend your way out of recession as well, isn’t it?

Pat Murphy:

So tell me about tell me about CAN, the Conscious Advertising Network, what you’re very involved in that, what what does it mean?

Tina Fegent:

Yeah, CAN, thanks Pat for asking for that. So yeah, it was set up by Jake Dubon, Harry King be five, five years ago. Jake lived in London at the time when he is Turkish neighbour. Came back for the pub, haven’t been beaten up and got Jake thinking about the world we we live in and met Harriet and basically thought they’re both working in advertising, but actually the ethics of advertising haven’t caught up with technology. And again, you know, our discussion a while ago about the pace of technology on the digitization of, you know, of everything that we do. But actually, you know, you only have to go and look at European football final, you know, the abuse that the, you know, the UK players got because of their colour. Yeah, look at COVID O2, VMO2, which is one of our, our members.

You know, people thought that conspiracy theories thought that 5G masks were spreading covid. You look at people, you know, when you’re using digital advertising display ads, they’re not, you know, they’re spending their $10 or $1 gets put on Displayer not knowing their ad is next to an ISIS video.

So basically what what they did was set up these manifestos. So there’s seven now in total. We launched a seventh one last year, which is climate sustainability, which is your point about prioritisation. We’ve got ones on children’s wellbeing, ad fraud, misinformation. But when I was talking to CMOs they’re like, ‘have you got a climate one’ because that has been the number one priority. And basically it’s seven manifestos. And basically we say to mainly brands and then media agencies is go through, we’ve got 15 checkpoints on each of the manifestos.

Where are you on them? You know, what are you doing to make sure that the ethics are in place when you are buying and creating your media?

So great response. You know, it’s all free. We’re most of us are volunteers. We have actually got some philanthropic funding in the last year for some full-time people, which is great. But yeah, I co-chair the, the Get Shit Done board which is the UK arm. And that’s about, you know, working with our member brands. So like VMO2, SSE, British Gas, Innocent, Nationwide. In talks to quite a few at the moment. People like group HIM and Havas and members as well. I was just saying that when you are, you know, junior advertising and you’re buying your media and everything that you do do, you are ethical and you know, Jake and Harrier, you know, work very closely with the UN we’re looking at going global as well. And we just need to make sure that, you know, things like misinformation is just, isn’t it, you know, or you look at certain online publications when you look below the line at the comments and you know, the trolls and stalking or ad forward as well. It’s, yeah, it’s, it’s a big issue across all those points. Again, it goes back to prioritisation. So we’ve been going five years, we’ve got 150 members, which is great, but we haven’t got that many big brands.

Pat Murphy:

So I was gonna ask you that question. So, you know, is this aimed at brands specifically or can other companies get involved as well? So for instance, MCA, we would love to be involved of course. Yeah,

Tina Fegent:

We’d love to have involved.

Pat Murphy:

So you know, how do people reach you?

Tina Fegent:

Yeah, we’ll just, just go, go. Just contact me. Just type into your feed.

Pat Murphy:

Or the website.

Tina Fegent:

Yeah, the website Concious Advertising network to put that in. It will come up.

Pat Murphy:

We’ll, we’ll put all your details on on the on the details of this.

Tina Fegent:

Thank you. Yeah, anyone can join. Yeah, full members have to do the tracker. Yep. Which is the seven manifestos. And that is aimed at brands and media agencies. Because obviously, for example, Pat, you couldn’t talk about ad fraud in terms of your day-to-day dealings or the ethics of what you do, but we have support and associate members. So you can just say, I’d like to support, support you. And then we send a survey out once a year to say, ‘this is where we are, are you applying CAN?’, but also Pat, from your point of view, it’d be great if you are talking to your clients to say, have you heard about Can, would you like to sign up? We, we wanna go global this year. We’re talking to some people in the states, obviously resource and funding. But no, thank you for asking and if anyone is interested, you know, come on. Especially brands, especially at media agencies. But we would love anyone who’s interested, please go on our website. It will come through to me. And then I can set up a call or send you information and please, yeah, the more people that support what we do, we, we’ve gotta get change. We have got to affect change in what we do in everything, in everything that we buy in terms of advertising.

Pat Murphy:

Sounds like an amazing initiative. And you know, we are on this and if you’re listening to this I implore you to kind of get in touch with Tina or the team there. I think it’s a great, great thing you’re doing.

Tina Fegent:

Thank you Pat!

Pat Murphy:

So look Tina there’s only one, one or two things more I wanted to ask you. Firstly, you’ve been in the business for a long time, right? So you’ve got some juicy stories. I’m writing a book at the moment and I’m putting it all down into writing. Tell us a couple, one or two of your really juicy stories come on. Spill the beans.

Tina Fegent:

I’m not sure if I, you know, could do that. I mean there’s been some funny instances. So I always teach agencies to read upside down when I do some work with agencies. So when you’re negotiating with clients, for example, in a room, you know, look at their notes because you know, be discreet about it. But there is one story where an agency that I was working with the client left the room and the agency thought, well okay, I’ll go and look at the client’s notes, but actually physically got up and was looking at their notes. Of course what happened?

Pat Murphy:

The client walks back in?

Tina Fegent:

The client walked back in the room <laugh>. Yeah. So that, that was quite funny. Another thing, not quite funny, but sort of dealing with celebrities. I think that’s always really interesting.

Pat Murphy:

It’s always good talking about celebrities, isn’t it?

Tina Fegent:

Yeah. And I’ve been in some pitches and it was years and years ago and it was say some I, I dunno why, but I think it was for a smoking brand, apologies. And the agency recommended this celebrity who was a well-known anti non-smoker and you just think ‘what is going’ on for that? And then years ago, do you remember brush the TV programme brushstrokes?

Pat Murphy:

Oh yes,

Tina Fegent:

There’s the actor, main actor in there. I think it was a P&G brain pack. Cause like it was when I was working at Grey. And I had to, you know, I’m a procurement person. I negoti I had to negotiate with the agent. Oh my god, that was the worst experience of my life. Having to deal with those talent agents are unbelievable,

Pat Murphy:

Aren’t they? Particularly the the American ones out in LA

Tina Fegent:

Really

Pat Murphy:

Definitely very difficult, tough to deal with. Yeah,

Tina Fegent:

Really, you know, and you think you’re a good negotiator until you come up across them.

And there was another supermarket that I dealt with who law had an ad two chefs and there was great discussion about which chefs should go either side of the billboard. So sort of got involved in that in terms of what the costs were from that point of view. But yeah, there’s probably not too much else I could share.

Pat Murphy:

Or stuff you’re not allowed to talk about without getting

Tina Fegent:

Exactly with the NDAs. But it’s, it’s all, you know, clients are great agencies are great, and you know, it’s great sitting in those pitches, you know, I love sitting in the pitches when you come up, you know, those creative ideas and even better when you actually see the creative idea they’ve suggested actually does run as well. You know, and there’s been some, you know, funny stuff sent through the post you know, from agencies as part of the sort of pitch stuff. I’ve got a puppet somewhere with, right, that was supposed to, that is, that’s behind me somewhere. That was supposed to be me that an agency sent,

Pat Murphy:

Didn’t have pins in it, did it?

Tina Fegent:

<Laugh>, no, didn’t have pins in it, but that, that was, I say last year, the year before is, is behind me somewhere <laugh> Obviously from a procurement point of view, we have to be careful so ethically, but the point was we’re gonna do this, pop it and this is what your one looks like. So that’s quite good. And then the other thing that I’m known for is probably when we were out and about a bit more before covid was tweeting quite a lot about agency biscuits. And the quality of agency biscuits when you go in. So it was a posh  biscuit brand, you need to watch their overheads. I then moved, I was tweeting quite a lot about the biscuits and then I moved on to the toiletries and actually, you know, it might be White Company on the outside, but they filled it with little <laugh> stuff inside as well.

So actually from a procurement point of view, you know, and in pitches actually having a score sheet for goodies you know, actually what are the, what other, cause I remember a media agency I went to once, they had a, a chef who, who worked on site and I still remember, I still remember the client there was homemade scones, I mean fabulous home, but they, but they hadn’t made them already. So of the agency presented and they’re trying to cut scone and then is it the cream or is it the jam first? And sort of do it that way. And then all these oh mean, oh my god, the food was unbelievable. So we often joke in procurement about having to score for food, but I think, yeah, we’ve taken it off now we might comment on it, but we don’t actually score agencies on that. So that’s a funny sort of thing that we do from a procurement point of view.

Pat Murphy:

Great stuff. Look final question. What’s your favourite ad of all time? And it could be one that you’ve worked on, but I always love harking back to the ads that we’ve always loved. What, what’s your very favourite ad of all time?

Tina Fegent:

My favourite as is when I was growing up, there was a milk company called Unigate.

Pat Murphy:

Ungate. They used to have those little kind of like yeah. Milk floats that used to come down my street. Yeah,

Tina Fegent:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it’s probably my first experience of a brand campaign. So it was, they created a character called Humphrey. Yeah, ‘watch out, watch out. There’s a Humphrey about’ and it was red and white and you could get the straws, you could get the stickers. There were some ads as well. So that’s my favourite ad say it’s my first experience I think of being aware of, you know the advertising and probably integrated as well. Cause I still remember the stickers. I still remember the straws saying it is, watch out, watch out. There’s a Humprey about.

Pat Murphy:

Yeah, absolutely. So, and, and we’ll be posting your favourite ad as well from YouTube if we can find it. Yeah,

Tina Fegent:

Great. That’ll be great speaking. Yeah, no, I love that.

Pat Murphy:

It’s got a lot people around the world listening to this going, ‘that sounds bonkers’. So you can take a look at this. ‘Watch out, watch out. There’s a Humphrey about’ ad from

Tina Fegent:

Many years ago. Bring it back. <Laugh>. Bring it back.

Pat Murphy:

<Laugh>. Thanks Tina. Look, I wanna say big thanks to thank you for joining me today and it’s it’s been brilliant catching up and talking to you about old times. And I’m sure everyone will appreciate some of the insights that you’ve given them on, on your side of the fence, on the procurement side of the fence. So thanks very much.

Tina Fegent:

That’s great. Thanks Pat. I’m really good to chat to you and thank you for inviting me onto your prodcast.

Pat Murphy:

Thank you. I wanna say a big thanks to Tina for taking time to talk to me today about the world of marketing procurement, specifically about production.

To find out more about the MCA Prodcast, please head to theprodcast.com where you’ll find details on all of my guests links to their favourite ads as we’ve just mentioned and full transcriptions of all the episodes.

If you’d like to feature on The Prodcast or have any comments, questions or feedback, please email us at prodcast@murphycobb.com. I’m Pat Murphy, CEO of MCA. Do come and connect with us on LinkedIn or Instagram, of which all links are in the notes for this episode. We’d love to hear from you.

Thanks again to my guest, Tina Fegent, my team at MCA and to my production team at What Goes on Media. Thanks for listening.

Catch you next time.