I was talking with a friend from the media earlier today and we were discussing in great depth how an agency had screwed them over. Personally I was shocked when I found out what had happened – maybe I have spent too much time in the nice world of digital (I have only worked in the recruitment side for a few years). It was the same story that I came across when I first started in media.
On the back of this it has really made me think that it is important to have this debate – it has been going on for a very long time and I think you will find the rest of the media world has grown out of this stage. Believe me, go and spend some time in the non-recruitment sectors and you still might see the odd temper getting raise but you see a far more professional working relationship.
I am not going to bother going into why this is still going on … the blog is not big enough but it did make one thing really come out in my mind. Here is a list of some of the tactics I working with people on when running media planning/buying training.
- Do your homework (find out prevailing range of prices being charged)
- Work out the best balance between long-and short-term buying
- Allow plenty of time for to-ing and fro-ing
- Keep ‘em guessing - always have a “Plan B”
- Tell ‘em only what you want them to know
e.g. target audience(s) - NEVER, NEVER confuse “cheap” with value-for-money
It is that last point really.
I think a lot of the time people forget that our aim is to get the right people into the right job at the right time for the right price. So shall we start sorting out these engagement issues and start focusing on what we are should be doing.
Maybe we should look at how manufacturing organisations work with both product design and component organisations to deliver their solutions!
A good bit of six-stigma quality being introduced!
We have got to change it – this debate is great but how do we moving things forward?
IDEAS PEOPLE
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