I’ve lived and worked in Scotland all my life. I
feel both privileged and proud to have done so, firstly as a client marketer in
the whisky industry and now on the other side of the fence in a marketing
services agency. Having seen how marketing services are sourced from both
sides, I was pleased to see the Scottish Government propose to establish a national
legislative framework for "sustainable public procurement to support
economic growth". The government aims to do this by "delivering
community benefits, supporting innovation, considering environmental
requirements and promoting public procurement processes and systems which are
transparent, streamlined, standardised, proportionate, fair and
business-friendly".
Since
becoming Scottish Chairman of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising
last year, I’ve been speaking with leading figures in the Scottish Marketing
Services’ community to understand how best to support the industry. It
is clear that our industry both applauds the intent of the Public Sector to
create equal opportunities to tender for taxpayer funded projects and supports
the objective of providing best value for money. However I’m sorry to say that, at
present, Public Sector Procurement processes are perceived by the industry to waste
time, effort and money. In fact, I would go so far as to say that current
processes are providing poor value for the public purse, are driving innovation
and creativity out of the market and have a net negative effect on the economic
contribution of the marketing services sector in Scotland. This should be of
serious concern to any government looking to promote an economic growth agenda.
The
tendering process for the Marketing Services Framework is a massive drain on
client, procurement and supplier time. Marketers are spending more time marking
than marketing, suppliers are spending more time filling in tender applications
than working on solutions to marketing problems and procurement are spending
more time measuring cost than finding the best value and most effective
solution to their clients’ problems. The cost and process based questions asked
in the tender provide clients with little differentiating information with
which to assess how effective agencies might be in addressing the very serious
tasks, life-saving in some instances, to which the tender is supposed to help
find solutions. In some cases, tenders are being completed by freelance writers
hired by agencies for their expertise in writing tender submissions. At no
point during the process is there any opportunity for client marketers to meet
with the agencies who are tendering. How then are they to know whether these
are the right team for the task at hand, whether they are a good fit with the client
team and their ways of working, whether they genuinely want to work on the
project?
Between
2000 and 2005 twelve Scottish Public Sector campaigns won at the IPA
Effectiveness Awards. Between 2006 and 2012 there were only two winners (in
2007) and there have been no Scottish Public Sector submissions at all since
2008. Scottish Public Sector clients and their agencies were once proud of the
work they did for Scottish Public Sector clients and won awards for its
effectiveness. How many can say the same today? For a Scot, working in
Scotland, there should be no more attractive marketing brief than helping
Scotland be the best it can be. That some of Scotland’s leading agencies now
choose not to tender for Public Sector work and others are struggling as a
result of chasing this uneconomic business, because of the complex,
disproportionate and opaque tender process should speak volumes. I hope for the
sake of the industry that the Scottish Government will engage with us before
they impose another business stifling procurement process.
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