Tyler Rice | T-Mobile

On this episode of MarPro we sit down with Tyler Rice from his home in Seattle during his transition from Nestle Coffee Partners to  T-Mobile where he will be the SR Sourcing Technology Manager supporting the Media Services & Media Agency Category.  Tyler is a former media turned procurement professional with over 7 years of experience in the space. With experience on 'both sides of the aisle' in both regional and global roles, he brings a mindful approach to the Marketing Procurement function relying on trust, transparency and fairness in every professional interaction.  

Key learnings from this episode include...

• Media Transparency - K2 Intelligence Report  |  ANA
• Cost vs. Quality
• What's driving the talent shortage in marketing procurement
• Traits of a great marketing procurement professional

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Transcript

Tyler: 0:11

hello

Dana: 0:12

and welcome to pro where we discuss all things, marketing and procurement. I'm one of your co-hosts Dana small, the procurement professional. I'm joined by my co-host and majestic marketer, rusty peppers. So rusty how's that? The lone star state treatments.

Rusty: 0:29

What we have had, whether you would think we were in Seattle.

Tyler: 0:35

Ah,

Rusty: 0:36

it is not stopped raining and it's forecast to keep writing for the next eight days, which we'll take a look into the summer months. Usually we have to beg the rain to come

Dana: 0:47

our way because we haven't gotten

Rusty: 0:49

any we'll take it. But yeah, I'm ready for a little bit of.

Dana: 0:52

Oh, so speaking of sunshine and rain, we have our guests with us today who I'm super excited to talk to. His name is Tyler Rice. He comes from Nestle, but he is moving to a new position shortly. So Tyler, welcome to the show. And maybe you can give us a quick background and let everybody know what you're doing and where you're moving.

Tyler: 1:14

Cool. What's shaking. What's shaking. Yeah. And fortunately though, unfortunately, no rain in Seattle this week, we are hitting summer months and it is beautiful blue skies. The mountain is out and I love it though. It's been incredibly hot. So. Almost anything for a little bit of Ray, but yeah. So my name is Tyler Rice. I am formerly the marketing procurement business partner lead at Nestle coffee partners based here in Seattle. I have recently taken a role as senior sourcing technology manager for T-Mobile supporting the media services and media agency category. So super excited it's up to that role, but a lot of good experience throughout my experience at both Nestle. I spent some time at Macy's and then also. In the industry as well, so happy to share it with you.

Dana: 2:02

Yeah. And one of the most exciting things to me when I talked to you originally was the fact that you had experienced doing during that K2 media report transition, right? You were at ubiquity, which I think is the coolest thing ever. Like how many people were actually there at the time. And you're one of them I'm super stoked about that having you on for that reason. But maybe you can give us a little bit more background about like your career. Progression or maybe the start in a Becketty or just a little bit more information on, I know you did media audit right there.

Tyler: 2:33

I did. Yeah. Was an interesting time to step into my career. So yeah, I graduated university in 2013, got the opportunity actually from a guy I had met at a networking event a year prior who worked at PhD media. He had moved on to equity and said, Hey, listen, it's media auditing. It's not the sexiest job in the world, but we'd love to have you at. That really set me on a path that I am so thankful for not only professionally, but personally, the people that I met about a bakery have been great friends and great mentors throughout my career. And so it's been great experience, but I stepped into the role out of equity, not really knowing what I was getting myself into and quickly found out that the media world was in this like world. What is going on, right with media rebates and tons of transparency issues and what a great time to start. So I started as a data analyst at a big equity, really in the weeds of the media auditing space, doing the reports and building not so much the methodology, but helping to execute the audits, then moved into a business development role where I played a pretty active role in helping recruit for the K2. At well with the Ana, the supporting my counterparts across different companies, outfitted was one of them, which is no longer rip out then. But yeah, it was a great experience stepping into that. I really, like I said, had no idea what I was getting myself into, but had to learn pretty quickly and great mentors and great leadership at a big equity who quickly showed me the ropes and told me what was going on. Really took a keen interest in it as well. The idea of lack of transparency with massive media dollars today, and starting to go out to different big brands and starting to have conversations with their marketing procurement people in their brand teams, but to first give visibility, because I think at that time, It was this little blip on the radar and people said, oh, okay. Yeah, we know this is a problem, but really starting to talk about the issues that are in the marketplace. First learned in myself, the issues in the marketplace being so fresh and educating people, and then also asking them to be part of this study. Ultimately it worked right. We recruited for the Ana helped conduct the study with K2. Great feedback. And I think a lot of good movement that I've seen over the past few years, five to seven years of my career, that. Slowly change or quickly change depending on the type of the company and where you are, but it's been a good progression. And it's been a great talking point and all of my experience in center, as I've jumped around from company to company, to be able to talk about the K2 study and the Ana study has been great fodder for my own professional career and professional growth. And I think for the broader industry and for the media industry itself really great that we now have that visibility. It's. So I think. As much of a hot topic. I think we still see some issues in terms of transparency, but I've seen particularly in my own experience from marketing procure professional. Now, not always the case. I spent some time in the industry, seeing marketing procurement people, whether they're fresh marketing procurement, or not to really start to ask the questions and understand. The nuances and the complexities of particularly the media space and then help those companies drive or their transparency or their quality, and then overall greater value for their media budgets.

Rusty: 6:02

So what would you say your greatest takeaway from that experience was for you?

Tyler: 6:08

I would say professionally from a big equity having very early on in my career, the idea of cost versus quality really ingrained into my mind, which has really helped me grow some marketing, procurement professional, recognizing that whether it's media, whether it's creative design, whatever it might be, there's always this fine line that you have to step in and play with between cost versus quality because Danny, you and I know probably right. Lowest cost does not always mean create as well. And from a marketing standpoint, I think it's very fair to start to have those conversations both internally from a brand standpoint, but also with our strategic partners across our marketing spend to say, what does quality really mean to us as a brand? And they're paying for it and what's the fair price to pay for it.

Rusty: 6:58

I think your counterparts on the marketing side would agree with you that those cost doesn't definitely, doesn't always bring the most value because sometimes we get stuck with those decisions and it can be very frustrating.

Tyler: 7:11

Yeah. You know, what's interesting. I am I'm one week fresh out of my former role at Nestle and the. The amount of like nice words coming from, even by my vendors and my agency partners to say, Hey, we really appreciate your approach to marketing. Procurement has been really satisfying and gratifying for me as a professional because I'm not your typical procurement guy that steps into a room and says, I want the lowest cost. Right? I want the lowest cost for what's fair to pay. I want a fair price, but I also recognize that what my marketers need and my stakeholders need from a brand standpoint. It's quality. Right? And now there are cases where lowest costs absolutely hands down when we need it. If we're margin constructed or whatever it might be. But if we really want to drive the brand and build affinity with the brands that we're working for, it's all about quality and really reaching those consumers where.

Dana: 8:05

I just realized this. We may have not said for some people who don't know the K2 media transparency report, which happened, gosh, how many years ago was it? I was just going to make me feel a little, I don't know, seven or eight posted that like a brief to me. I'll try to, I'll try it, but I may butcher it. Feel free to jump in, correct me basically. What I remember from the Ana sitting in the audience was that, Hey, there's this great report done about media and buys and what goes on behind the scenes and are there kickbacks or not for buying certain amounts of media and basically uncovered? Yeah, there, there is. And it wasn't really well received. But in talking with you, interestingly enough, you mentioned. It's actually very common in legal and other

Tyler: 8:54

countries. Yeah. It's interesting. What actually kicked off. And I remember someone from decisions actually who misses subsidiary of the big equity kind of showing this graph on the screen before the K2 study was really before we were even starting to kick off on a recruiting to show, um, agency fees over time X, we would see that in a big equity, um, anonymized of course, but agency fees going down. But agency revenue going up. And so there was the circle on the graph that said, Hey, what's going on here because something's not making sense. And I think that that's what really started to drive that question. Where's this money coming from? Is it kickbacks? Is it somewhere else now? And I don't know if this is still the case. I would say it's probably so that a lot of holding companies, of course the WPPs the pupil cysts have headquarters in the UK and EU across the globe where kickbacks and rebates are common practice. It's fairly common sense to. They're not common sense, but fairly common practice. Let's cut that out. It's been, you know, at that time it was a fairly common practice to go to your media vendors, strike a deal and say, Hey, if you bring us X amount of revenue, we'll give you X amount. To your holding company, the issue, of course, what the K2 study really dove into and help understand and give visibility to was are those dollars coming back to the brands for some of us, we're spending 50 million for others, we're spending $500 million through our agencies. And so are those dollars that the agencies benefiting from. On behalf of our dollars flowing back to the brands themselves, instead of sitting within these holding companies or within these agencies.

Dana: 10:41

And we found out the answer was

Tyler: 10:44

we found out the answer was, yes,

Dana: 10:48

it was not going back to the brands in all cases. But interestingly enough, like there was a while ago, five plus years ago when we had talked previously, I had mentioned how not everybody. I think even though it's been out and around for a while, it has really implemented that right. At different organizations. What's your perspective on people just not doing it? We still aren't aware. Like where do you think like that

Tyler: 11:14

gap is? Yeah, it's, it's interesting coming up with the case. You studied that the Ana was bearish in that oil coming up. And I think working with K2 and their legal teams to really start to build clauses and legal terms around rebates and Abbs and the procedures and the processes to bring those back to the brands. There are, I think to your point, a lot of people. Don't necessarily know that existed. And I think a lot of that, and I see it in my own career. I was not typical procurement. I did not come from a procurement background. I spent a couple of years in the industry before I made the move. But now that I am in procurement and Dan, I know that you and I talked a lot about this. There's a lot of movement in procurement and specifically in media procurement, whether it's people coming from the industry who maybe they worked for creative agencies, maybe they work somewhere else that didn't necessarily know that this K2. Existed or that Abbs and rebates or even a thing in the media space. Cause they came from creative. We have other counterparts in the industry that are coming from the direct side, which typically when you're building a commodity contract, those rebates are just coming back to us anyway, because we're dealing directly with the stake or not with the stakeholders we're dealing directly with those vendors. And so we have more of the power. The nuance to the media space is that we hand that money over this big pile of money and say, go buy our media and do it. Well, we're not contracting with the wall street journals or with the trade desks in some cases. Yes. But a lot of those media vendors. Historically, and again, not calling anybody out, cause that's just for example, but those media vendors that were sending up those kickbacks and the ABB deals back to the holding companies or the agencies or whatever they might be. Which kind

Dana: 13:05

of brings us to another topic where you talked about is like marketing procurement talent. So all the people we've talked to in this role definitely have different backgrounds. Some have come from marketing side yourself, like media audit some from the procurement side, but there definitely seems to be a, what I would assume is like a talent shortage. When we talked about what's driving really people to leave marketing procurement after a while, what's your take on.

Tyler: 13:34

Yeah, I think there's two issues that we have to tackle as a marketing for German space. And I think first is the talent pipeline. I remember. Growing up into the marketing space and thinking, ah, I want to work for an agency. Is it super sexy? I want to work for a BVDO or a Saatchi and Saatchi or a PhD or an OMD or something like that from a marketing procurement standpoint. I don't know if we do a very good job ourselves. Uh, professionals in the space to really highlight the really great work that we do. And so I think there's just an issue of knowledge, right? I don't think a lot of people realize that marketing procurement even exists.

Dana: 14:12

A lot of people from the direct side, see it as a growth opportunity and they, but it's not translatable. You can't go direct, indirect, especially indirect marketing or in it's so specific.

Tyler: 14:24

Right? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a really good point. And so. I think the second point is that we have a lot of talent coming specifically from the direct space and the commodity space and direct whatever it might be, which is really great career progression for anyone in the procurement space, moving from direct to indirect to market, and then vice versa. The problem. I see. And again, this is my opinion is that it doesn't necessarily translate kind of one-to-one right. When buying commodities, you're buying commodities, you're buying based on specs, but for marketing procurement, whether it's media, whether it's design, whether it's creative, you're buying an idea. And I think for a lot of people, and I see a lot of my colleagues growing and understanding this space, which has been really interesting. But it's a learning curve. 100%. It's a learning curve because you're no longer having necessarily conversations about facts, right? This is the cheapest cost versus this, for that spec. It is, Hey, is this a good price for this idea? Or is it not right? And we, as procurement professionals can make that decision. We can inform, we can say yes, we feel according to benchmarks, XYZ, that this is. Great price for this idea, but really those are the marketing stakeholders that are driving those conversations and also really making the decisions. We don't make the decisions and every,

Rusty: 15:50

so how do you create that score? Because I think what you were just talking about was pretty interesting as the fact that marketing is making those decisions, you're validating, but how do you create that scorecard? Where then you can align with marketing to make sure that the way you're scoring and rating isn't aligning with them, what their goals and objectives.

Tyler: 16:09

Yeah, I think first and foremost, it's about getting a seat at the table and making your marketing stakeholder. Really trust you as a strategic partner to their business. And Dana, I know that you and I talked to a lot about this, right? That that's sometimes a challenge because of the evolution of the marketing procurement space procurement, historically right before my time. So I can't say that I know this exactly was really direct and commodity focused. And you had a lot of movement either from the direct side into marketing procurement, or from the industry and to procurement who. Let me back up. You had a lot of movement from the direct side into marketing procurement who stepped into the marketing space and said, let's get the cheapest car. Right hands down. We're going to get the cheapest cost, which sounds really great from a bottom line perspective. But I think taking that approach is really targets our reputation as marketing professionals with our marketing stakeholders, right? And every time I step into a new role as a marketing professional, I always get this sense of an us versus them mentality procurements here, and even with agencies and with vendors procurements here to cut the dollar, right. What we need to do rusty back to your question is really get a seat at the table and start to have those conversations about strategically, not what's the lowest cost, but what's right for the business. And what did you need for the business to grow? And how can I get you there knowing farewell that it may not be the cheapest cost, but it will. If procurement's involved, be a fair cost for what you're getting.

Rusty: 17:45

And I think that's the critical part is you've touched on a couple of things. Procurement did a disservice to itself years ago. I just coming in and we're just going as low as possible. And that has been very difficult because I still remember those days, wherever we see us even got worse, we started coming out with reverse auctions or you're like, oh gosh, Yeah, by a thousand cuts, but it's tarnished. And now when we look at it from either on the vendor side or on the marketing side using it, it's what are we going to get? Especially with organizations where they don't have dedicated marketing procurement folks, you've got buyers managing certain product categories within there, and that's where it's just yeah.

Tyler: 18:22

And lump it all together. It's interesting because you said a disservice that we did a few years back. I think we're still doing it to ourselves to this day because of that constant churn of procurement marketing, procurement, direct procurement into marketing procurement industry people. Um, and there is a learning curve, right? Absolutely. There's a learning curve. And I think we're still doing ourselves a bit of a disservice in some cases, not with everyone because we still have people stepping into the space. Not fully understanding what it means to be a true strategic marketing procurement person to support your business partners, reverse auction. And I think is a really interesting example because I've worked for companies that have really big commodity procurement teams. And I remember stepping in and my first foray of procurement and. The hot thing was reverse auction it like let's try to get as much reverse auction in as possible, which logistically. Okay, sure. Makes sense. But when you apply it to a marketing procurement space, It doesn't translate. It absolutely does not translate. It does

Dana: 19:28

not make sense at all. You can't really commoditize creativity or an idea, or the things that come along with it. I think part of the problem when the people have moved from direct to indirect, specifically marketing, is that they have the skillset. I think taking some time to have discretion about it and saying, we don't have to be so rigid and it's got to be the lowest cost. It's gotta be this. Yes. We still need quality assurance of supply. We need all of those things, but we need to look at it from a different kind of lens and angle, just because it's a low cost doesn't mean it's right for the brand or it's the right person to go with. And I think. Learning that discretion is where a lot of people still I think get

Tyler: 20:13

hung up. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I always use the metaphor that you could buy a Corolla, but you're going to get a Corolla, right? You're not going to get into Avalon for the price of the Corolla. And that comes from my background as a car salesman. Before right here at my college job, I'm selling Toyotas to get myself through college. And, but it really goes back to that example, right. You get what you pay for, and if you pay really cheap costs for really crappy service, you're going to get really crappy service or really crappy deliverables that then I think to your point, it's interesting. And it made me think commoditizing. Marketing procurement and marketing services just in general. I think that we've tried to do that. I think a lot of companies have tried to do that specifically in the creative space with the evolution of like menu prices and rate cards per deliverables, which I am 100% behind. I think it's a great idea. I think it's great to have the visibility, the challenge though. And it goes just to being empathetic to our, our creative agencies is. Having an aligned definition across the industry, right? Because that is by far the most important thing. And what I would love to see is. The creative agencies come together with kind of key brands to say, these are the deliverables, right? This is the name. This is the description. And then we, as procurement people can negotiate what we think a fair price for that is. But we have a lot of cases where agency might have one cost for account stewardship for this. With this definition and a completely different thing for another brand. And I think it's causing a lot of rework and churn among our creative agency partners, which ultimately we pay

Dana: 22:07

for that lack of standardization, right. Or certain tools out there spend in pharmaceuticals. There's Wanamaker who try to do standardize the titles and roles and what a banner ad is. But I noticed when I did have like rights spenders, some of these tools. I would go to the agencies and they just did not want to touch it with a 10 foot pole. It was so hard. It was like pulling teeth saying, can you at least just give us this pricing so we can ask some more detail. They didn't want to do it. And so your points are completely valid. If they could come to us and say, Hey, Th these are, this is the deliverable, this is the detail around it. And then we could do our own benchmarking, whatever we needed. It would be a lot easier if there was some standardization from their end versus from our end, because it's the people on the outside trying to standardize forum. It just, I don't know. Sometimes I feel like it creates more churn because you just can't agree on

Tyler: 23:04

absolutely. Holding companies. Exactly. For me, whether it's a holding company by a holding company or collectively as a whole, I would love to see it. And I'd love to step into this space to help support that because it would make everybody's life easier. It would make creative agency, their account peoples and their operation life a whole lot easier. It would make our lives easier from a, just a overall procurement standpoint. And then also our marketers, because they know exactly what they're doing. And maybe there's a multiplier that says maybe there's five more revisions. Three, whatever it might be, but I'd love to see it. I don't know whatever happened, but I here for it.

Rusty: 23:47

I think it would be a challenge there. I don't really see that for most those agencies. I just don't see them being willing to come to the table and try to do that. I think. It's better for them not to.

Tyler: 24:00

Yeah. Which is absolutely fair

Rusty: 24:02

for it to be a little chaotic is okay. Because in that chaos, they've got better margins and we all know it. Dan, I talk a lot about just that whole, the gamesmanship that gets played between procurement and vendors and it goes back and forth and it's just as a cat and mouse

Tyler: 24:17

sometimes. Yeah. I think the person that I've taken with a lot of agencies, whether it's a media creative, whatever it might be is having more open conversations about. What's driving costs. Right? I think we as marketing for Kevin people, and a lot of it is capacity and time. And Dan I'm sure that because there are so few of us we're stretched so thin that maybe we're not always asking the right questions to say, what's really driving this car. We may never get to an aligned menu. Uh, but I think if we started to have more conversations and start to build those strategic partnerships, because a creative agency, a design agency and media agency, our strategic partners, we can't just get rid of them tomorrow.

Dana: 24:58

And if you just an extension right of the team, they really, at least from the marketers and brands I've worked with, they really are. These guys sometimes even sit next to them right in office. And it's, these are literally, we don't have the FTE head headcount. So this is the extension to our team. And it's that personal right of level and commitment, but which I also think makes it harder for them to remain clear minded when it comes to what they just see does in pricing.

Tyler: 25:28

Yeah. And really, I think that's an opportunity for us as procurement leaders in this space is to be that objective third party, because we're not always at the table as much as I'd love to be at the table. We're not always at the table when it's interesting. Even in the past couple of years, as I've talked more with my stakeholders and then talks with the agencies to really understand how is the relationship going? It doesn't have to be a bloodbath, but what's going really well and what's not. And how can, what can I do to support those conversations, to drive better growth, better partnership, and better happiness. And I've seen a lot of. Good outcomes from those conversations because an agencies and my marketing stakeholders coming back to me to say, we, we didn't first know that we needed to have that conversation because everyone is so close and nobody wants to bring it up because they're like, well, we're their agency and we're working for them. So we don't want to rock the boat, but we do have these challenge. And so being that kind of objective third party to step in the middle and really. Approach it with a mindset of I'm here to build this strategic partnership instead of purely cut costs. That's the approach that we need to take. Now I'm a firm believer that once you start to build that strategic relationship, that's where you can find cost efficiencies, or process efficiencies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, because you're looking at it from a third party and from an objective view to say, okay, we need to cut costs. We know that we've maybe. Deliverables down to a bone and we can't cut anymore from our brake cards or our FTS or whatever it might be, but are there process efficiencies, right? Are there technologies that we can start to bring in to help drive greater efficiency? Inevitably reducing costs. Are there ways of working that we can implement that help everybody both from a marketing standpoint and then also from an agency standpoint. And I think that's our big opportunity from a marketing procurement standpoint is to have those strategic conversations, build those relationships and find strategically ways to optimize the business and the cost of whatever it might be.

Rusty: 27:34

Technology's going to be a big driver of being able to gain those efficiencies and starting to extract some of those soft dollar savings where you're and not have to replicate. It is not going to get the returns. You're not going to speed up the actual click to order time, to be able to receive that from a consumer standpoint, those are all gonna be things that the technology is going to drive. One thing I wanted to ask and I'd be curious about is when you look at the marketing procurement category, which is. Expansive. How would you break that down? How many buckets would you break that into? I'm just looking at, from a global, I got very high level. How would you

Dana: 28:03

break that up? My perspective and Kylie, you can give yours too is that's what's spend analysis for, right. That's why I said it depends on the amount of spend. No, it really does. If you have $5 versus 500 million worth of media, then maybe it doesn't make sense to break it out as another category or PR maybe PR has half a million. Or 50 million. It depends on the size of the spend to say, does it make sense to break this out as its own category? And at what level do we actually source?

Tyler: 28:32

Yeah. And I think the need of the business, right? Because there are some business needs that maybe they're super heavy NPR, or maybe they're super heavy in media, but Dana, I think to your point, absolutely. It's about spend and rusty. Maybe that's not the answer, right. We wanted to go with, but I think for me it is about spend because. You have major CPG companies or major pharma companies or whatever they might be that have massive spins. And it makes a lot of sense to have someone purely focused on media. There are other companies who have much smaller spins, and then it makes sense. Maybe let's have two procurement people in split it. Now I do think that there are lines that you can see. Between a firmly I'm biased, right. Media. I think if big enough should have it's dedicated resource, but something like creative design production, PR point of sale material, those could likely be grouped in together. If the spend is small enough that they can give the strategic support that they need. What is the

Rusty: 29:32

threshold for the spend, you know, lumped in or not?

Tyler: 29:35

Yeah, it's going to depend on the company I've seen. Spend thresholds as low as a hundred thousand, I've been seen, spend thresholds up to $500,000, but it really depends on how much you're spending in this space. I've also seen spend thresholds of $5,000, right. Like in the it space. Right. And it's really just depends, I think, on the company and what their level of strategic need is for that category and a level of risk. Right. Because you may look at something like, oh gosh, I don't even know. Paper and I'm talking just indirect. The level of risk is very low, but with it, the level of risk is really high. You need cloud compliances, you need all kinds of different things. And so your spend threshold would be lower for a higher risk category versus something that if we lose it tomorrow, we can find another.

Dana: 30:28

I want to go back to though a point that I think you made that I think is really key for a lot of procurement professionals who I don't think have the same approach is that we need to be that sounding board, not only for our brands to this supplier, but vice versa when the supplier has issues with us. And I think a lot of times procurement people. Nope. We're were hitting them hard. We're upon a non-price we're doing this. They, we need to be right that middle person to have that partnership. So when they have issues, we can get them resolved, whether it's the agency. And then internally, when we have issues, we get them resolved because we're not perfect either. And I think if you go at it from the stance of, I'm just here for my business. Then you're missing that whole, how to bridge the gap, how to create a partnership and have this close tie with the agency like you should.

Tyler: 31:21

Yeah, I think it's a really great point. And I think the greatest thing you can do as a procurement professional, whether it's direct commodity, indirect or marketing, is to be that relationship person. No matter who it is, right? Whether it's your brand or the agency, depending on the strategic level, right. If it's something that can be easily replaced, it's a little bit easier to be less strategic, but to be that strategic partner and to be that sounding board, I think Dana, to your point to both sides is absolutely key, especially with. If you're supporting kind of key strategic partnerships within the organization, because I think we forget a lot of times from the city and brand side that our agencies are, and our vendors are strategic partners for us, but we are also strategic partners for them. And when we went, they went and so how do we be that sounding board to make sure that all of the communication is flowing? And if there are challenges. Fix them let's optimize them because that's really how we're going to grow together and ultimately drive greater efficiency, greater value and greater growth for both companies.

Dana: 32:34

Here's another question for you. So this is a little bit different direction. We've talked about talent and there's a shortage, right? What do you think is driving that? Like I know in the past, from what I've seen. Is that a lot of marketing per cureman professionals end up going over to the business. I myself have thought, Hey, this could be fun. I could go over and do marketing. This is really interesting. What do you think is driving the shortage, right?

Tyler: 33:00

Yeah, I think that's one thing. I've never worked in marketing on a brand side, but I'd tell myself, man, that would be the life. And I think that is a big issue in terms of just like retaining talent in the marketing procurement space is that there's this most likely a perception that other pieces of the business are much easier to work in. Now we know Danny you and I know in breasts very well that. Marketers jobs are hard jobs, right? And we see probably the fun parts that they just get to send out great creative and grow the brands and build brand affinity, which is super exciting. So I do think that we have a retention issue caused by people just wanting to leave marketing procurement. I think we have another retention issue because it's a tough job, right? It's a tough job to always. Balanced between the two of the stakeholders and the agencies. And I do think that it takes a very particular type of person to be able to thrive in this role specifically in the marketing procurement space, because you have to know this world in marketing, you have to know this world of brand and you have to be a really strong networker and a really strong relationship builder or else it falls apart. Because if you don't have those kind of three points, I'm missing something. And I think that for a lot of us, just on a personal level, our lives change, and we want to have more work-life balance or whatever it might be. And if you're not clicking into the marketing procurement space, you're like, you know what? Maybe it's time for me to go somewhere else. Maybe it's easier for me to step into the direct procurement space. Maybe it's easier to step into marketing, but it's challenging. I think that the church and people leaving the marketing procurement space also. Uh, a disservice as well, because we're always trying to source talent who may not be qualified or may not fully understand the space, maybe less, so qualified, but may not understand the space. And we're constantly having to retrain and transfer our knowledge over to people who either have not worked in the marketing procurement space or worked for much smaller companies in the marketing for Cameron space and help them grow as professionals. Wow. That's exciting. That's another job on top of your job, right? So then it goes back to your work-life balance. I've got to manage 20 different vendors, 15 different stakeholders. I have to train this person. It's tough. It's absolutely tough. It's not an easy job, but it's a rewarding job.

Rusty: 35:35

Now, I, this is the first I've heard that there's a talent shortage and marketing. Marketing has an emotional area spent for a company you're dealing with emotions. That's what marketing does is we create emotions. We create demand. We create a need building brands. So managing something that is the emotional you're dealing with something it's not a number two pencil or. You could buy that number two pencil pretty much from anywhere, but you're dealing with that creative. And there's something about what this agency or with this vendor provides that unique. And so you're always having to balance all those emotions and keeping them in check with your partners, both on the internal side, on marketing and on the agency side. I don't know if that helps with the burnout or what's creating more turnover, but I would also think marketing's also experiencing the same problem though. Yeah, people turn a lot. They're not loyal. Spend all this money training somebody they're there for six months to two years and they're gone. They're building resumes and it's a challenge, but I think it's just not in your marketing procurement world. I think it's cross a lot of very special areas within an organization.

Tyler: 36:41

And I think there's so many key drivers to that. And it's sometimes it's culture. Sometimes it's burnout. Sometimes it's processes, sometimes it's diversity and inclusion, right? There are so many things that are causing a lot of people to burn out. Whether it's in marketing, procurement, marketing. Sales, whatever it might be. I, I think the brands, right? No matter where you are, whether you're a brand or an agency or a vendor, how do you build that really strong corporate culture, where people are super, super proud to work there and want to be there. And some brands do a really great job of that. And I think other brands do not, and we can all see on LinkedIn who churns and who doesn't, but I think a lot of it comes back to the marketing. Just in general, right? When you can build a really strong brand, you do that with marketing, right? And by building a brand affinity with your customers, you also build brand affinity with job seekers and with people in the industry that want to work for your company. And it's all coming together in my brand. We as marketing procurement professionals, I think. Oh, it to our brands, not only to help our marketers build brand affinity with our consumers, but also with potential job candidates. Then when you build a really strong brand by having really strong, creative, and really good media plans and really good design, you build affinity and people want to stay right. They don't want to leave.

Rusty: 38:08

So what makes a great marketing procurement?

Dana: 38:12

I was going to say something smart ass, like you to say, I look in the mirror. I don't know about you.

Tyler: 38:21

Yeah. I'll say the same. I'm looking at them there. No. What makes a good marketing procurement person? I think, I think there's an empathy aspect to it because you're right. A lot of market is around the emotions. So like understanding what's driving people's decisions, both from a marketing, like your. Standpoint. And also the agency standpoint is key, I think, balance and always being willing to juggle whether it's cost versus quality, whether it's agency relationship versus stakeholder relationship is absolutely key. And I think there is an analytical piece to it as well. I've talked a lot about quality and not necessarily. Pain the cheapest price, but we are procurement professionals. And so having that business accurate to understand the business and understand truly the business needs and translate that into savings or growth or whatever it might be is also just instrumental. And I think growing and thriving as a marketing procurement professional.

Dana: 39:22

So I think from my perspective, Procurement person. And Tyler touched upon, this is the empathy, right? And trying to understand the business and knowing that when we think about a scorecard and a rating, new suppliers, guess what price is not. Number one, it's not going to be the largest percentage. And there are other things that are more important in this category than just driving the price and just picking the lowest cost solution. So I think people who can. And understand that and are okay with it. And aren't going to be those typical, uh, buyers or people who want to pound on price. I think those are the people who really can Excel and do really well, that they can try to understand the business and understand me. You may pay $5 more an hour, but you know what? We're buying a set of people and a team and their ideas. And that's more valuable than sometimes anything, right. It could make or

Tyler: 40:16

break your brain. Yeah. Yeah. And then I think to build on that, it's, it's about understanding the marketplace as well and the situation of your agencies and your buyers. I've always said, I spent five years in New York city and I've seen rate cards, whether it's the rice vendor, whatever, it might be of fair rates in New York city. And I'm like, and I've always said that we need to be empathetic to our. The people working on our business, their hands on the keyboard feet on the ground, that if we're not paying them enough to even live in New York city or buy a beer after work, their mind's not in the business, it's not there. So being fair and understanding both the marketing space technology space, but also situational things.

Dana: 41:09

I think that's a good point. Like it's not going to drive them into me. It relates to, when we try to have agencies work like on a bonus structure or pay for performance and what I've seen in the past, it never works. It's not that person working on the accounts, not seeing the benefit. So it's really not going to motivate them. It's a great idea, conceptually, but I just don't think it works or I haven't seen it work. I'll say that. I don't know, maybe you have, but I just, it, just, to me, it's, you've got to incentivize the people. You got to make them feel like your team. And if you're doing it by cost cutting and doing those things, how, what kind of bond are you really forming those people?

Tyler: 41:48

Yeah, absolutely.

Rusty: 41:50

I think marketing would agree with you on that. We want strong partners who advocate and want to be a part of what we're doing.

Dana: 41:59

There's more than just cost right. And cost. Isn't the number one. And I think that's the biggest to me, miss by a lot of procurement professionals. Yes. We care about costs, but you have to care about it in a different light than you normally would. You can't just say lowest cost wins. It's that's just not how. And if you do there, marketing's going to hate you. They're going to slam the door and say, don't come back for at least

Rusty: 42:23

there are so many intangibles in that too, when you're trying to go on, they're not, you're not looking at everything else that goes into why that cost is what it is. And if you're just checking a box and just trying to figure out how you can get that widget, look again, I go back to the number two pens, cause it's. I remember two pens is a, a number two pencil. There's very little difference than you're going to get in a pencil. My opinion. I don't even know if anybody can use this pencil anymore, but it's a commodity start getting into creative that you didn't fulfill my kid in special services like that. There's a lot of things that can affect the way that product or that service is being used by more. That comes back on the backend from time savings, time to market, the quality of the care that

Tyler: 43:09

yeah. And rusty it, it reminds me of one of the most important things a mentor ever told me stepping into the marketing procurement space is that when speaking to your marketing stakeholders, don't leave with costs. They don't care, right? It is about the value that you can bring to the business, whether it's generating sales, process, efficiencies, time management, whatever it might be, but it's not about cost unless they ask for costs. If they, if my stakeholders come to me and say, Hey, we had a budget cut and we need to find X million dollars, then let's have a conversation. But until that question is asked, we shouldn't be leading with.

Dana: 43:52

I think that's great advice. I really do.

Rusty: 43:55

It's probably a good place to leave it too, because I think that was sums up. I think really when it comes to this, when you start using the language that markers want to hear what. That's how you get that at the table. You earn that respect. You get them to be like, all right. They're part of us. They're an extension of our marketing team, just like our agencies, our extension of our creative teams. Now I think that's valuable. So the one thing I would ask this, who, what topics would you like us to cover in future episodes? And who would you like to hear on more pro?

Tyler: 44:27

Oh, there's so much. I'd love to hear. More just selfishly from more agency management. And I, I touched on this today is that I think because a lot of procurement professionals are so focused on costs like that strategic relationship management piece is sometimes lacking. I do what I can from my end, but I'd love to hear what other marketers in the space are doing or marketing people in this space are doing to help bridge that gap between or close that triangle between procure. Agency or vendor and procurement, because that would be super interesting. There are tons of people who I'd love to hear. I know that they're super busy. My former boss, Tracy alary is absolutely amazing. She's great. She delves into kind of spin classification, which I think is super, super important. Um, so she's a good one. Barry Byrne is another one who I actually have never talked to, but I love his content on LinkedIn. And so I'd love to hear whatever he has to say. Yeah. It's always

Dana: 45:35

interesting to see certain people on LinkedIn, you feel like, or whatever, social media platform, and you feel like, you know them, and then I've had you meet them in person at a conference. You're like, this is really weird and awkward because I feel like I know you so well, but I've never

Tyler: 45:49

met you until now. Yeah, absolutely. It's offense. And it's funny because we're now living in this virtual world, which gotta become even more. Relevant cause I'm starting to jog during the pandemic and I'm never going to see these people until October. So it's good to know each other virtually through emails, through some video chats, but seeing people in per person's going to be odd. And I experienced that when I worked in Panama, I worked with people all over the globe and then we met each other in person and they go. You're taller than I expected because I'm always sitting down. So I always get

Dana: 46:26

your shorter than expected. If you have such a big personality. I can't believe you're only five. Like, dude,

Tyler: 46:33

I would've never guessed. Yeah.

Dana: 46:36

Awesome. Thank you again so much for being here. We greatly appreciate it. Rusty. Do you want to summarize, or do you just want to close it out with anything else?

Rusty: 46:43

That was interesting topic on the eight. It's something I really was too familiar with and I was aware of it, but not, I wasn't falling into tracking that much because I wasn't part of the media spend side of it. But I did think that the interesting part was the talent shortage or the potential of having a talent shortage and marketing procurement. That's just not something that I even heard about or been aware of.

Tyler: 47:09

There's not a lot of

Dana: 47:10

us,

Tyler: 47:11

I'll say that works to our advantage. Sometimes

Dana: 47:14

there's a ton of positions open right now. If I look there's a ton of associate and director level positions and marketing procurement all across, I normally look in pharmaceuticals. So all across there, I'm like, there's a ton. There is there such a shortage, but I think it's because people do get burned out. Yeah. At the end of the day, it's I don't wanna have to hammer on costs again. I don't want to have to do another RFP and do