A featured contribution from Leadership Perspectives: a curated forum reserved for leaders nominated by our subscribers and vetted by the Construction Tech Review Advisory Board.
PT Kino Indonesia TBK
Inside a More Strategic Approach to Marketing Procurement
Beryl Rose
Prior to joining Kino, Beryl Rose built valuable experience across multiple MNCs in industries such as skincare, nutrition and pharmacy and F&B. Those cultures shaped her as a professional, influencing how she thinks, how she leads, how she works and how she manages the indirect marketing services category. Now, as Head of Marketing Procurement at Kino, she has found even more room to be creative, exploring initiatives she previously did not have the chance to implement. She is grateful for the trust placed in her to share ideas openly, drive stronger cost efficiencies and recommend process improvements that make the work smarter and more effective.
What to Choose First: Always Define Value over Cost
I have come to believe that you cannot manage what you cannot define. Creativity is valuable, but it is not a requirement on its own, especially in this category. The question is simple: how do you measure creativity? Or how do you know that one’s creativity is more qualified to the others?
There are a lot of variables to consider when you are trying to figure out whether or not I am spending money on services that have value for money. I personally feel that if you do not have the knowledge to brand management, you will miss out on the intangible points to reflect on that could bring value to your brand and eventually the business. I have also learned through the course of my career that having that knowledge would help to communicate more effectively with the marketing team, who is your biggest stakeholder and this helps tremendously in planning and alignment and once you have gained their trust that you are their strategic partner everything will fall into place.
In terms of finding the balance between cost and creativity/quality, you need to shift your POV from cost-centric to value-driven purchasing. As a strategic procurement professional, especially one who is managing this category, you need to be able to see beyond getting the lowest cost because often times I find that investing (spending) a little more would give you more value.
Let me give you a simple example, Agency A is charging me $ 100,000 for a set of deliverables whereby my brand can be rest assured it will maintain its position as the market leader. However, Agency B is offering me $ 150,000 for the same set of deliverables but when I look into the detail of the team structure assigned to manage my brand I can see that they allocate a lot more manhour and give me more senior team so I would go back and challenge them to give me more than just maintaining the brand’s position in the market, I mean considering such set of skillful team would you not want your business to soar?
So, with marketing services I would say it is quality over cost.
What I’m Seeing: TikTok Shop Creates Categories
It is how, nowadays, China is impacting the consumers’ behavior as well as new businesses in almost all areas.
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Positioning ourselves as a partner would induce the impression of equally important as a function, while strategic would mean bringing procurement up one level in the game – getting involved from the beginning, being a reliable source, included in the discussions and planning and being two steps ahead.
Talking about media, I would say TikTok Shop has made a tremendous impact it shifts procurement’s spend classification – creating an independent category of its own. And, I do not mean the shop alone, but how the presence of that platform rapidly becomes close to the consumers daily lives while from another perspective I see a lot of new agencies grow providing services to support your sales through the shop. I.e., affiliates, TSP livestreaming service including AI video creators. There are many more though, such as the short series that are produced using low budget equipment however it has not made major shift like how TikTok has.
Procurement Partnerships: Start Early, Lead As Allies
Where ever I go, I always try to plant to everyone’s mind that procurement team is your strategic partner.
Positioning ourselves as a partner would induce the impression of equally important as a function, while strategic would mean bringing procurement up one level in the game – getting involved from the beginning, being a reliable source, included in the discussions and planning and being two steps ahead.
It goes quite the same with how I foster partnerships with our external agencies actually; I always emphasize that they are our strategic partners and most of the time their behavior would quickly change because they now have established that their expertise matters, then they start to feel more at ease to give us meaningful feedbacks and be more proactive.
Wisdom from Experience: Learn the Market Language, Earn Trust
Having a background in marketing or brand management would help, but if you do not have those backgrounds then you need to have strong motivation and passion.
Bring yourself to learn about the marketing ecosystem and familiarize yourself with your country’s marketing and/or digital landscape including the industry trends, the consumers’ buying behavior and so on and so forth.
Another skillset you would need is relationship management and excellent communicator.
