Watered Down - Michael Kassan - MediaBizBloggers

In media and marketing, as in life, there is such a thing as an idea that looks great on paper but whose time should never come. New Coke. The Time Inc./AOL merger. The Enron Media Buying Exchange.

Last week's announcement by the King of Beers and the Next Generation may be one of those ideas.

PepsiCo and Anheuser-Busch InBev, which together spend more than $1 billion on advertising annually in the U.S., said that they are expanding their six-month joint purchasing agreement for such things as office supplies and computers to include broadcast, cable, magazine and outdoor media buying.

I have no reason to doubt the validity of reports that the two clients have saved plenty on notepads and the like since they teamed up in October. But it is a little disconcerting that expanding their union into marketing was something the beverage marketers expressly said they wouldn't do. (Pepsi, at least, said as much.)

Nor should they.

Isn't combining leverage to gain clout why entities like Mediabrands, Omnicom Media Group and GroupM were created in the first place? Can Pepsi really get better deals with A-B's in-house buying unit than it already enjoys from OMD? Should Coca-Cola now cozy up to Procter & Gamble and coyly suggest they go Dutch to gain clout—when SMG already gives that to them in spades?

Yes, no and no way.

There's a good reason why most marketers haven't teamed up to do this before: their media services partners already do it superbly. The key to success in the marketplace isn't just buying cheaper. It's about buying smarter, too. That's the secret sauce that agencies bring to the table—and that's where it will stay if clients insist on taking buying in-house just to save shekels.

Media buying is not like ordering new chairs for the conference room or demanding a volume discount on office printers. It is an intricate business dance that includes insight, judgment, creativity and negotiating prowess—as well as clout.

Cost-saving is a worthy goal, but so is building brand awareness, defending or seizing market share, or any of the other myriad objectives that can accompany a buy. If it was all about the Benjamins and nothing else, there would be no media buyers, or planners either, just rows and rows of desks in client purchasing departments stretching to infinity like the warehouse in Raiders of the Lost Ark, populated by order-placers mechanically buying Oprah, Comedy Central and the NFL in bulk.

So I'm concerned that this new mash-up isn't so much revolutionary as it is just another version of the same well-intentioned but perilous point of view that results in media reviews being run by purchasing executives. And I worry that it's a slippery slope from "let's join forces to save money" to "why do we need a media buying agency at all?"

I don't know about you, but I could use a drink.

Michael E. Kassan is Chairman and CEO of MediaLink, LLC, a leading Los Angeles and New York City-based advisory and business development firm that provides critical counsel and direction on issues of marketing, advertising, media, entertainment and digital technology. Michael can be reached at michael@medialinkllc.com

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