Press

But this can present an opportunity to make changes and identify areas for improvement.

Here are three steps to getting started: 
Step One
Who?
Identify someone responsible for managing production.
They could be internal resources with deep production knowledge, such as marketing, procurement or finance. Another option could be training one or more team member to manage the production processes, or eventually hire a production specialist to support and advise the internal team.
Choosing the right team is a crucial first step and it’s important to make sure the person/ team chosen has the right tools and resources to be successful.
Step Two
How?
Implement solid policies, procedures, and guidelines. These, of course, should comply with your company policies and procedures but this alone is not enough. For best results, specific production guidelines should be updated regularly, be clear, address approval processes and should be shared with the employees to be trained. In this way, these procedures can offer a true benefit by defining transparent production practices, creating efficiencies in the production process, and reducing financial risk.
Step Three
When?
Avoid surprises and issues in the process by conducting a thorough pre-bid meeting, to be aligned on all the elements of the production from the vendor selection, to music, location options, special effect, budget and so on.
The most critical decisions which can have a significant impact on transparency and costs are made early-on. Having standard processes and the right tools ensures transparent discussions and can avoid any unnecessary spending.
Perfect timing is the keyword here. That’s why reviewing invoices before payment is a best practice too. If something happens after the payment it causes issues and wastes time and money.
And speaking of time, that’s the moment to take an active role in managing production transparency.

Written by Alessandra Pasquini

Here’s how to make sure that’s not the viewer’s reaction to your new TV commercial.

Advertising is a-changing. Radio is shaped to audiences like a glove, internet channels are more targeted than ever and Programmatic TV is growing day after day.

At a time when we can identify the audience better than ever before, we can lose focus creatively. How many times have you watched a commercial but you were not even able to discern what the advertiser was trying to communicate? Or worst, a few hours later you couldn’t even recall who the advertiser was?
So, how can you avoid deficient or absent communication?

Here’s how, in one simple and feasible exercise with your agency, you can be sure the right people will get the right message out of your commercials.

It is called a Communication Objective. A Communication Objective is the summary of your advertising strategy or creative brief.

Of course, you have an advertising strategy. It delineates, at least, who should be interested in your product and what benefit they’ll derive from using it, your unique selling proposition. It may also include mood or mandatories, but the first three factors are the basics of any advertising strategy.

That’s also the essence of the Communication Objective. When your agency presents a storyboard, ask “What do we want the viewer to remember from this commercial?” Usually, communication objectives shouldn’t describe the look of the commercial.

While executional factors are important (and that’s what pre-production meetings are made for), they are not the key elements of the commercial that you want to be remembered. Of course, if you have a Communication Objective that wants the viewer to feel how easy and fun it is to clean with a particular detergent, you don’t want people remembering, “It was a dreamy moment with breathtaking music in the background”.

Communication Objectives should be few – less than five – even four it’s a bit much. If you have more, consider that you’re trying to get a single, focused playback expressing a single cognitive bit from a single viewer. Chances of delivering five different memorable communication messages out of a 30″ spot are very slim.

If you have multiple Communication Objectives, go through the storyboard and identify the particular parts of the commercial that are supporting each of the objectives. If you’re having trouble finding a match between storyboard and objectives – well, probably the viewer will, too.

Communication Objectives are useful at the production bidding stage, too. Efficient agency producers should include them in the material given to potential directors. This will be very useful for the directors to have a clear focus when they decide what their treatment or approach to the production will be.

Written by Stefano Arbitrio

Engage magazine – Enterprise System-SICS

VA Consulting, Production Advisor & Cost Controller marketing procurement consultancy, confirms investments of over 10% in the IT and application development area in 2019.

As part of its activity, VA international advertising Consulting combines strong skills in all areas of advertising ATL, BTL and TTL (Social media and Digital), with benchmarking, monitoring and reporting the spending of its customers worldwide. This is the key enabler to go beyond the skills of a normal international producer and to provide the governance of projects to customers by improving efficiency and maximizing marketing budgets.
Since the creation of the Enterprise System-6 modules in 2009, namely JOB (for real-time control and reporting of marketing campaigns) and AWF (workflow tool with which VA approves and classifies about 7,000 quotes per year), these tools have continuously been improved and perfected, making it possible to classify and analyse creative production investments.

Throughout time, VA Consulting has developed two new modules in order to expand and complement the services offered: KOLB (KOL benchmarking tool) and the FRC (FTE Ratecard Calculator). These acronyms might seem incomprehensible, but let’s explain them with a word that everyone knows: influencers. The KOLB System-Sics tool, “Key Opinion Leader benchmarking” allows, in fact, to validate the economic demands of influencers for their involvement in brand awareness on all media and non-media platforms.

On the other hand, the Enterprise System-SICS FRC FTE Worldwide Ratecard calculator allows VA Consulting to define benchmarks for Full Time Equivalent ratecards proposed by creative agencies or application development agencies in any city and country in the world. Yet another innovation that proves that VA Consulting is a reality that does not stop at national borders but expands globally.

It is with these tools that the company led by Alessandro Arbitrio strengthens its role, combining extensive knowledge in the production field with extremely innovative analysis tools. Thus, in 2019, the commitment to understand and anticipate trends is confirmed, allowing customers to control and improve processes aimed at maximizing available marketing budgets.

The conversation is finally changing for the marketing procurement professional.
Lessons here we´re learning working side by side with them, as production advisory & cost consultants.

Marketing Procurement executives are no longer talking about savings. They are recognizing the importance of value. Conversation with their partners. Only cost savings is the wrong conversation. It is clear that performance and efficiency goes well beyond saving when it is possible to combine tactical and strategic initiatives. When fully introduced into creative content production logic, procurement can help develop more flexible, critical thinking.
Marketing nourishes growth. Investing more in what works, making money work better and focusing on what is really efficient and effective to drive top-line growth, with a clever cost management.
the four P’s: process, people, partners and performance. Zero-based budgeting is unproductive and doesn’t serve growth.
Business silos should cease, thus connecting media, creative and production. The most challenging thing that is suffocating many initiatives is the silos within organizations. The key point is the need to evolve the behavior towards a common operational line. After all, everybody have the same goal: to bring their brand to success.
To consult with best practices and to validate their decisions is critical and more powerful than similar recommendations from an internal source, such as a procurement person working on their own. A correct choice of full production advisor & cost controller is what can shift and evolve business perspective.

READ MORE: Engage magazine – Defining the actual role of a production advisor & cost controller

Defining the actual role of a production advisor & cost control

What to expect when it comes to advanced optimization.

Who is an advisor & cost consultant nowadays? Or, better said, who must be?
In order to support customers optimizing advertising investments in the production of creative content, the analysis and optimization of a single project by a normal international producer / advisor – such as those related to TV commercials production – has now become “Business as Usual”.
Customers ask for more efficiency, total and real-time control of investments and a greater exchange of information with the Procurement.
This lead to more responsive working processes and, magic word: smart use of data and analytics.
Because a significant increase in efficiency in strategic areas of expenditure can only be achieved by collecting and analyzing data that can show improvable behavioral processes, thus offering actionable strategic insights.

Where most of the attention over the past few years has focused on technology selection and combination, it’s now more about capitalising and optimizing this capability.
That’s why the selection and study of these data is followed by a “root cause analysis” which can lead to Efficiency management project. The impact in terms of savings and cost avoidance is absolutely not negligible.
Here’s some concrete examples:
Studies such as the MPRD Marketing Processes / Procedures & RAM Definition and the implementation of RTSC Real Time Spending Control have led to the realization of numerous Efficency increasing projects like the MREF Marketing Reworks Efficency Factors and the PPEM Post-Production Efficiency Monitoring.

VA Consulting’s studies as production advisory & cost control firm were carried out using the Enterprise System-SICS database, which currently has a collection of approximately 120,000 estimates / final balances and 8000 ATL “Above The Line” (agencies / vendors selection, agencies pitch, TVC production, Radio production, Pre Press, Post Production, Usage Rights, FTE Ratecards, Talents), BTL “Below The Line” (POP, POS, Illustration, Logo Concept, Events & PR, Fair, Stand, Influencer, Key Opinion Leader) and TTL / Social & Digital (social campaign, social activities, web reputation, digital & social video production, app development, KOL “key opinion leader” & Influencer, AR/VR/MR, banner, website implementation, usability, contentest, SEO, Insight, DEM & Newsletter etc.) projects managed by CEO Alessandro Arbitrio of VA Consulting from 1994 to the present day. An impressive collection of information.
Once the database is used and clear and efficient projects are implemented, what’s the next step? Forecast analysis, obviously.

READ MORE: DailyOnline Magazine – VA Consulting & Ebiquity

A new collaboration dedicated to the optimization of marketing investments between the media benchmarking company and the supplier of the Integrated Spending Control System is born.

A new collaboration dedicated to optimizing marketing & media investments. Ebiquity, an independent company specialized in the field of media benchmarking and performance measurement has partnered with VA Consulting, a company active in optimizing marketing production contents and communication investments operating internationally in 35+ countries to guarantee an increasingly specific and detailed services.

Always up to date and specialized consultants

This collaboration is born as a response to ever-increasing demand from investors, to have highly specialized consultants on their side able to keep up with the fast and continuous changes in a constantly evolving environment. The optimization of investments in marketing and communication requires updates and specialization. Thanks to this partnership, Ebiquity will not only be able to offer a level of excellence media benchmarking cost management and optimization but also to provide consultancy and increasingly specialized skills aimed at ensuring control of investments in marketing and communication at 360 ° so to meet the increasingly specific needs of its customers.

A 360 ° service from the creative production contents advisory & cost control to media benchmarking

Ebiquity deepens its knowledge of optimization services, advisory & cost negotiation from creative agencies selection, creative agencies picht, TV and radio commercials, pre-press, press, usage rights, digital & social campaigns,social activities,material and point-of-sale events, PR up to media investments in the relevant areas. A 360 ° service, in short. On the one hand, Ebiquity carries out a careful performance verification analysis, on the other VA Consulting provides to its customers a unique offer in the panorama of cost controllers: the Enterprise System-SICS (Integrated Spending Control System) to give customers governance to improve efficiency with data & reporting. This system implements a framework/workflow for the control and approval of expenditure and a system of precise classification of estimates / final balances of creative agencies and suppliers operating for the customers. Ebiquity & VA Consulting, finally, can boast a fundamental source of national and international benchmarking.

READ MORE: Engage magazine «always more important to maximize digital investments» 

READ MORE: Engage magazine 

READ MORE: ADC – GROUP MAGAZINE