Andy Wood, MD, Total DM You Asked Should I get all my Marketing Services from the same organisation?

I am passionate about the importance of Chinese walls in marketing services. Parts of the marketing services industry should be kept separate because of inevitable conflicts of interest. The situation we have to be very wary of is where organisations try to be both service recommender and service supplier. The obvious parallel is the shake-up that has occurred amongst independent financial advisors, many of whom now charge on a fee basis to prove that their recommendations are not being swayed by commission rates.

So where do the flashpoints of potential conflict of interest occur?

One sensitive relationship is that between analytical insight and data supply. An important distinction needs to be made here. There is nothing wrong with a broker conducting analysis and then applying the insight to data selection and purchase. That is because they have access to pretty much all the available data sources, with a vested interest in no particular one. If the person who engages them — the marketer — is going to come back for repeat business, then it is in the brokers interest to ensure they get the best performing data. On the other hand, we should treat with extreme caution data owners who also offer analysis and insight. Even their analysis may be skewed by favouring their own dataset.

Another area to watch out for is the relationship between agency and mystery shopping. If they sit within the same group of companies, beware. Testing the efficacy of campaigns must surely always sit with an independent third party. Would we rather believe a water company’s statistics on leakage, or those of the regulator and reputable consumer groups. I think we know the answer.

Total DM