The short answer is neither, but both. The strongest agency selection processes are not owned by one function alone. But getting this balance right can be tricky. We spoke with Rebecca Nunneley, Tobi Asare and Paul Stevenson at AAR, three people who have sat on every side of the table, to understand where processes can become difficult, where it can go wrong and what it looks like when it goes right.
The case for early alignment
When we asked Tobi how she frames the opportunity, she was clear that the best answer is not about choosing between Marketing and Procurement. It is about designing a process where both are involved early enough to shape the outcome properly.
“It’s about triangulation,” she told us. “CMOs, Procurement and pitch selection consultants all need to be working together to get the best outcome for the brand. Procurement brings essential commercial expertise: value, risk, governance, efficiencies, and supplier accountability. The marketer brings the brand, customer, and creative judgement. And AAR brings deep market knowledge, benchmarking, and agency model and marketing operating model expertise to help those perspectives come together in the right way. All three viewpoints make the process stronger.”
Paul, who spent years leading agency partnerships from the brand side before joining AAR, recognises that triangulation from experience, but also knows how rarely it happens naturally, and that it needs to be nurtured.
He draws a distinction that matters: “It is important to understand early what shape of Procurement team you are working with,” Paul said. “Some teams sit across the whole business and bring broad commercial expertise across multiple categories. Others are specialist Marketing Procurement teams, with deep experience of agency models, scopes, remuneration structures and supplier relationships. Both can add real value, but they may need different levels of context and support.”
Rebecca continues: “A specialist Marketing Procurement team may already be confident in understanding the nuances between different agency types, including areas such as fee structures, contract terms and supplier governance. In that context, the role of Marketing and the pitch consultant becomes slightly different: less about explaining the category from scratch, and more about aligning the commercial model to the strategic ambition of the brief, helping balance efficiency with effectiveness, understanding the specific teams and agencies in question, and bringing a current view of a market that is changing fast. That is particularly important in the context of AI, where new capabilities, technologies and ways of working are changing not just what agencies can deliver, but how clients should evaluate value, cost and long-term fit.”
So where can we spot the stalling points, and the solutions?
Where it can become difficult: late-stage commercial negotiation
Rebecca, Paul and Tobi have watched the same scene play out too many times. A marketing team invests valuable time and energy building what they believe will be a transformational agency partnership – finding the right people, the right culture, the right energy.
But then too often, Procurement is brought into the process only at the point of contract negotiation.
“You spend a lot of time aligning cultures, ways of working and personalities to make the relationship feel like one team,” Paul said. “But if Procurement has not been part of that journey — if they have not been close to the brief or had the chance to build a relationship with the agency — the commercial conversation can narrow too quickly to price, rate cards and savings targets. Those things matter, but they need to sit alongside value, capability and the long-term fit of the partnership.”
Rebecca builds on this: “Bring Procurement in early and give the commercial workstream proper shape from the outset. That means involving Procurement in the pitch kick-off, agreeing the commercial principles alongside the broader selection criteria, and running a parallel commercial workstream throughout the process so value, cost, risk, governance and long-term partnership fit are considered together, not bolted on at the end.”
AAR’s role: connecting strategic fit with commercial rigour
So, what does AAR actually do when an agency selection process needs both strategic judgement and commercial discipline? Tobi outlined three things.
“AAR’s proprietary benchmark data helps ensure the commercial deal is competitive in market without undermining the quality of thinking, seniority and team structure needed to deliver the work,” she said. “Second, we keep everyone anchored to the brief; what is your marketing strategy, what were you looking for from an agency partner, and how can we ensure the commercial approach is an accelerator of this? And third, as we are constantly in market, we can provide up-to-date insight on new emerging commercial models, and a point of view on what will work in a particular client’s set of circumstances.”
AAR’s role is not simply to help brands find the right agency. It is to help design the conditions for that partnership to succeed commercially and creatively. That means understanding what the client needs the agency model to deliver, designing and building the right commercial approach, fee benchmarking, identifying where efficiencies are possible, and making sure savings targets do not undermine the quality, capability or sustainability of the relationship being bought.
Paul described what that looks like in practice — and why it’s harder than it sounds. “If you’re meeting three or four potential partners over several days, brands often come out more confused than when they started. When I was a client, I worked with AAR and they were hugely valuable when it came to keeping us honest about what we were really looking for from an agency partnership. They’d bring us back to the principles: how are you scoring, what really matters, what are the criteria that should drive the decision and, therefore, what is the role that commercials should play in the overall decision-making process.”
Who should own what
When we pushed Paul on who should own what, definitively, he was precise.
“Procurement brings essential commercial expertise: value, risk, payment models, retainers, performance incentives, efficiencies, savings, contractual structure and long-term supplier accountability. Marketing brings the brand, customer, creative and relationship judgement. The strongest processes are designed so those areas of expertise inform each other from the start.”
He was equally direct about where it can fall apart: “Challenges tend to arise when roles are not clearly defined upfront — for example, when creative judgement and commercial judgement are treated as separate debates rather than connected parts of the same decision. And there’s nothing worse than having internal disagreements play out in front of agency partners.”
Tobi added a dimension: for brands who don’t have specialist marketing procurement knowledge and the resources available.
“Organisations like ISBA are doing a lot of work helping procurement teams develop a deeper understanding of marketing partnerships, not just selecting them, but how they run and evolve over time. That reflects how important specialist marketing procurement has become, not just as a buying function, but as a strategic partner in helping brands buy marketing services in a way that supports effectiveness, accountability and long-term value.”
Rebecca explains: “Specifically at AAR, we invest a lot of time in supporting and upskilling Procurement teams throughout any selection process, so that they have a lot of the tools they might need for future processes, where they may not have been involved closely with marketing procurement in the past.”
Why the brief is everything
Rebecca, Tobi and Paul returned, unprompted, to the same foundation: the brief. Before a single agency is approached, before a chemistry meeting is booked, before any scoring begins, the brief needs to be written, stress-tested, and signed off by every stakeholder in the room.
“The brief writing is absolutely critical,” Paul said. “You need a really clearly defined scoring system built from it. Once you’re in the process, it becomes incredibly complex very quickly. The criteria may differ from client to client but having that framework agreed before you begin is non-negotiable.”
Tobi put it in terms of AAR’s process: “We do a lot of upfront work with brands and stakeholders to design the right agency model in the first place. We write the brief, make sure all stakeholders sign off on it, benchmark the commercials, and design a model that meets both organisational and brand objectives. Those outcomes aren’t always just financial.”
The market has never moved faster
We asked whether the agency selection process has become meaningfully more complex in recent years. The answer from all was unambiguous.
“The landscape is changing faster than ever, especially with AI and technology being embedded into agencies,” Tobi said. “If you compare the agency landscape twelve months ago to today, it’s significantly different. That’s why we’re well placed, because of the amount of time we spend with agencies, understanding not just capabilities, but leadership teams and cultures, operating systems and agency technology stacks. We can break all of that down and make it clear for clients.”
Paul pointed to a structural shift that’s compounding the complexity: “The rise of the holding companies has changed things. Traditionally agencies had very clear swim lanes: media, creative, CRM, digital. Now holding companies bring all of those capabilities together under one umbrella. Clients are becoming more sophisticated in first-party data and omnichannel thinking, so briefs are becoming more sophisticated too. Brands literally can’t keep up with how fast the landscape is changing. Having a partner like AAR – immersed in the market every day – is worth its weight in gold.”
Advice for CMOs and Procurement leaders
We ended by asking Tobi, Paul and Rebcca for their honest advice to anyone approaching an agency review this year.
Tobi’s answer was thorough: “Really think about the team you build around the process. Pitch processes are incredibly time-consuming and internal teams still have day jobs. You only know what you know, so you need people who can uncover more and broaden your perspective. The experience of the process sends a signal to the market and to your internal teams – having people who understand how to structure that experience properly is hugely valuable. And you need experts who deeply understand the landscape, agencies and who can negotiate hard commercially without damaging the collaboration needed to achieve great work.”
Paul’s answer was, characteristically, more direct: “Bring the right people into the process early. And call AAR.”
Then, after a beat: “And have some fun with it. You don’t often get the opportunity to go to market for partnerships of this scale. Use it as an opportunity to learn, to explore new technologies, to understand how agencies are evolving. It should be a fun process.”
Rebecca concluded: “The point is simple: commercial judgement is not separate from agency selection. It is central to it. The best outcomes come when Marketing, Procurement and AAR are aligned early, clear on their respective roles, and working together to buy the right relationship for the business.”
AAR has been working with brands on agency search and selection for over 50 years.
