Omnichannel Customer Experience: Session Recap: Key Takeaways from Emma Canny, Ian McDonald, Morgan Bittle, Diana Harter at ProcureCon Marketing

2025, ProcureCon Marketing. Panel Driving Impact: Elevating Omnichannel Customer Experience That Drives Measurable Results

Announcer: Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a lovely little treat. I know I did. We are gonna be doing one more panel for the afternoon, and then we're gonna head into, as you can see, we've had a little wardrobe change in here. We have some round tables at the front, and so you guys should come up and sit here because we're not doing the round tables yet, and we have a panel and we want you to come sit here and and talk. It's gonna be great. Okay, everybody come up. All right, so we have a great panel for you. This is on the omnichannel and we are gonna be hearing from lots of different great companies, co consolidated, Edgewell Personal Care, Adobe, and Pinterest. So please welcome our lovely panel to the stage.Emma Canny, Sourcing Manager – Pinterest (Moderator): Okay.

Emma Canny, Sourcing Manager – Pinterest (Moderator): Oh my goodness. Hello everybody. Thank you for coming to our panel. We'll do very brief intro introductions and then we'll just get into the meat of things. I'm Emma Canny. I'm a strategic sourcing manager of marketing and content at Pinterest. I've been very lucky to be in marketing sourcing my entire career except for small stint in law and policy, which you'll hear about more tomorrow morning at the Economic Uncertainty Panel.

But yeah, lovely to be here. I'll throw it over to you guys.

Ian McDonald, Sr. Global Category Manager – Edgewell Personal Care: Yeah. Hi everyone. I'm Ian McDonald, the senior global category manager with Edgewell Personal Care. You may not be familiar with Edgewell, but some of our brands include Banana Boat and Hawaiian Tropic Schick Cremo, Jack Black, that's a few of ours.

And yeah, excited to be here.

Morgan Bittle, Senior Procurement Specialist, Marketing Materials – Coke Consolidated: Hi, I'm Morgan Biddle. I'm a supervisor of marketing procurement at Coca-Cola. Consolidated. I mainly focus in the in-store point of sale side of things 2D Print as well as displays.

Diana Harter, Marketing Strategic Sourcing – Adobe: And I am Diana Harter. I am with Adobe managing the events and sponsorship and research categories.

Emma Canny, Sourcing Manager – Pinterest (Moderator): Amazing. All right, so first question, when we're talking to Omnichannels, what makes them so different to implement versus like a standard campaign for those of us who aren't in the retail space?

Ian McDonald, Sr. Global Category Manager – Edgewell Personal Care: So I'll start now. Say that what really makes it different is. The amount of coordination that it requires, and if it's really going to be successful, you have so many different stakeholders or so many different entities that need to work together.

It needs to be collaborative. It needs to avoid either redundancy or stepping on one another's toes or one of the risks is waste of multiple entities or multiple teams within. Being repetitive or not necessarily being in perfect, like working in concert with one another. Okay. It's important to make sure that gets, mapped out.

And it's one of those things that's much easier to say than do so many things. It's the execution and the implementation. Yeah. We're the real challenge lies. But yeah, that's one of the differences between an omnichannel campaign and your standard.

Morgan Bittle, Senior Procurement Specialist, Marketing Materials – Coke Consolidated: Yeah, and I would echo Ian here as, as far as that consistency goes and making sure you're bringing in all of the key stakeholders for a certain program, especially for ourselves my or myself in the in-store space.

Making sure that in-store program aligns with the digital program. So making sure that we're consistent across the board with the look and feel to make for a successful program.

Diana Harter, Marketing Strategic Sourcing – Adobe: And I would echo the same, even though I'm in the digital space. It's a very similar kind of way that we're tackling this.

In addition to legal and finance, we're also having to incorporate a bunch of different marketing teams that are gonna be impacted by whatever kind of deal that we're focusing on at the time.

Emma Canny, Sourcing Manager – Pinterest (Moderator): Amazing. When you think of like the key challenges that you guys have faced in implementing Omnichannels, what are some things that come to mind and how are you, how have you historically coped with, or what are plans that you have for the future on how to address these challenges?

Ian McDonald, Sr. Global Category Manager – Edgewell Personal Care: Again I'll start an offer up that. To make something successful in this space, I think it's important to really leverage the partnerships that you have externally, and that's, again, something that it's easy to say to actually take advantage of what you have access to and to make sure that you're really leaning in a meaningful way to get as much value from your partners.

You have many different. Like tools for example, be it something like a sprinkler or a bizarre voice and ratings and making sure that I would suggest that we all lean into the capabilities that they have more than we do. If I were to do like a deep audit into what we've done and how we've utilized what's available to us, I would think I'd be.

Unpleasantly surprised at how much we leave on the table, and I think it's something we really need to rely on the platforms or the external partners themselves to help us to hold our hand a little bit and make sure that we are utilizing as much as we can. 'cause there's a lot that, whether it be a bandwidth issue and we just don't have the bandwidth to dive deep into some of these capabilities or just a awareness and know-how.

I think we probably scratched the surface and there's a lot more we can do to get some benefit from the amazing capabilities of some of our tech partners.

Diana Harter, Marketing Strategic Sourcing – Adobe: I would add to that too, that in addition to looking at some of our partners, I love looking internally too. Our marketing teams are some of the best in the world.

They're very highly trained and very forward thinking and just hearing them share what it is that they're, what keeps 'em up at night and what are the things that they, if, pie in the sky, the thing that they could possibly have. What is that? And try to see what can we do to make that happen for them.

Talking with our suppliers and sharing this is what our marketing team would like to do, what can we do in order to get there is really helpful. And then of course, I think, even turning to consultants is also very important to assess where do you guys see the market going in the sector?

Our marketing teams have this idea, this is what we're hearing from our suppliers, but what are you seeing after talking to a couple of your clients as well?

Morgan Bittle, Senior Procurement Specialist, Marketing Materials – Coke Consolidated: And I would say from my perspective, a challenge is in measuring these results, we wanna make sure that we're getting the proper and accurate data to show the accurate picture of the execution of the program or for whatever you're looking to be reporting on, like Ian mentioned.

So making sure you're bringing in clean data and putting that in a, format or a report that is easily consumed by your internal stakeholders.

Emma Canny, Sourcing Manager – Pinterest (Moderator): Love it. Yeah. And when you think of procurement's role in all this, what are some examples where procurement can provide the most value to your internal stakeholders or even your customers when it comes to implementing an omnichannel?

Ian McDonald, Sr. Global Category Manager – Edgewell Personal Care: I feel like I should let someone else go first, but I'm happy to, but you're all looking at me. I turned to my right. I'm not trying to put anyone on the spot.

Diana Harter, Marketing Strategic Sourcing – Adobe: I guess I can go. I'm trying to like, and a specific example is I am I help manage the sports sponsorships. Sports is very active right now and that was something that we had to.

Very much get everyone very quickly at the table, 'cause that area moves very fast and it's high dollar, but it's, we have a very small window of time that we have to get that done. And so to have all of the players and trying to incorporate all of these different opinions, but we had a lot of pushback on what is the ROI of this deal?

Are we actually, yes, sales wants to do this. Yes, marketing is excited about this, but their leaders and my leaders are asking, what are we actually getting in return for this? Pretty significant investment and just trying to, marketing collects all this data pretty regularly, but just having them, okay, send me all the data pieces that you have.

I need this data piece and this data piece, and converting that together to really show that actual impact that we're getting from investing in that deal.

Morgan Bittle, Senior Procurement Specialist, Marketing Materials – Coke Consolidated: Yeah, and I would build on that by saying for us our ask is that we're getting clear and concise feedback on what they would like to see, maybe what worked last time, what didn't work last time, and what they would like to see for upcoming programs.

Because without that feedback, we don't have a clear goal of what we're looking for. So making sure that communication is honed in. So we all are aligned on the final goal.

Ian McDonald, Sr. Global Category Manager – Edgewell Personal Care: Yeah, and I'll just add from a procurement perspective, it's not my intent whenever I go into any sort of a work stream isn't just to drive price down.

It's to really make sure we're getting results. And in order to do that, you can't just negotiate rates and then in a deal and get a contract in place and then say that it's done. To build on what I was saying a moment ago, it's the utilization and it's ensuring that there is a real return.

Like I'm, this might sound a little non-pro procurement esque, but I'm happy to spend money as long as the return bears that out, and there should, everything that we do should more than pay for itself. And it should be one of those things where the more value you're generating. The more intelligent it becomes to spend more and to put more investment into it.

And so in terms of procurement's role in making some, driving impact in an omnichannel, it's just really not handing it off after an agreement is signed, but staying through and maintaining some oversight and support for the marketing team that you're supporting to to ensure that. Your external partners are delivering what they say they're going to deliver and that you're really, I'd love to say pouring, gasoline on the fire to create more of a, more of a blaze.

Emma Canny, Sourcing Manager – Pinterest (Moderator): Yeah. And I always stress with my stakeholders, especially in many instances where the ROA, ROI might not be able to be quantitatively summarized. Just being able to be like okay, what can I tell my CFO? What can I tell my CAO? Having the flexibility and collaborating I feel like really goes a long way.

So feeding into that with stakeholder management, like how do you guys, strategize your stakeholder management strategy and making, keep prioritizing stakeholder management in order to make omnichannel implementation successful.

Diana Harter, Marketing Strategic Sourcing – Adobe: I think if you can benefit from a long runway, that is ideal.

Especially in my company, it is very difficult to get in front of our executives. They're scheduled for, months out, essentially. So having, understanding that and communicating that even with our internal people as well as our suppliers, like it's just gonna take some time.

We're trying to. Figure this out well and in advance because you're gonna have a much better move strategically, if you can think about this with that long runway. That doesn't always happen. And I'll be honest, majority of the time it doesn't happen. So you do have to adjust very quickly and try to, I feel like there's like that internal collateral that you have to really weigh on of really getting to know the executive assistants to really I just need 15 minutes to get on their schedule because we have to be able to push this along.

And their feedback is crucial. So that's unfortunately a bit of the reality for me.

Morgan Bittle, Senior Procurement Specialist, Marketing Materials – Coke Consolidated: I have found that telling them why we have such a long runway and the reason why that lead time has added up to maybe longer than they anticipated or prepared for just having that conversation so that they understand where you are coming from and maybe you can better understand where they're coming from.

But for us, that has helped. We've put some processes in place where it actually walks them through that timeline of. Where we are in the process and why. And that helps manage expectations. But to your point that does not always happen. And so when that doesn't happen, continuing that transparency and that communication so that you tell them like.

I'm gonna work to get to this deadline. But let me tell you, these are the levers that I have to pull so that I can make that work for you. And I think keeping them in that constant line of communication helps them understand why or how we do what we do to get to the final project.

Ian McDonald, Sr. Global Category Manager – Edgewell Personal Care: Yeah, and I would totally echo this sentiment both of you shared about the long runway.

Always helpful. No matter what the context, it always helps to have more time than less. I would also add, yes, always good to be on good terms with any assistance who might be able to make some flexibility with someone's with the senior leader's time or their schedule. Fortunately I can only imagine how difficult it is at both of your organizations.

Not that it's easy where I am, but I've been places where it's much worse and so there's enough connectivity that it's not impossible to at least grab a few minutes or get someone's attention, which makes it. Nice. That isn't as challenging as it is elsewhere. One thing I do want to add though, where we can in procurement can add value is our organization is structured as such where there aren't too many points of connective tissue and us in procurement, we are that connective tissue.

So we're the ones that can see the various pieces and sometimes be the go-between that has that holistic view. And that's an area where it can help drive. More cohesion and and a similar. A similar outcome or a similar, like trying to move us all in the right same direction rather than having disparate pieces go off in multiple directions.

Emma Canny, Sourcing Manager – Pinterest (Moderator): Yeah. There are many times in my own experiences where I feel like I almost should have a PMP for like how much I've had to project manage people. Not speaking from recent experience. But no, that, that's super helpful. And I think also like being able to be their collaborator and advocate. For marketing.

'cause I think I always say, like, when people ask me like, what makes marketing procurement so special? And I think it's, I think my mom was a marketer, so I speak with a personal lens. I feel like there's a lot of marketers out there who really, because they're so creative and so like thinking and nuance, they're afraid that like finance people are gonna come in and be like, you're dumb.

You don't understand what I'm saying. This is, I know numbers like I'm smarter than you. And it's, I think when you approach like stakeholder management with empathy and like understanding, but also honesty and just being able to speak to your own limitations, I always feel like tantamount for success

Ian McDonald, Sr. Global Category Manager – Edgewell Personal Care: always helps.

And I'll just add to that too. It's especially when you're dealing with internal stakeholders, you're all part of the same team, right? And not that you can't have that same team mentality even with your external partners. In fact, you should. Fully support and do a lot to try to foster that. Yeah. But when you are having those conversations internally, you really are driving towards the same goal.

Yeah. And it's I've found it to be helpful going into these interactions with internal stakeholders to really lean into that and. Drive that message if I'm just here to help you. And success does have to be rooted in some sort of a financial outcome. You can't do what you do. Totally devoid of that,

Audience: right?

Ian McDonald, Sr. Global Category Manager – Edgewell Personal Care: But let's go figure this out together and I just like to be a resource and a team member. So when you're doing it from that lens or through that perspective, it is typically received much better.

Emma Canny, Sourcing Manager – Pinterest (Moderator): Definitely amazing. Speaking of external partners, I feel like agencies, are a huge part of this equation.

How do you collaborate with your external partners, agencies included, to really successfully show value to the C-level execs who have five, you have five minutes with them and you have to quickly show them like the high level summary of the value you brought, which I can totally rephrase that because that sounded.

Totally garbled. How do you partner with agency partners to show value?

Ian McDonald, Sr. Global Category Manager – Edgewell Personal Care: So I'll just say, and quick, high level not even a disclaimer, but just like a public service announcement, relationships with agencies is a big part of why I have stayed in the industry that I have. 'cause I so genuinely enjoy and value working with agencies.

I've had the. Wonderful experiences. I've been fortunate enough to be part of some really incredible partnerships and personal relationships, so I really do value that. And one of the easiest ways is to give them an opportunity to say, not so much that they're grading their own homework, but help us understand what you've delivered.

Help us understand how you've just driven so much value, or oftentimes. Help us understand how you've gone above and beyond. Maybe you've made an agency investment. I might not be aware of it and if I'm not aware of it and I am specifically looking for it, 'cause I'm much more aware of what they may or may not have done.

I do have an agency background so I can put my myself in their shoes and understand some things that they may have done or decisions that they've made that some of my other stakeholders might not understand. And I try to be vocal so that internal partners. Are seeing what agencies are doing. But even me there's definitely things that are going on that I'm not aware of. So I say, raise your hand, shout from your rooftop and let me know what you've done. That's been so spectacular, and I'll make sure the broader organization is aware of that as well. But I think just asking them directly is a good way to get to the value story and let them puff their chest out and and pat their own back.

Yeah.

Morgan Bittle, Senior Procurement Specialist, Marketing Materials – Coke Consolidated: I would definitely echo that, and mine's not as much on the agency side, but it's more so on the supplier production side. They're my external partners, and so I really take it as education. I wanna be educated. I let them be the subject matter expert in their space and tell me what they're doing.

Tell me what production looks like or their materials and what's currently going on in their markets and what do I need to know? So that I can take that and educate my internal stakeholders. And this has been really beneficial for us because in doing that, I also am learning those levers to pull that I mentioned earlier.

So we've seen this, that's helped us in production savings. In material cost savings, and we're able to pass that education along to our internal stakeholders so that we can let them know what we're seeing, being that bridge between the vendors and our internal partners.

Diana Harter, Marketing Strategic Sourcing – Adobe: So I'm in a little bit unique of a space in that I came from marketing.

I had a 10 year marketing career before I pivoted over to. Procurement sourcing. 'cause I actually found, I liked having these conversations more than creating the content. But I think from that perspective, I've just been very candid with my suppliers and with my internal team of just letting 'em know, here's my prior experience.

I actually am very interested to know where you guys are planning on going. I talked with both of them. Honestly. I love. Hearing where the suppliers are interested and where they wanna pivot and go to. And I love hearing from the internal team and it, we just keep a very open dialogue about that. We really value transparency with our suppliers and with our team.

So we're just very transparent back of, this is where we want to go. This is where we're anticipating the market going. I feel like it's a, it creates a very symbiotic kind of relationship, which really does benefit everybody at the end of the day. That's how I see it, honestly.

Morgan Bittle, Senior Procurement Specialist, Marketing Materials – Coke Consolidated: I would agree with that.

Once you give a little transparency to the vendor, you see them give it back and it creates a much stronger partnership for sure.

Emma Canny, Sourcing Manager – Pinterest (Moderator): Yeah. I always feel like having just like really fluid, two way communications in any context, but I feel like especially with something as complex and as time sensitive and operationally lack of a better term, fragile as an omnichannel.

I feel like that's as even more important. Also, I'm legally obligated to ask the next question. Otherwise, WBR is gonna have a very big conversation with me. When it comes to ai where do you think AI could really help procurement, deliver and communicate the value that they bring when implementing an omnichannel?

If at all,

Diana Harter, Marketing Strategic Sourcing – Adobe: I'll start. 'cause I know that this is something that we are very much known for. I use it all the time, honestly. I use it for trying to help me understand what's happening in the market, what are some of the future trends along with those sources. But I also will use it, Adobe PDF has its own AI assistant now, which is really great.

So I personally will read through all of my contracts before. I know not everyone loves doing that, but I actually do. I think it's very interesting to see what is included in each of those contracts and try to see like what are they trying to insert in there that the, they're hoping we won't see. But I do that so then I can then use my assistant and be like, I think I remembered something.

And I'm asking questions like, where was that section about this, where was that section about that? And that is exactly. The way that I hope that AI will be used in our space is it's meant to more assist us not to replace anything that we do.

Morgan Bittle, Senior Procurement Specialist, Marketing Materials – Coke Consolidated: And I would say for me, I'm not currently implementing it in my procurement processes.

I, I know that will come just not quite there yet. But where I am implementing it is from like a data perspective. Really trying to measure results and if I'm feeling. Stuck with the data, or if I want to understand a large set of data helping run through an internal AI platform that can help me understand or maybe even gain a different perspective on the data itself.

Ian McDonald, Sr. Global Category Manager – Edgewell Personal Care: Yeah, and just adding onto that, I too feel that we're really at the infancy and least in terms of adoption and utilization. It was said earlier today, so much focus goes on toward generative AI and dealing with the creative capabilities of, and the power of what it can deliver, but there's just so much that it can do in terms of the analysis.

Like you were just mentioning. It's pretty mind boggling and in my experience it's been really helpful. It's been really good. I am on the lookout for hallucinations or something where it just doesn't. Make sense or kick something back that's whoa, wait a second. So it does require oversight.

You can't just do it, run it, and leave it at that. What I am not sure, and here's where I haven't really gone that far yet, is really getting a sense of how the agency is using it and how they've introduced it into their work streams to support clients. That's something that I think we need to have some real just.

Gen, genuine, honest, frank discussions around how we're going to leverage it and harness it in a way that drives our shared ambitions. Emma Canny, Sourcing Manager – Pinterest (Moderator): Yeah, and also like driving it in a way that makes sense, right? What the end goals are. The pie in the sky, the big picture, totally aligned with that. I think, when it comes to going back to the value piece, because I feel like this is what this whole conference is about how we're showing value.

Emma Canny, Sourcing Manager – Pinterest (Moderator): What do you think have been like some successes personally from your own implementations that you've been able to highlight as far as your role in the whole campaign?

Ian McDonald, Sr. Global Category Manager – Edgewell Personal Care: Yeah. I don't have that million dollar case study that's so whoa, that's mind boggling. But I can say that, we're working very closely with and we've introduced our agency and our data team, our da, our data scientists that have done some internal mms, and we have them now getting embedded into the beginning of the process, and they will be a key part of, kPI identification, right? There are so many ways that you can just measure things and come up with these vanity metrics that do they really make a difference?

Is that really the goal? I heard it also said earlier today it's look, the goal is sales. The goal is growth or market share growth or things like that. Impressions maybe help, but that's not the end goal. But, so getting the data team, getting the right people to. Be speaking with the agency to be a part of the process so they can be, they can help influence inform what that program looks like and then just making sure that they have access to the data, that they either own it and have it directly, or that agencies can share it in a format that is user friendly and allows them to do what they need to do.

And then at the end of the day, you gotta be able to glean insights. And that's why I'm really excited about having. It's hard work, it's hard to be able to do that and really see the signals amongst all the noise, but making sure the right people have their eyes on it and they can do what they are so adept at doing.

And that's when you really start to unlock the power of all these various tools. But it takes cohesion and coordination.

Morgan Bittle, Senior Procurement Specialist, Marketing Materials – Coke Consolidated: I would say we've added the proper teammates, like you mentioned, getting the right people involved. Now we have a procurement team member that's only doing data and analytics because that's not something that we had before.

And what that is doing is unlocking things that we hadn't seen before. And these are big numbers that we like, wanted visibility to. So making sure you're getting the right players involved and making dashboards and reports for what your internal stakeholders want. They don't want, whatever our procurement view is, they want something that will service them and help them order smarter.

So making sure we're being that strategic partner to them. I almost feel like it was, we went from an ordering. Just placing the orders as requested to now being that strategic partner for them, showing them how to order smarter. And these are the numbers that we have. You can see this dashboard every week, and you can learn how that program was and how we can make it better in the future.

So making sure you have the right teammates involved to really provide that strategy to your internal stakeholders.

Diana Harter, Marketing Strategic Sourcing – Adobe: I would say we're still doing it ourselves, and so we really do lean on what our marketing teams are collecting and looking at their dashboards and asking for access to some of their dashboards and letting 'em know exactly what are the data points that we're actually interested in, and.

Also letting them know as well that maybe we're not collecting certain data pieces that down the line are actually gonna be very important and that their CMO is gonna ask them at some point. And so we'll have those conversations with them and we'll have it with our suppliers as well of, Hey, I think we need to start collecting a different set of data because, yes, marketing is very interested in touch points and impressions and all this other stuff.

Finance is very interested in other things. And yes, all of that does help, but we do need to know some of these more mature pieces to really show some of those conversions and you know that investment overall.

Morgan Bittle, Senior Procurement Specialist, Marketing Materials – Coke Consolidated: I think a piece of that you touched on a little bit, but definitely knowing your audience.

Yes. What dashboards or reports are you showing the marketing team versus what you're showing your finance team? Because it's totally different. So data is really powerful in that way. Making sure that you format it in what's most effective for that team, knowing your audience.

Diana Harter, Marketing Strategic Sourcing – Adobe: Yeah, audience is huge.

Yeah.

Emma Canny, Sourcing Manager – Pinterest (Moderator): Yeah, just to double click on that, I think, a lot of what we do is just so data driven, especially, with the rise of AI and other mar like MarTech tools and procurement tools. How do you guys make sure that you are staying on top of the data collection, making sure that it's the right data points to be to be requesting, to be tracking.

Is that something you track in the contracts as well as like KPIs or other metrics?

Diana Harter, Marketing Strategic Sourcing – Adobe: So I personally will, nobody wants to hear it, but I actually do turn to AI to see what's out there, what's gonna be on the forefront. I keep up on the news too, to and I start asking my marketing teams, have you thought about this kind of impact and whatnot in the future?

Because I think that all of this comes into play. I'm only using AI really to give me like a general market view as well as turning to market research as well. I'm not, I don't wanna put them on a. On a secondary place. 'cause they're not, they're very much at the forefront. But AI is very easy.

It's like the new Google in a way. Of just, let me ask this quick question. Let me get this conversation started. Let me see what other, but what other things I need to be asking. 'cause maybe I don't see the full picture because I'm so hyper-focused on one thing. So that's what I use it as.

It's giving me a broader sense and then I can hone in on, on more specifically on the tactics that I'm looking at.

Emma Canny, Sourcing Manager – Pinterest (Moderator): Excellent. I think we are rounding out our time and we will dive right into q and a. But before we do for any of us out there who are looking to, who are preparing to help launch an omnichannel in conjunction with marketing, what are some final recommendations that you guys have ha have reflecting on your own experiences?

Ian McDonald, Sr. Global Category Manager – Edgewell Personal Care: Yeah, just offer, map it out. Know who the players are. And make sure that they're all together, create some sort of a task force that's overseeing everything and in contact. It's quite cliche to say it, but communication is important. You cannot over communicate. Also, one of the most, I'm gonna try to get this quote I might not get it exactly right, but the gist is. One of the most dangerous aspects of communication is the illusion that it's actually occurred, which is, you might think you've communicated, but have you really, or you might think everyone's on the same page, right? But are they really? And so just, yeah, over communicate, make goals clear, make responsibilities clear, and yeah, just really get everyone on the same page.

That's pretty much table stakes.

Morgan Bittle, Senior Procurement Specialist, Marketing Materials – Coke Consolidated: You teed me up really nicely there. I we practiced that earlier.

Ian McDonald, Sr. Global Category Manager – Edgewell Personal Care: Yeah, that's right. We're well coordinated.

Morgan Bittle, Senior Procurement Specialist, Marketing Materials – Coke Consolidated: But I was definitely gonna say that communication is key here. The different points that we touched on today. Communication, if you have the data and the reporting, you're communicating it accurately to the correct team and the correct audience.

If you're educating yourself, you're communicating your stakeholders. On the education so that everyone can be aligned and just concise communication with your stakeholders in general, making sure that you're all working towards the same goal, and that's not possible if you're not communicating in a transparent fashion.

So I think all of that is key to a successful program.

Diana Harter, Marketing Strategic Sourcing – Adobe: Yeah. In addition to what they both said, I think key is you have to know what your target is. If you don't have a clear understanding of what the target actually is, then omnichannel fails. You have to know. What it is that you're trying to go after.

Emma Canny, Sourcing Manager – Pinterest (Moderator): Love it. All right. Handing it up for questions.

Announcer: Alright.

Emma Canny, Sourcing Manager – Pinterest (Moderator): Oh, come on. There's no bad question. We

Announcer: gotta have something here.

Emma Canny, Sourcing Manager – Pinterest (Moderator): This is my first time moderating a panel, folks. Come on.

Morgan Bittle, Senior Procurement Specialist, Marketing Materials – Coke Consolidated: All right.

Announcer: Come on. What the heck? All right, we got one

Emma Canny, Sourcing Manager – Pinterest (Moderator): over

Morgan Bittle, Senior Procurement Specialist, Marketing Materials – Coke Consolidated: there.

Audience: You mentioned about looking at the agencies and trying to dig into how they're using ai. What are your, what's your, like your position on paying these creative agencies and then them using ai? Do you think there's a difference of opinion that you're paying for humans, but then you're getting robots or vice versa?

Ian McDonald, Sr. Global Category Manager – Edgewell Personal Care: It's a good question, and I'll start and say it's an area that, to be honest, I'm a little conflicted by. Because I, for whenever there's a discussion around efficiency and doing things quicker or doing things with robots or the ai, there's a human element to it as well, or a human impact. And I'm aware enough to understand that if there is this efficiency, they could do it for less.

'cause they don't need a team of humans trying to come up and ideate. And I don't think that's the. The big win. I don't think that's out like the goal. So I think it's a question of how do we leverage it? And I'm not, I don't wanna dodge your question. I want to take it first, like head on, but I don't necessarily have the answer.

It's a conflict. I don't want agencies to have to reduce head count. Whenever I hear about that, whenever I hear about a reduced headcount, no matter where, no matter what company, and it's been in the news quite a lot, it's a sad, it's a sad update. It's a sad piece of news that. I find to be unfortunate. With the analysis though, it does require humans.

So I want to just have that frank conversation to find that right sweet spot. As a client, I don't wanna pay for something I don't need, but I don't think a victory is the agency slashing headcount and us paying less. That's not a goal of mine. But there's a, there's some balance to be struck. I just don't know what that is at this point.

And I think. Not many of us do. I think we're all trying to figure it out. It's still really new and the capabilities and the, to have something that powerful when they're coming up with, I've seen examples that just are really strong, but that's also, it's curated a little bit too. I don't know how strong those outcomes are in the real world on a regular basis.

It could it be that the experts who really know how to use it are generating these beautiful videos? Anyway, sorry, a bit of a ramble there, but I don't know if there's a, if there's one great question. Did my other panelists, do you guys have any thoughts?

Diana Harter, Marketing Strategic Sourcing – Adobe: Yeah, so we just had Max a couple, like last month actually.

So we had several thousand creators there asking very similar questions like, is this gonna replace what I do my job? And from our standpoint we're saying, no, it's not. Nothing will ever replace what a human can do. The human element is always more. More valuable than the ai and now the younger generation can actually identify AI created versus not.

I don't have that eye right now, but I'm hoping I'll get to that point. And I think that, that says a lot about your brand. If something is completely AI created. Definitely use it to give you ideas. Definitely use it to get like you, push you further. 'cause a lot of times creators will be spending hours or weeks on something that AI can get it done in a second, but then take it further and elevate it even more.

I think that's what we're really hoping for is elevate it. Don't use AI to get like the very nitty gritty done or, help you get that creative juice going. But then now as a human, you need to make it even better. That's our expectation at least.

Emma Canny, Sourcing Manager – Pinterest (Moderator): Yeah. I'll also add very quickly, I think for us, we're al, or at least for me not speaking on behalf of Pinterest I think it's all about transparency.

So especially when it comes to the bit, like especially with production, in particular it's really being direct and being like, the assumption is that you're using AI for something. What are you using it for? And like there, I had a conversation recently with an agency who were using it for some aspects of post-production and I was like, great, please don't charge that for, charge us that because, that doesn't make sense.

And having those conversations with a lot of transparency and, sometimes brutal honesty. But I think also making it clear in the contract in the deliverable section, like it's those kind of conversations we're having too.

Announcer: We have time for one more quick question.

Audience: Hi. Thank you. I direct this at Ian, but it's really for the whole panel. Ian, you mentioned saying that you, when you buy services, you wanna make sure that they are, they either cost less or about the same or less. Along those lines aren't things that are better worth paying more for?

Question sort of the secondary question to that is, when the relationship is geared around growth, how do you factor in the growth that relationship delivers into the total cost of ownership as part of your decision whether to partner with somebody?

Ian McDonald, Sr. Global Category Manager – Edgewell Personal Care: Trying to make sure I understand the question, but from a standpoint of factoring in growth into the overall relationship, if there is a performance element in the compensation and the alignment of goals, then absolutely. I would love for, all of us like the rising tide to rise all boats, including the agency. And and that's a conversation I've had with internal stakeholders where I've proposed performance incentive, incent in essence a bonus structure or a bonus program, and.

I've mapped out some scenarios and I said, all right, in this scenario, yeah, we'll be paying more than we otherwise would have, but we should be smiling ear to ear, like elated that we're paying the agency more. 'cause if that scenario becomes real and that's our result, we should be doing back cartwheels and back flips.

And yeah, the agency should get it. Let's just grow the pie together, give the agency a bigger slice, and we're all winning together. It's something where this, we don't have the luxury of big budgets where I am. And so anytime you say, all right here's a scenario where we're gonna pay more, there's a little bit of a pause there, but I really drill in on, but that's only if we're hitting these milestones or we're hitting these thresholds.

And if that's our case, that's such an improvement from where we are today, that it's really a win for all of us. So I really do. And I, as I mentioned, just to. Carry on with the thought about really valuing the agency relationship. I want us to all be in it together. I want us to be winning and celebrating together.

And if that happens, I want the agency to get the reward.

Emma Canny, Sourcing Manager – Pinterest (Moderator): Alright. I think that's all. I

Announcer: think that's all the time we have. Thank you so much, panelists. Thank you. Let's give brown applause. Thank

you.