• Advertising Age, Sunday, July 12, 2009 9:52 PM

Consumer package-goods marketers are piling more pressure on marketing and media agencies, pushing them for ways to slash costs. For instance, both Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser, a $1 billion global spender, have called worldwide media-agency reviews in recent weeks.

The growing list of global agency reviews by such companies is "primarily cost-driven," says Stef Gans, CEO of consultancy Effective Brands. He adds that the lure of agency lineups that better reflect current marketing realities is another motivator.

Procter & Gamble's BAL (Brand Agency Leader) program, in which a lead agency gets a preset fee from which it pays other marketing-services shops, is also being expanded. The program reached about 40% of P&G's business as of July 1, but by year-end it will likely account for about 70%. The program is expected to result in fewer individual shops used by the marketer, as the newly empowered agencies themselves look to get more efficient. The shift is just one more sign of the growing power of procurement executives and processes in P&G's marketing-services decisions.

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