• by Joe Mandese , June 28, 2012

It’s always dangerous trying to live blog yourself, but I used that line on the panel I just moderated at the Brand Marketers Summit, and aside from being fond of clichés and mixed metaphors, my point was to get my panel and the audience to think about the role that one-stop integration plays in creating and executing great brand marketing vs. having an array of siloed agency voices piping in for “best-in-breed” solutions.

In English, that means what’s the best way to integrate creative and media – as well as the swath of communications platform, digital or otherwise – that a brand hires agencies to execute for them.

For Amy Bartle, the media and digital chief at La Qunita, and a last minute fill-in client perspective on the panel, she prefers to play that role herself. Mainly she says, because as much as she loves her agencies, their primary interest is in their own businesses, not hers.

Bartle says she currently has about 10 agencies in her roster, and is close to hiring an 11^th – a PR firm – and as much as that sounds like her job involves herding kittens, she says it begins with giving her agencies a clear mandate for what their role is in achieving her brand marketing goals.