• by Jim Meskauskas , September 5, 2002

Something all individuals in a profession that involves buying or selling things know well: for all things you want to buy, there is someone out there to sell it.

Something else all individuals in professions that involve buying and selling things know well: there are two ends of a transaction.

This polarity demonstrates that there are opposite sides engaging in an exchange, namely, the buyer and the seller. Traditionally, this engagement has been what we would call a negotiation; or what shopkeepers at bazaars in Marrakesh would call “haggling.”

It seems that lately, though, buyers and sellers are approaching this business from the same side of the table. I’ve been to quite a few sales presentations where the sales reps are positioning themselves and their properties as partnership vehicles rather than products for sale.

In online advertising, it seems that those with something to sell are taking a new approach and positioning themselves as though they and the buyers are actually in this together - to work on the clients. It’s almost as if instead of it being buyers versus sellers, it is all of us versus the clients.

In some ways, it is. Certainly, the sellers and buyers of online media understand the value of Interactive as an advertising vehicle much better than the average marketing or brand manager at the client does. But, as I wrote a few weeks ago in my article about trying to “put the agent back in agency,” the agency’s job, ultimately, is to serve the interests of the clients. This means zealously representing the client to publishers, and that sometimes means confrontation for the purposes of getting the best deal that will yield the best results.

With agency/vendor deals like Arnold and Yahoo! or OMD and Disney, can a client really expect an agency to act on behalf of the client’s best interest, or will the agency act on behalf of their own best interests and the interests of their “partnership” with their vendor?

Partnerships with vendors are certainly essential, and I don’t mean to suggest that all dealings between buyers and sellers must be knock-down, drag-out fights. But we can’t conduct business as a series of Kumbaya moments either. Negotiating is inherently a confrontational exercise. It can be conducted in a civil manner, but my job as “agent” is to do what is best for only my client. That is not always what the client thinks is best and certainly not always what the publishers think is best.

Today, the client’s demand on the performance of their media and the kinds of work they expect it to do certainly demands closer relationships between publishers and buyers. Now that clients want their media to serve as distribution channels for product, it becomes imperative that those vehicles understand more about that client’s business. The level of understanding necessary requires changes in relationships that look more like partnerships than buyer/seller interaction. But this does not have to mean that buyers can’t still challenge sellers in ways to get the best deal they can for their clients.

We shouldn’t have to be expected to all get in bed and buy each other breakfast to do right by our clients. We should still be able to get into the ring and box, and at the end of the match, still be friends.