What does it mean with regard to retainer fees?
Procurement’s involvement will undoubtedly lead to a much higher level of scrutiny as to how these fees are derived. Procurement’s role is to ascertain the reasonableness of suppliers’ cost to their corporation and to validate that they are getting the best value for their money. Procurement needs to have some level of comfort that the make-up of the retainer fees reflect competitive pricing in the marketplace. In the case of PR, for the most part, procurement is buying people’s time as it relates to campaign ideas and the execution of programs. The pricing (i.e., agency billing rates) of individuals assigned to the client account, which is representative of the retainer fees, needs to be somewhat transparent to procurement. By this, I mean the average direct labor cost by agency job title or function, an understanding of the agency’s indirect overhead factor applied to direct labor, and the agency’s mark-up for profit. What does it mean with regard to the types of PR campaigns impleme
