Over a long period of ten months, Deutsche Telekom has conducted four parallel agency reviews, involving a large number of agencies, from traditional media to specialized ones.
As the first winner of this long pitch, and as the first agency selected for the new operational model of this telecommunications giant, emerged WPP’s Group M, which will continue planning campaigns and media buy for Deutsche Telekom as incumbent.
For the Adriatic region, this means that these parts of DT’s business will be managed by MediaCom, a member of GroupM.
“We have applied state-of-the-art elements of digital tendering across all the phases, resulting in an innovative and efficient approach on how to buy media services from suppliers,” says Volker Ross, Vice President Procurement Europe from Deutsche Telekom.
The company added that the new operating model requires a new kind of overarching cooperation between all parties involved, which is why intensive “collaboration workshops” were conducted as essential cornerstones in the tendering process to ensure successful cooperation going forward.
Through the four pitches, Deutsche Telekom is fundamentally realigning its international paid media activities by launching an innovative and progressive operating model for media across its European footprint, consisting of 13 Telekom subsidiaries. As a result of these activities, T-Mobile Netherlands and Hrvatski Telekom will remain with their current incumbent media agency partners for now.
“The ambition of our new operating model is to drive greater transparency and flexibility across all facets of the increasingly complex media ecosystem”, says Dr Christian Hahn, Vice President Marketing Communications, Strategy and Media at Deutsche Telekom.
This overarching ambition is to increase active guardianship and control over the Group’s paid media placements and outcomes, fundamentally re-defining the Telekom supplier arrangements.
To ensure flexibility, within the new model each of the Deutsche Telekom subsidiaries will implement packages in a way that fulfils the local needs and levels of services required.
According to announcements from the Deutsche Telekom, launch of the new media model is planned for the first quarter of 2018.
