The Cabinet Office minister Douglas Alexander has announced that COI Communications, the government's in-house marketing unit, is to test the media buying market over the next year to ensure that campaigns are being bought cost effectively. A media framework will be established that Whitehall departments will be invited to join.
The announcement forms part of a compromise deal thrashed out between the COI and the Department for Transport, which sparked controversy last year by setting up its own creative agency roster and media buying arrangements.
At a meeting in London this morning, attended by COI chief executive Alan Bishop, head of the Government Information and Communication Service Mike Granatt, DfT communications director Charles Skinner, and Dick Emery, chairman of the Advisory Committee on Advertising, it emerged that the DfT's existing agency contracts will be allowed to run their natural course.
However, the breakaway department is likely to join the new framework next year, paving the way for an end to more than 12 months of acrimony between the two organisations.
Skinner declined to provide quantitative evidence that the DfT breakaway had been in the taxpayers' interest, saying that such details "were commercially confidential".
The COI will also undertake a restructure of its client services teams to reflect more accurately the structure of its government clients, and is to establish a "Client Council" to ensure that COI is meeting departments' needs.
In a further shake-up of the government's advertising activity, ACA, which is made up of some of the UK's most senior marketing professionals, will be given direct input into the planning of marketing campaigns.
The COI's annual report will be published later today, revealing that government adspend dipped slightly during the last financial year to around £160m.
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