Thirty Years In, Tina Fegent Is Still Redefining Marketing Procurement

LONDON - What comes to mind when you think of procurement? Office managers hauling boxes of Bics? A thirty-page RFP with the brief hidden on page 28? That cliché dies quickly in the presence of Tina Fegent, who for more than 30 years, has been the reference point in marketing procurement, establishing the early playbook at Cellnet/O2 and shaping how the field works today.

Fegent counts innocent drinks, Scholl, Ferrero and Fujifilm among her clients and has helped define marketing procurement as a discipline, proving it belongs at the top table. Client side and agency side taught her the same lesson: treat suppliers like partners, treat process like design, and hold every decision to a single test, does it work? 

From there, Fegent is ruthlessly practical.

Rituals that steady the week

We speak on a weekday morning; Fegent has just returned from Palm Springs heat. To fend off the post-holiday dip, I ask what a perfect weekend looks like. “Perfect weekend would be in my garden.” The picture widens to movement and a small circle of company. “I quite like my exercise. So swimming and pilates, but I might go for a coffee afterwards as well. My best friend of 42 years who I went to Brighton Polly with lives nearby.”

The habit of getting in the water runs deeper than routine. “That comes from my dad who passed away over 20 years ago. He was London cab driver, and used to take me and my brother swimming. He was a great swimmer.” 

From weekends to first principles

Procurement can often read as the no, yet in capable hands it's how the idea gets to market intact. With that in mind, I ask Fegent where it all started. She stays in her practical register: “30 years ago and I was working with a company called BT Cellnet which is now O2. I was covering indirect procurement - everything from cars to stationary and user guides. The ad agency at the time was buying it and I questioned why aren't we going direct to a printer?” She tested the hunch and let the numbers decide. “So I went to a printer and it was 50% saving.”

“I studied marketing at Brighton Poly, not procurement, but the draw was the overlap, using marketing to get best value and solve problems for clients.” The category kept opening because the work kept moving.

Who set the standard

When I ask who shaped her ethic, she does not hesitate. “I think it was my mom. She passed away nearly a year ago now and she had to leave school when she was 14 to bring up her brothers and sisters so she never had the education that she wanted.” The rest is a string of nudges that opened doors. “She was the one when I was doing O levels. I said, ‘Oh, I don't want to do A levels.’ Well, why don't you do a diploma, why don't you go to university or poly? So, it was my mom and I found my way.”

The blocker that never changes

We turn to the client–agency relationship and the thing that breaks it. “The biggest issue is communication.” Time pressure bends good intent out of shape. “On the client side, it's time pressure. I spend 60 70% of my time on filling in purchase orders and signing off invoices and doing that and I want to have the time to do the fun stuff.”

She also believes senior presence is not optional if you want the work to last. “The exceptional work comes out of partnerships and it's not a term that we use lightly in procurement and I think senior people have a role to play in that to make sure that you move from that tactical to that strategic partnership.” The old stereotype of big lunches becomes governance when the right people show up. “That's exactly what they should be doing in having that at that very very senior level, talking about strategy and where to be heading in three, five, 10 years time.”

Britain, scale and realism

On national habits Fegent is brisk, “I think the industry still has it,” she says, meaning craft, understatement, and a long memory for what works. But scale lives elsewhere “the budgets to spend in one state is the same as we would spend in a whole year,” she notes of the United States.

Ambition, tempered

Her hardest lesson has nothing to do with savings. It is awareness. “Be self aware and know your emotional intelligence.” The story lands with the shock of recognition. “I had a massive knock back at Orange when I went for what I thought was a guaranteed promotion and I didn’t get it. The feedback was based on my management of one of my team members and I really hadn’t thought about my attitude and the impact on that.” The bruise became instruction. “It was my first management role and it really did knock me for six. But a fantastic lesson and one that 25 years on I still remember.”

Where ideas really form

When looking for inspiration Fegent phones a friend. “A lot of my good ideas come from when I am talking to work friends (my friend Debbie doesn’t call me Top Chat for nothing).” The example is immediate. “Only today I was talking to a work friend in New York and together we discussed and suddenly scoped out an initial product for our marketing procurement community that we are going to look into further.” Inspiration is social, then filtered. “So it is people that inspire me overlayed with being aware of forward thinking industry noise.”

Take your time

Ask Fegent what separates great partnerships from good ones and she points to something small and stubborn. Time. Not a calendar hold, but an actual investment. “The great partnerships are ones where time isn’t rushed. We are all rushing around in our personal and home lives but a great partnership is where all sides involve invest the time to make that partnership work. Invest being the key word there.” She does not pretend it is easy. “It is not an easy task at all but does make all the difference.” 

We speak about transparency and whether the industry has more of it now. Fegent does not varnish. “I would say no. I don't think we have.” Fegent says, which she offers not as cynicism but as a reminder to choose how you operate. 

Where AI shifts the power

When we talk AI, she splits the field. Inside brands, procurement already uses it where it saves time or risk. “Procurement has a lot of power with AI in terms of their processes and I already know procurement people that are using it to review their contracts to get market data to do agency search.” Agencies, she says, have invested earlier and deeper on the creative side. “I think agencies are way ahead of their investment on AI than clients are, they’ve been investing for years, when I see agency rate cards they've listed AI services for a few years now.”

The hard part is not adoption, it is accounting. “The issue is how to monetise it, is it a license fee? Is it a fixed fee?” she says, then makes a prediction born of long practice. “With AI we will start to look at different remuneration models.”

Creativity that actually works

On festivals and awards like Cannes Lions, she wants the human back at the centre. I really want to see that creativity I felt creativity was lacking. I felt from what I saw I think it was so AI tech data focused.”  For Fegent, the fix is layered: judge the work on strategy and human insight, use technology properly, and put diversity and sustainability on equal footing with everything else. She argues for fewer, more integrated categories that reflect how campaigns actually run, and for a harder line on outcomes. “It's about that effectiveness. Work that works.” 

The next chapter ahead

Legacy is not a plaque on a wall. It is a set of useful things other people can use. Fegent is specific about hers. “I’ve got a couple of legacy ideas, and one is marketing procurement awards to get the new Tinas out there, let’s recognise that.” Running alongside it is a second track. “One of my other legacy ideas is a marketing procurement training programme. 2026 is my year for building my legacy. I am really looking forward to it.”

What comes to mind when you think of procurement? After an hour with Fegent, it no longer looks like boxes of pens. It looks like a woman who loves irises and firm ground, both inherited gifts from parents who taught her how to stand and how to start. Who keeps a lane at half six, believes in long conversations between the people who can actually decide, names the relationship as it is, and holds the work to a single test: does it work. “I'd rather overcommunicate than undercommunicate,” she says.

After almost 30 years, for Fegent, the brief is still the same: make it work.

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