Global advertising director says agencies have to break down "P&L fiefdoms."

Barbara Basney is director of global advertising for Xerox Corporation, the $15.7 billion technology and services enterprise that helps businesses deploy smart document management strategies and find better ways to work. Headquartered in Stamford, Conn., Xerox is No.130 among the Fortune 500 and has 60,600 employees worldwide, including 35,100 in the United States (as of March 2004).

iMediaConnection: What was your biggest online "win" this year, and how did you sell it throughout the company?

Basney: The extension of the brand advertising campaign via the Web.

iMediaConnection: What surprised you in the online world this year?

Basney: The growth in natural search with Fortune 1,000 companies. It seems to really be on the radar screen now.

iMediaConnection: Have you realigned internal structures and resources to simplify or increase integrated marketing?

Basney: To increase integrated marketing, I assigned a team member to focus on natural search, paid keyword buys and online advertising.

iMediaConnection: Have you seen specific evidence of online driving offline sales?

Basney: No

iMediaConnection: Are you using consultants, software, agencies or other tools to help with search engine market

Basney: Yes. 

iMediaConnection: What do you believe is the future of ad agencies?

Basney: A breakdown of the P&L fiefdoms that exist today, so that agencies can truly integrate without performance risk. 

iMediaConnection: What do we need to be doing as an industry to help you make interactive marketing a bigger piece of your marketing pie?

Basney: It has measurable value. We need to consistently integrate pre- and postresearch into efforts that are not lead-response based. The value is there, but often needs to be proven.

Also, we need to have a better way of measuring online -- something that measures frequency per visitor.

iMediaConnection: Are you being affected by any consumer-generated marketing (CGM) -- blogs, user groups, etc.? Are you using any blogs or other social networking tools to market?

Basney: No

iMediaConnection: What blogs do you read?

Basney: None

iMediaConnection: What are your daily "must-see" Web sites and why?

Basney: CNN, WSJ