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Every agency that’s ever participated in a pitch knows RFPs and pitch processes can be far from perfect. We’ve all heard the horror stories and whether the pitch is run directly by a client or a search consultant, win or lose, we all sense there’s probably room for improvement.
While we know there were more than 150 pitches undertaken in Canada last year, what we don’t know is the range of pitch practices agencies are faced with and where specifically we should be calling for change.
Last year, our partners at TrinityP3 in Australia pioneered a survey to capture much needed data on the state of the pitch landscape to help the industry understand the good, the bad and the ugly of pitching across Australia. The information gathered is now a starting point for an industry discussion around pitching based on actual data rather than hearsay.
We have joined forces with Campaign, to launch the State of the Pitch survey here in Canada. The 2024 survey is hosted by Campaign Canada and you can find the link to the survey here. Campaign have also published an article to explain what we hope to achieve and why we feel it is so important, as well as some industry commentary.

We are asking every agency that participates in any pitch – irrespective of winning or losing – complete the survey. The link can be used as many times as needed – one for each pitch.
Because pitches are typically confidential, we’re not mandating any information that can be linked back to a particular advertiser, agency or pitch, and is therefore within the confines of any reasonable confidentiality agreement. Likewise, details of any single survey response will never be revealed.
This is not about who won or lost. It is about how well those pitches were managed.
The survey will enable us (hopefully on an annual basis) to report on the trends in pitch behaviour and to start a meaningful dialogue with brands about improving the process for agencies in Canada.
Sampling commences today but any pitch you have participated in since January 2024 can be included.
Campaign’s global team of data analysts will then work to process the findings, working with the editorial team here in Canada to produce a full, anonymized report in Spring 2025.
In short, every pitch agencies participate in moving forward can now be included – no matter how big or small. Each and every contribution made will add to and inform a rich view of the state of pitching with which we hope to effect a positive change.
Our goal is to hold up a mirror to the industry that will inform – and hopefully transform – pitch processes based on agency input. It will start conversations between clients, agencies and consultants on what constitutes good pitching and what doesn’t. This is an opportunity to help our industry get it right, eliminate the practices that drive us all crazy, and a chance to have your say on the state of the pitch here in Canada.
Thank you in anticipation.
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Out of the blue, an RFP arrives in your inbox from a company with in an irresistible brand name. Wonderful!
But the thrill of the newly arrived RFP quickly gives way to discouragement when you see it’s a staggering 25, 50 (or even 100!) pages, with even more pages of terms and conditions. There’s probably little or no information about why they’re searching for a new agency and their questions are buried under a mountain of legalese and procedural directives. Yep. Probably a procurement crafted document from hell but the brand’s so great you can’t say no. Sound familiar? Well, take comfort, you’re not alone in your pain as almost any agency that receives this kind of procurement missive is agonizing as much as you are. So what are the clues and questions that you have a procurement driven RFP on your hands and how should you answer it? Here are few tell-tale warning questions we’ve seen in the past:Will you accept 180 day payment terms?
This one’s easy: No. For goodness sake people – why would anyone ask for or (or accept) 180 day payment terms. If you’re a client in search of a loan – go to a bank – don’t ask a potential agency to cash-strap their business to ease your cash-flow. Put another way, ‘would you mind if we held your paycheck for as long as you hold paying your invoices?’ Of course not. So why would anyone else?Describe your case studies in detail and attach all documentation in order to allow us to understand and evaluate the outcome
This issue for any agency in attaching ‘all documentation’ is likely a breach of confidentiality, and how could any team not associated with the project possibly evaluate the outcome? No matter how the question is phrased, the answer is: Client name – problem / solution – result. Succinctly. If you’re allowed to provide detail, by all means – but not at the expense of your own confidentiality agreements.Answer this question from another [unrelated] RFP we created…
This one came from an Asia Pacific RFP, but the variation on the theme could come from anywhere. And simply put, this is a procurement team lifting a question from a manufacturing RFP and dropping it into an agency RFP: What are the provisions of your DRP/BCP in respect of the services you are providing to your clients (e.g., alternative premises, recovery time, access to equipment and systems, etc.)? If you do not have a DRP/BCP in place, please state whether you intend to develop one. If so, please estimate date of completion. If you find multiple questions that are obviously only relevant to manufacturing or supply based RFPs, then make the case for pushing back, picking up the phone and asking why – even if it does break the rules.What discount will you provide / what work would be done at no cost?
Another case for pushing back – even if it means breaking the rules. As with extended payment terms, free work should be a deal-breaker for any agency and procurement teams should know better than to ask. Meaningful pricing is virtually impossible without a scope of work and pricing should reflect a competitive market price, while leaving room for a fair profit for the agency. Anything less is asking for trouble.Five golden rules
Rather than asking isolated questions that are largely irrelevant to agency search and selection, procurement teams will receive more meaningful and insightful responses by following five golden rules:- Context. Providing context for both the reason for the RFP and the questions being asked will help agencies craft insightful responses tailored to the organization for which the RFP is being issued.
- Case studies. Case studies should be used to provide a window into areas of agency capability that would be most relevant the client. An excessive number of case studies (more than five or six) will make evaluation between agencies more difficult and increase workload for both proponents and readers.
- Document size. Limiting the size of the response document to a specific number of words or pages is a great way to get the agency to focus their response, sharing what’s really relevant based on the context you’ve provided. This sets the foundation for more considered RFP responses and hopefully more engaged reading.
- Differentiation. Generic questions across about agency history or capabilities lead to generic answers that make the distinction between agencies more difficult, whereas thoughtful questions will generally lead to more thoughtful (and meaningful) answers.
- Evaluation criteria. Clearly articulated evaluation criteria will help agencies understand what to focus on within their responses and help procurement teams, and their marketing counterparts, rank responses in a meaningful order of merit.
If you’re answering an RFP and there’s no flexibility around these kinds of questions, beware. Press hard for their evaluation criteria and if it’s not forthcoming, the RFP may not be worth your time.
And finally… the question to which we don’t have an answer:
If your agency were an animal, what animal would it be?
I have to admit, I’ve no idea how or why this question would be asked but (unfortunately) we’ve seen it. So presumably the answer is, ‘dolphin’ because who doesn’t love dolphins, right? No? Then perhaps ‘tiger’. To eat whoever it was that came up with the daft question in the first place.Image by frimufilms on Freepik.
Marketer with well-known brands, seeks hardworking, imaginative agency.
For consideration, successful candidates must be prepared to answer detailed questions about their past, and then many hypothetical questions about proposed future relationship.
Finalists must then share financial history and be willing to sign alluring prenup.
Imagine (just for a moment…) you’d read an ad like that!
While some or all of those requests may be phrased somewhat differently, that is essentially how the traditional agency RFI / RFP scenario can often unfold. Marketers issue lengthy RFI questionnaires to assess the market and then narrow the field based on written responses. Shortlisted agencies are then briefed in an RFP – that may or may not include spec work of some description. And once an agency is chosen both sides negotiate, terms are hashed out and work finally begins.
Under these conditions there has been a growing call for a different, more streamlined – and more effective – approach to finding the right agency(s) to meet marketer needs. And many would applaud the end of the RFI and RFP.
The good news is there are any number of alternative approaches and methodologies that can lead to excellent matches between marketers and agencies. Depending on how you look at it, the bad news (perhaps), is that marketers need to be prepared to invest time and effort into their search processes and to answer some tough questions about themselves. And done properly, the results can really pay-off to create long-term, valuable relationships that reward both marketers and their agencies.
Interested? Well, start here:
Know your own organization
Do you really understand who you are as an organization? What are your strengths and weaknesses as a marketer? What’s your team really good at – and what needs to be improved? What internal processes need to be improved – perhaps even thrown out? What’s brought you to this point seeking an agency review? What does your incumbent agency say about you?
The answers to these kinds of questions will help shape the kind agency you really need as a marketer, while defining areas for improvement and change in your own organization.
Understand the market
Knowing the agency marketplace is a crucial step in condensing or eliminating the RFI. RFI’s shouldn’t be used as substitute for not understanding the market or – just as bad – a mechanism to ‘tick boxes’ on the requirements list.
If you don’t like RFIs the answer is simple: Do your homework on the agency marketplace. And if you’re not confident you have an up-to-date view of what the market has to offer – ask your friendly agency search consultant to help define the market and narrow the field based on specific expertise, while ruling-out on areas like conflicts.
Know what you’re really looking for
Sounds easy – but it’s much harder than many marketers imagine. While understanding your own organization and why you’re in the market for a new agency is half the battle, the other half is being able to define the real attributes of an agency that will make your own marketing efforts more successful.
One of the most common attributes we hear as a requirement is ‘creative’, which is generally just a jumping off point to understanding why your current agency isn’t perceived to be creative (because most are…), and what’s preventing that creativity from coming to the fore. Generally, there’s something behind the current lack of creativity – lack of insight, poor briefing, a breakdown in conceptual evaluation or misalignment of core objectives – all of which might point to a very different set of attributes from what’s initially been defined.
Define value
Another thorny subject we frequently have to help address is when marketers say ‘we’re paying too much…’. If costs are the root cause of your agency review, then the RFI and RFP should indeed be tossed out – not because the search process is wrong, but because what’s really needed is a benchmarking exercise to determine fair market value for the services required.
Costs aside, marketers should also develop a strong sense of what constitutes value from their agencies. Whether it’s strategy, transparency, creativity, thought leadership, technology or anything else is immaterial – but understanding what you really value in an agency relationship is pivotal in being able to assess whether an agency is right for your organization.
Get the chemistry right
Ever read a great resume, then met the candidate only to file under ‘thanks but no thanks’? Well the same holds true in agency search. All agencies look good on paper but only those with good chemistry between themselves and the marketer get the contract.
Ticking boxes against an RFI submission and then evaluating against a specific RFP challenge can only get you so far because ultimately you’re buying an organic set of relationships. Those relationships have to engage, examine, challenge and grow with the human beings within your own organization that you’ve already gone to great pains to interview, hire and train. And because of that, the chemistry step is perhaps the most important aspect of any agency search process when finding a solid, long-term match.
Less is more
Armed with a deep understanding of your own organization, a clear perspective on your key requirements, and what the agency market really looks like, marketers are then much better equipped to manage their respective search processes. And as a result of that understanding, marketers should feel confident in talking with only a handful of agencies.
And if that makes your palms sweat, chances are there’s more homework that needs to be done on your own organization before you can comfortably adopt a more streamlined search process.
But.
Yes, there’s a but. Perhaps several ‘buts’ because not all marketing organizations are ready or capable of walking away from the RFI, RFP process.
Adopting a more streamlined approach to agency search requires considerable introspection in order to be successful. Organizational structure, corporate policy, procurement requirements, international alignment, total contract value and yes, internal politics, are all factors that may determine a marketer’s readiness and ability to move away from a traditional RFI, RFP search process.
Even when marketer conditions are favourable, killing off a traditional process framework could be disastrous if your organization hasn’t done its corporate homework and doesn’t truly understand itself or identified the reasons for their chosen search process.
And in those situations, marketers may be jumping from a frying pan into a whole new fire of their own making. So is it really time to say RFI, RFP – RIP? Or do marketers need a little more introspection?
Perhaps the best reference for agency search best practice in Canada is the Association of Canadian Advertisers guidebook on Searching For A Marketing Communications Agency Partner. As its author, we can help ensure you have a best practice framework for your next search process.
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If you’re a marketing or procurement team looking for a new agency, you’ve likely got a list of questions you’re ready to include in your RFP document. But are all those questions you have lined-up really necessary? Are they helpful? And will they really help you choose the right agency for you?
Well, let’s be honest here – based on some of the homegrown RFPs we’ve seen, chances are your questions are about as helpful as a bowl of lukewarm alphabet soup and could use a shot of espresso.
Too harsh?
Unfortunately, no. Some of the questions we see repeated in RFP documents really aren’t helpful to marketers or their prospective agencies. Won’t delineate between good and great. And won’t help find an agency that’s really right for you. Here are a few examples and how to think about making some improvements:
How many awards have you won?
Answer: 100. Is that the right answer? Of course not, because it’s out of context and doesn’t break out what awards were won and for which campaigns. My colleague Darren Woolley at TrinityP3 in Australia wrote a powerful piece on this ‘cutting through the creative wank of creative awards‘ which makes for an interesting read on how to better ask the awards question.
If you want to short-cut to an insightful and more creative answer, what about asking, ‘what are the top five awards you’re most proud of and why?‘ This would give you a sense of what the agency values as success, whether results are tied to it and how relevant the awards are to your business.
Do you have a process?
We’ve heard both ‘do you have a process...” and “what is your process…” In either case, both are somewhat irrelevant because the answer to ‘do you have…‘ is undoubtedly ‘yes’. And I defy any marketer to look me in the eye and tell me they’re interested in someone else’s process chart!
Very few people are even interested.
What people are interested in is the specific part of the process that may not be working for them currently. So why not ask that question – i.e. ‘can you help us understand your Quality Assurance (or whatever it may be) within your process to ensure we get the highest quality work…‘? Wouldn’t that be more helpful instead of pages of process charts that nobody’s going to read?
What’s your hourly rate?
Here’s another particularly unhelpful question. Asked in isolation the answer has almost no relevance. It’s like asking what you’d like for dinner – answer: food!
Hourly rates quoted in isolation, without a scope of work and the amount effort required to deliver on that scope are just a number. Either an hour rate of $X x Y number hours, or a total fee is needed to complete the equation. So if you’re worried about hourly rates, you need to provide a detailed view of your ask for a meaningful answer.
How can you make our campaign go viral?
While an agency (or the internet) might bombard you with a million sure-fire possibilities to make your campaign go viral, the truth is, nobody holds the magic remote.
Campaigns typically go viral because the client and agency deeply understand their audience and have captured their message in a highly original way that then triggers an equally emotional response.
So a better question is to ask would be ‘how will you develop the deepest possible understanding of your audience and marry that with a media solution to reach them‘?
If your agency were an animal what animal would it be?
Hold the phone right there. Unless your ideal agency is a mind-reading psychic ferret, this question is truly best left unasked.
These are just some examples of questions asked in an agency search that need context in order to be relevant and for agencies to be able to answer thoughtfully. Other questions you may want to avoid include answers to questions that could easily be found with a little homework such as, do you have French capabilities, or do you have offices in the US, or are you part of a larger holding company?
The bottom line here is that unless you want to read potentially hundreds pages of information from agencies who have had to sweat for weeks on their submissions, ask fewer but more relevant questions. Restrict answers to a defined number of pages and ditch the snooze-fest by asking questions that will get you the agency that’s right for you.
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For more than a decade, we’ve had the privilege of writing RFPs for some of Canada’s leading marketers and I’d like to think we’ve learned a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t along the way.
Periodically, we’ll come across an RFP document written by a client – often edited or ‘enhanced’ by asks from procurement or legal (or both) – for the resulting pig’s breakfast to then make its way to agency inboxes.
When it’s bad, agencies often call us to ask how best to respond. And when it’s really bad, it’s a journalist looking for more on a story. Some come wrapped in red-tape with (literally) 50 pages of terms and conditions, others are so laden with asks they’ll sink before they set sail, while others are just bizarre. Case in point was one that crossed my desk last recently stating that their target audience for their ask was: “CXOs, CIOs, CFOs and CEOs of enterprises that are 500 men and above” Now, I’m assuming that just means ‘people‘ – or not(?) – but you get the point. Jaw dropping.
The reality is, RFPs are as much a reflection of you and your organization as they are about finding the right agency partner for your business. Whatever you put out, typically reflects what you’re like as a client. Lots of terms, conditions and red tape? Well, that’s likely what agencies will need to expect. Short timelines with an unreasonable number of asks? Rapid response teams will probably be what’s needed on the business. And so on.
So it occurs to me this week that it might be helpful to shine a little light for anyone working on a home-grown RFP and point out some pitfalls well worth avoiding:
Ditch the Overload
The biggest mistake most marketers make with home-grown RFPs is over-stuffing them to the point of bursting. Ask everything you can possibly think of, before passing it on to another group who want to ask a whole different set of questions and so on down the line until it goes out. The result is either a 300 page response from each agency you asked to participate (which will take weeks for your internal teams to evaluate), or, presentations which can only possibly hope to answer the first four questions in your document. If there’s one thing you should take away from this, please – keep it simple and remember that less is almost certainly more – so please channel your inner Marie Kondo, embrace minimalism and keep your RFP concise, focusing only the essentials.
Be the Roadmap, Not the Maze
OK, let’s get to the good stuff and ask to see creative, right? Hold on a moment… Before asking for anything you need to provide agencies with a sense what they’re pitching for. This includes details of your RFP process, your anticipated budget, key requirements, scope of the business that’s up for grabs as well how agencies will be evaluated. This is essentially the agency’s roadmap for success and without it they’re just having to guess as to whether you’re right for them, just as you’re guessing whether they’re right for you.
Forget the Silver Bullet
Contrary to what some might believe, RFPs aren’t an invitation to provide a silver bullet solution to all your marketing problems in one presentation. No agency can ever be expected to understand your business as well as you do, or appreciate the nuances of what makes you, your teams and your organization unique. So if your expectation is that you’ll find a silver bullet strategy or creative idea that will miraculously catapult your brand into the stratosphere, you should pack a parachute. Ideas presented in pitches are typically only ever directional and demonstrate how an agency might approach your business – they’re not a shortcut to whatever final solution you might be looking for.
Skip the Busywork, Ask the Right Questions
We’ve seen a huge number of RFPs that ask some painfully unnecessary questions – ‘do you have an office in Quebéc‘, for example or ‘do you provide account management‘ (yes really, that was a suggested question), or ‘do you have a process…?‘ (yep, that was a proposed question too…) And while those kinds of questions may tick some governance boxes, they’re not doing much else. In fact, they’re actually taking away from your time and the questions that really matter – particularly if you’re in a situation where you need to evaluate based on a 60 or 90 minute presentation. Typically the basics can be determined with some minimal desk research and leave plenty of room for your RFP to focus on what’s really important. So skip the busywork and get to the meaningful stuff.
Include Critical Information
OK, let’s get to the good stuff and ask to see creative, right? Hold on a moment… Before asking for anything you need to provide agencies with a sense what they’re pitching for. This includes details of your RFP process, your anticipated budget, key requirements, scope of the business that’s up for grabs as well how agencies will be evaluated. This is essentially the agency’s roadmap for success and without it they’re just having to guess as to whether you’re right for them, just as you’re guessing whether they’re right for you.
So are we being too tough here?
No, I don’t think so. But I do think expectations are sometimes out of alignment with reality – either because marketers don’t weed out unnecessary questions, or because they expect too much from their RFP documents, and / or because they expect too much from their participating agencies.
Care and clarity of thought need to be poured into RFP documents to maximize the results. And while it may seem counter intuitive, the answers often lie in taking out, rather than adding in. Focus on what’s really important and remove all else, and agencies will likely reflect that back in powerful and unexpected ways that may even leave you spoiled for choice.
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Well-written agency RFIs, RFPs, RFQs – or whatever you choose to call them – should be concise requests to help determine whether an agency is or isn’t capable of fulfilling your scope of work requirements. So it can sometimes be an eyebrow-raising experience when a telephone directory-sized document, filled with redundant requests appears in agency inboxes.
These seemingly endless reams paper that ask way too many, unnecessary, inappropriate and often thoughtless questions, serve little or no purpose other than to create unnecessary work for agencies that have to complete them and a corresponding amount of unnecessary reading for clients who have to evaluate them.
Marketers who choose to chuck everything – including the kitchen sink – into their RF whatevers, need to pause before hitting ‘send’ and ask themselves the relevance of each question, whether it might be removed and how their documents might be streamlined. Here are a few examples of kitchen sinks that we’ve seen that don’t need to be included:
How many offices do you have?
132. Happy? It’s a pointless question. If you’re asking because you want solutions for a particular market – say so, and ask the question accordingly. For example, “what resources do you have on the west coast?” would yield a far more insightful answer.
How many awards have you won?
650? Is that the right answer? Of course not. It’s a kitchen sink question because it provides no insight whatever. It doesn’t answer whether the agency won 20 awards for the same campaign, how old the awards might be or what kind of awards they are. Try, “what are the three awards you’re most proud of and why…?” Wouldn’t that give more insight around the awards and the work the agency believes is their best work?
Obvious questions with obvious answers
We sometimes see kitchen sink questions along the lines of “Do you have account management as part of your offering…?” Well if you’ve done your homework on the agencies you’re reviewing, the answer should be obvious – and if it’s ‘no’ then you’ve likely shortlisted the wrong agencies.
What’s your process?
Truly an eye-rolling, put you to sleep, who cares, and nobody’s ever going to remember kitchen sink question. Every agency has a process of some description. Whether it’s a simple four-step – discover, ideation, create, measure – or a detailed twelve-step approach, it doesn’t matter. The point is – they’ve got one and your ability to evaluate “do you have a process” can only be ‘yes’ or ‘no’. If you have process challenges that you want addressed – ask a specific question such as “help us understand your quality assurance process” to drill into the aspect of process that’s relevant for your business.
‘Differentiating’ questions that make no sense
Yes, I’m talking about those nonsensical kitchen sink questions that lead nowhere such as “if your agency were an animal, what would it be…?” I don’t know why you’d ask a question like that, much less how you’d evaluate the answer. If you want to ask a differentiating question, just ask “What do you think differentiates your agency from others?”
Last three years of financial statements
People, you’re not asking agencies to complete a mortgage application and agencies are under no obligation provide financial statements. One of the few reasons you should be concerned about the financial stability of an agency is if you’re handing over millions of dollars for a media buy. And if that’s the case, ask for a financial reference.
Annual billing by client
Some kitchen sink financial asks go deeper and ask for annual billing of the agency’s top ten clients. Just think about that for a minute. Would you be ok if the agency disclosed your spend to a third party? I doubt it. So please don’t ask the question.
Future business plans
We’ve seen RFP documents that specifically ask for agencies to disclose their future plans by sharing their five or ten year plans. How can this kitchen sink question be relevant to your advertising / media activities? If you’re concerned the agency might be sold to another entity for example, include a ‘change in control clause’ in your contract.
Too many case studies
We saw one client-written RFP recently that asked for seventeen (one seven) separate case studies ranging from strategy to print to out of home to direct marketing to ‘interactive television’(?). This is a classic hallmark of a marketer who’s not thought through their requirements to define what’s really important,. So instead of thinking about their own challenges, the marketer chucks in everything (and the kitchen sink) – likely forgetting they’l have to read and evaluate 17 case studies x say 10 agencies. That’s 170 case studies to be evaluated! Good luck.
Unfortunately, many of these questions are cut-and-paste questions from other documents or RFP templates that have been pulled from the internet. Some are pulled from procurement documents for product based sourcing initiatives that just aren’t relevant for service based initiatives. Either way, if you’re struggling with preparing an RFI,P,Q documentation that would otherwise include the kitchen sink – call for help. It’ll be less work for agencies. Less work for you. And you’ll almost certainly get a better result.
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“Marketer with well-known brands, seeks hardworking, imaginative agency.
For consideration, successful candidates must be prepared to answer detailed questions about their past, and then many hypothetical questions about proposed future relationship.
Finalists must then share financial history and be willing to sign alluring prenup.”
Imagine (just for a moment…) you’d read an invitation like that!
Well, traditional agency selection process can be lengthy and cumbersome: Procurement written RFPs often send out detailed questionnaires to evaluate a large pool of agencies. Then, a select few are invited to submit even more detailed proposals, which may or may not involve unpaid speculative work. Finally, after negotiations and contract finalization, the project kicks off.
Not surprisingly, this approach is ripe for an overhaul. Marketers and agencies are calling for a more streamlined and effective way to find the right agency partner. Thankfully, there are several alternative methods available.
The caveat? Marketers need to be more invested in the search process. This means dedicating time and effort to self-reflection and crafting a clear project vision. But the payoff is significant: fostering long-term, successful partnerships with agencies.
Ready to explore new approaches? Let’s dive in…
Ditch the RFI – Do Your Research
Instead of relying on lengthy RFIs, invest time in understanding the agency landscape. RFIs shouldn’t replace your knowledge of the market or become a checkbox exercise.
Get Help Narrowing The Field
If you’re unsure of the current agency landscape, consider partnering with an agency search consultant. They can help identify agencies with the specific expertise you need while avoiding conflicts of interest.
Dig Deeper
Knowing what you truly seek in an agency is crucial but often trickier than it seems. Understanding your organization and why you need a new agency is a good start. Dig deeper by defining the qualities that will enhance your marketing efforts. “Creative” is a common request, but it often masks a deeper issue. Why isn’t your current agency considered creative? What hinders their creativity?
Look For Underlying Issues
There’s usually a reason behind a perceived lack of creativity – missing insights, unclear briefs, communication breakdowns, or misaligned objectives. Identifying these root causes may lead you to prioritize different agency attributes than you initially thought.
The Secret Ingredient
A stellar agency can look great on paper, but the real magic lies in the chemistry between you and them. Just like a bad interview, a mismatch can doom the partnership.
Price Isn’t Everything
If high costs are driving your agency review, ditch the RFI/RFP. The search itself isn’t flawed; you need a market value analysis to determine fair pricing. Look beyond cost and define what value means for you in an agency. Do you prioritize strategy, transparency, creativity, or something else entirely? Understanding this is crucial to finding the right fit.
But.
Yes, there’s a but. Perhaps several ‘buts’ because not all marketing organizations are ready or capable of walking away from the RFI, RFP process.
The Road to Streamlining: Self-awareness is key. A more streamlined agency search requires significant introspection. Factors like organizational structure, company policies, procurement needs, international alignment, and even internal politics all influence a marketer’s ability to move away from the RFI/RFP model.
Even with ideal internal conditions, abandoning the traditional process can be disastrous without proper self-analysis. Organizations need to understand their needs and the reasons behind their current approach. Skipping this step risks replacing a familiar process with unforeseen challenges.
So, is it time to say goodbye to RFI/RFPs?
Perhaps. But before making the leap, marketers should invest in introspection to determine if their organization is truly ready for a more streamlined approach.
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There have been a lot of doom and gloom headlines recently about agency RFPs and pitches and how marketers might be better abandoning their RFP processes altogether.
Indeed, the ICA has also brought a version of the British pitch watchdog to our shores, and since its launch two years ago, the watchdog has singled out processes from a number of companies including, Canada Post, TD Bank, the TTC, and YMCA.
When it bites, the watchdog threatens to ‘name and shame’ those marketers it deems to be out of step, and may send ‘one of five anonymous, hand-written cards directly to the contacts’ to an offending marketer.
But marketers know the potential impact of an agency search on their business can perhaps be best measured by multiplying the annual agency budget by 10 years – an estimation of the potential length of the agency relationship. So a $10 million budget for example, could be a $100+ million decision. So, with that kind of pressure, what are marketers supposed to do?
Well, even if you don’t suffer from cynophobia, there are some steps you can take to avoid the wrath of the wily watchdog.
Be clear about why you’re doing a search
Yes, it’s a pretty basic question but you’d be surprised by how many marketers we meet who struggle with a definitive answer.
We’ve heard everything from “we don’t like our (insert function here) on our business…” to “too expensive” to “we just want a change” – or (worse) – “we just want to see what’s out there”. The question about why you want a new agency is crucial because you have to establish if your issue may actually be fixable – thereby saving you the trouble of a search in the first place. Equally, a clear definition of why you want to start an agency search inevitably leads to a more focused and concise set of criteria when you meet prospective agencies.
Get the set-up right
In addition to doing your homework on yourself and preparing for the process, it’s important to help agencies know what the process looks like ahead of time. This means:
- Sketching out a high-level timetable so agencies can work out if they can accommodate the pitch
- Providing a high-level view of your intended asks – i.e. whether spec work or travel will be required
- Detailing what constitutes a conflict so agencies can rule themselves out if needed
- The approximate size, scope and value of the business up for review so agencies can make a judgement call on whether or not this is the right fit for them
Avoid the cattle call
With so many agencies providing individual or combined services, it can be difficult to identify and narrow down the best agencies to add to your search list – compounded if there’s internal or political pressure to include agencies that you feel shouldn’t be on your list in the first place.
Thorough preparation, a robust stakeholder interview process, and a little homework can help define not only which agencies might be a great fit – but which agencies wouldn’t be – either because of conflict or some other incompatibility with your business. As a general rule of thumb, if you’re starting with more than eight agencies on your long-list, you need to do more homework and save yourself – and the agencies you’re talking to – wasted time and effort.
Be reasonable about your ask
Nobody should be a fan of asking questions just to tick boxes – so it’s always a puzzle when marketing or procurement teams ask dozens (sometimes hundreds!) of questions that are superfluous to the task at hand. The faster you can get to a dialogue about your business, with smart, well considered questions, the more likely you are to determine how well-equipped agencies are to help manage your business.
Deal with spec work properly
Contrary to what might be shouted from the proverbial peanut gallery, spec work isn’t a complete no-no and the decision to request or not is up to you – not those throwing peanuts. If you ultimately decide spec work is critical for you, the key is to deal with your request properly and in our view, this means:
- Limit your ask to understand how the agency might approach your challenge – not boil the ocean
- Pay for spec work properly – whether strategy, creative, digital, media or anything else
- Clearly define how you’ll evaluate the work including how you’ll manage a tie-break
- Put in the time to collaborate and work with agencies to discuss the work (not just evaluate it)
Agencies are pretty good at being their own watchdogs and if they have an issue with your ask, or choose not to participate – they’ll either ask for changes or politely decline.
Get clear about price versus value
With some procurement teams being less familiar with service-based sourcing and/or not being synced with marketing team counterparts, some procurement driven RFPs have an over-reliance on financial metrics. Evaluation then focuses on price rather than value and otherwise perfectly suited agencies become eliminated for the wrong reasons.
Whether you’re working with procurement or going it alone, define what constitutes best value for your business beyond price, which may include anything from proposed key resources, proposed staffing seniority to quality of work, case studies or previous experience.
Define your evaluation criteria
How you ensure your team evaluates agencies consistently and correctly is critical to an effective search. I’ve written before on the development of agency scorecards, but whatever approach you choose – make sure it’s not just about adding up a score. While scores can provide quantitative data, they cannot fully convey the intangible aspects of chemistry and whether an agency is a good match for your specific requirements.
While functional aspects of submissions or presentations are important, they do not tell the whole story. Defining true value and determining if an agency aligns with your organization’s goals and culture requires a more nuanced evaluation – so take time to ensure everyone on your team understands how agencies need to be evaluated and that evaluation criteria are shared with agencies.
Be respectful
And finally… agencies who participate in a pitch process typically put their collective hearts and souls into creating the best possible submissions they can. They’ll likely be working late evenings and giving up weekends to make sure they get the best possible shot at winning your business. So, try to:
- Be reasonable about turnaround times
- Answer questions within the prescribed time period
- Turn your phone off during the pitch
- Be generous when things go sideways (and they do…)
- Provide feedback when agencies have been unsuccessful in their submissions
If any of the steps defined above seem onerous or complex, chances are you’re not fully prepared and you run the risk of being bitten. Advice contained in the Association of Canadian Advertisers step-by-step best practice guide on Searching for a Marketing Communications Partner can help. And of course, we can always guide you through your process – so you’re not bitten by the wily watchdog – or at the very least, you’re equipped to muzzle it.
Image by master1305 on Freepik.
The potential impact of an agency search on a marketer’s business can perhaps be best measured by multiplying your annual agency budget by 10 years – an anticipation of the length of the agency relationship. So a client with a $20 million budget, for example, could potentially be facing a $200+ million decision – not something anyone should want to take lightly.
Since the ICA launched its Pitch Watchdog two years ago, the association has questioned pitch processes from companies including Canada Post, TD Bank, the TTC, and YMCA. Earlier this year, the ICA came up with the idea to “send one of five anonymous, hand-written cards directly to the contacts”of an offending brand provided by an agency.
Irrespective of the likely breach in a non-disclosure signed by the participating agency, the ICA says the goal of these anonymous missives is to provide a “humorous yet pointed push” for clients to get the ICA’s free QBS toolkit. The toolkit is the ICA’s best practice agency search guide, and includes a binary outcome diagram to either “amend process” or “name and shame in public media.”
Personally, I’m not sure anyone would find anything humorous about being on the receiving end of an anonymous calling-card (handwritten or otherwise). And issuing a “search guide” in “an attempt to provide insight into the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of abandoning the price-based RFP” just isn’t going to help anyone.
Advertising’s problem with RFPs
The reality is there are (unfortunately) advertiser requests for pitches out there that are badly conceived and executed, and can place excessive demands on agencies seeking to grow their businesses.
Whether it’s because they’re too cumbersome (because they ask for too much or unnecessary information), too complex, don’t provide sufficient guidance or make unreasonable asks – some clients get it wrong. And yes, sometimes badly.
While the origins of poorly run pitches may go back years, things began to take a noticeable turn for the worse during the financial crisis in 2007. Marketers found themselves under increasing pressure to cut costs while bettering performance with smaller budgets, and procurement teams were brought in to run pitch processes – or at least provide an extra layer of oversight.
Because procurement teams are often less familiar with service-based sourcing and/or not synced with their own marketing team counterparts, procurement driven RFPs can include complex asks and are evaluated based on an over-reliance on financial metrics. Outcomes can then be skewed in favour of price rather than value and otherwise perfectly suited agencies become eliminated too early in the RFP process for the wrong reasons.
But just because there are rogue RFPs that surface with unwieldy requests, doesn’t mean we should throw the whole process out as the ICA is stating: “when it comes to agency selection, of any kind, it’s not working…”
I resent the assertion that “agency selection, of any kind” (which is, by default, the hundreds of millions of dollars in searches we’ve done for some of Canada’s best known brands over the last decade) isn’t working. For the record, pitches we run never ask for prices up front and our evaluation methodology is always a discussion around who and what constitutes best value – not lowest price.
Sure, the ICA’s toolkit makes good points on low-cost processes, clear and obvious selection criteria, transparency and limiting the number of pages to force a balance between brevity and clarity. And it talks a lot about collaborative client-agency relationships too. But its watchdog diagram that concludes the guide, undermines its own message by threatening to name and shame in the public media as a recourse to those who don’t agree.
My view is soliciting media headlines and publicly naming and shaming clients does a disservice to both clients and agencies.
Industry bodies and consulting firms that hold unique and privileged positions of being able to view the market from the sidelines, surely have a duty to demonstrate leadership and help clients who may not be experts in agency search management. The Association of Canadian Advertisers offers a step-by-step best practice guide to their members on Searching for a Marketing Communications Partner. The Canadian Marketing Association has also developed best practices and guidance for RFPs, which it plans to release soon.
And for marketers or procurement teams tasked with managing an upcoming search, there are also specialist consultants who can provide objective advice and guide teams through their search processes – no matter if your extrapolated budget works out to be millions or billions.
In my experience, agencies are incredibly savvy about being their own watchdogs and doing what’s best for their teams and their businesses. So when it comes to the ICA’s watchdog in the background… stick it back in its kennel.
This article first appeared in Strategy May 21, 2019.