How to run a large scale, ethical agency pitch in just three weeks.

Introducing Resentment Free Pitching - the new RFP.

An agency CEO thanked me when I told them they didn’t win a pitch.

Another runner up said it was the best pitching experience they had ever had.

The right agency was appointed, with a winning idea presented in the room and all stakeholders aligned.

The whole process took five weeks, with agency engagement on the pitch spanning just three weeks for a major brand and creative appointment. Agency investment of time and resources was low, trust between the business and the agencies stayed high. Better yet, the process is easy to adopt; any brand-side marketer can follow it if you create the right circumstances.?

But first, why is this important?

These are lean times, especially for agencies. Yet too often brand-side marketers expect agencies to cover the short fall from our scarcity of resources and shifting budgets. This is hurting them, dehumanizing their people - and it is hurting the work. This year there have been a flurry of articles in the ad trade press about the financial cost of pitching , but I only see agency folks engaging. For brand-side leaders, I cannot emphasize enough that resolving this isn’t just the right thing to do. It is better for your business. When you have a good reputation for working well with agencies, high-trust relationship with leaders, and a good dialogue where both parties can ask challenging questions, you save time and get better work.?

I’m an ex-agency leader, so I have an inside view into agencies’ business model and comparatively low margins. Because of a multitude of factors, retainers have become scarce. But the pitch process for a large project often has a similar timeline and effort attached. An RFP announces a four-month process, which inevitably becomes six, which often leads to a compromise where two finalist agencies are each appointed different portions of the work and are then asked for a trial period before signing off the full project. No one wins when this happens because the agencies have reached burn out before the engagement has begun and resentment has set in. What looks like a safe bet for the budget holder, is just a bad one. The agencies will churn, and they’ll be putting out another RFP before long.

Meanwhile, agencies aren’t just bleeding money. Their people are bleeding. Sometimes literally - the pitch expectation of late nights and early mornings takes a huge toll. For client-side people who haven’t worked at an agency, this is often not fully understood because, we too work long hours. But it is different because agency talent is the product. Psychological safety is low when job security is at risk and the pressure on people can be too much.?

So, here’s an alternative solution that also saves your business time. I’m calling it Resentment Free Pitching - the new RFP.

Week -1 Plan the process: ?

Draft an outline of the three-week pitch process, your straw man brief and scope RFP.?

Take the time to get the brief right and you’ll be able to judge great thinking easily and quickly further down the line. If you don’t have the right person to author this brief in-house, perhaps because it spans across your verticals, then bring someone in to support before you burn agency hours and your reputation by asking the agency to work it out for you.?

(90% of pitch briefs I worked on when I was an agency strategist weren’t an accurate and aligned reflection of what was needed and possible for the client team to buy.)

If you’re moving fast, clarity makes the difference between an excellent presentation and off-brief disappointment. It’s also crucial that all decision-making stakeholders make their mark on the brief and feel some level of ownership over it.

Construct your panel of decision makers, ask them who they would want to see on the list, get them to talk to their connections and talk to yours to construct a current picture of who would be best placed to do the work.?

Hold a kickoff meeting with your panel to align on the process, brief, criteria for success and to shorten your list to (maximum) six agencies.

Week 0 - Socialize the plan:?

Once you have your final brief, recirculate with your stakeholders.

Also socialize to the CEO to make them aware of the pitch process and what you’re strategically solving for.

Reach out to check agency interest and bandwidth and share the three-week process outline when you do.

Schedule an intimate and informal “RFP meeting” between agency leaders (ideally one to two people) and brand-side leaders (CMO and Brief owner).?

Week 1 - Chemistry meeting:?

Agenda for week 1 intimate and informal chemistry meeting:?

Client challenge & opportunity

Agency creds and one to two case studies

Q&A.

Ask the agency to send creds & case studies through after the first meeting with more detail, socialize meeting notes and agency decks with stakeholders and include an executive summary to get everyone on the same page.

The next day, hold a stakeholder regroup discussion (narrow six agencies to three).?

Send the three agencies the creative opportunity brief and the scope RFP (ensure between five and seven working days are allowed between receiving the brief and the creative tissue meeting (the only creative presentation).?

Put strict limits on what is presented in this chemistry. Make it clear that this is an exercise in seeing how the agency thinks and whether they’re willing to work scrappy in partnership with clients to get to the right answer. (I once limited this pitch process to a maximum of twenty slides and insisted on no sizzle reels and nothing fully mocked up.)

Week 2 - Creative Tissue & Working Scope Meeting:?

Schedule a mid-week working scope meeting with the agency and your financial and sourcing partners internally. Ask for this meeting to include agency finance partners and the business leaders. Ask the agency to bring some loose principles of how they would scope the work and their questions.?

Allow this to be an informal conversation to start to establish a two-way conversation and working partnership. Tell them that this is their meeting to lead to ensure that they get clarity on their questions. Ensure that the agency is clear on what finance and sourcing wants to see from them in the final scope proposal the following week.

The creative tissue meetings should be at the end of the week to allow the five-to-seven working days on the exercise. For this meeting, allow a minimum of an hour and bring the full panel of decision makers to the creative tissue meeting. Half the meeting should be a presentation, leaving half for discussion.

The next day, hold a stakeholder regroup discussion (narrow three agencies to two).?

Week 3 - Scope Presentation:?

Final scope presentations and negotiations can take place from the Monday to the Wednesday, allowing for stakeholders to regroup on the Thursday and give a final decision on the Friday.

Finally, appoint and onboard.

It is important to caveat that going fast without this level of intention won’t drive the same outcomes so these principles are just as important as the process.?

If this doesn't feel possible for you or your organization, then ask yourself "why?". This process requires high trust between you and your potential agency partners and your stakeholders. If that's lacking, this could provide the opportunity to build that trust by bringing people together to collaborate and align at pace. If you're concerned that appointing an agency on the basis of a creative tissue meeting alone, that's why doing your homework upfront is important. People's testimonials on their working relationships with their agencies and how they've helped to overcome challenges together as partners can tell you 50% of what you need to know. Moving slow in the preparation and pre-preparation phases allows you to go fast in the process. Most importantly, this process requires you to listen to your intuition and go with your gut - so do you trust yourself?

I'd love to hear from agency and brand-side people on their experiences if trialing this process so please get in touch.