Agency Newsletters

Flash Report @ AgencyFinder - September 19, 2006

CONTENTS:

1. Bitching About Pitching & 
    Agency Compensation
2. Client Search Trends 
    (Business is Popping)
3. The Whole Truth About 
    Search Consultants
4. Licensing - What Can You Share?
5. A Dictionary challenge

BITCHING ABOUT PITCHING & AGENCY COMPENSATION

Monday's (9/18) AdAge carried an interesting story from the ANA Conference that revealed "simmering levels of anger" about the pitch process. Three prominent agency creative officers spoke quite candidly about the fact that pitch dollars might be better spent on clients that were capable of making an agency selection without employing spec creative.

We oppose spec creative and have since we began in 1997. Many clients, even those with vast experience, have the mistaken opinion that

somehow "they" are capable of recognizing "great creative" - particularly that which will

produce positive results. I suggest that even some of the best agency CD's couldn't make that determination with the information clients have at hand. By example, a client might have a particular fondness for the color "yellow." Congratulations and an unfair victory to the agency whose spec work happens to be predominantly "yellow." (It's happened!)

What's really going on (in case the obvious is not as clear as it should be) is that each client wants to discover which agency really "gets it!" Which agency has a creative style they're comfortable with, which agency (during an agency tour) has "good people", which agency has shown the logic and process by which their work-products are produced, and which agency has listened, identified the strengths and weaknesses of the client, and has a plan to communicate that to the market. The client wants as much hard evidence as you can give them that YOUR AGENCY GETS IT! If you were their only candidate, you might say "trust us", but in the competitive pitch environment, you've got to prove some- thing through demonstration. (Doctor, would you mind terribly doing a small free surgery before I become your paying brain tumor patient?)