Imad Kublawi is director of IK Consult and MENA partner for Agency Assessments International
“I have spent time on all three sides of the advertising triangle and witnessed its 3D perspective: on the agency side, the client side, and as a qualified pitch consultant with my UK partners, Agency Assessments International.
My first and lasting observation is that neither clients nor agencies pay enough attention to connecting a brand with its consumers. Instead, clients are happy to have squeezed the agency, and vice versa.
Clients have their own vulnerability in terms of meeting their marketing objectives or responding rapidly to competition or simply keeping their jobs. Those who grow the business are promoted and those who don’t are not (in most cases). In China, clients call for pitches every six months and in Germany clients pay agencies a pitch fee. In the US, clients pay a pitch fee but in return get rights to the work. In the MENA region, clients like to hire someone they know personally, not necessarily who best serves the brand. Agencies’ vulnerabilities are no secret and with the prevailing economic situation many are struggling.
So what do we make of today’s pitch process?
Many pitches are a waste of time, money and resources. Clients employ a massive process, involving far too many agencies, and the agencies fail to calculate the odds against, and over-invest. Most agencies have dug their own graves, but not as a consequence of client exploitation. In a classic example of over-competitive market syndrome, agencies have engaged in the indiscriminate pursuit of almost any account, to the point that many undoubtedly spend too much time on new business at the expense of old. They also seem prepared to “go all the way” all the time, against commercial sense. It is hard to find another marketplace where suppliers give their services free to other companies’ clients.
Pitches often fail to solve the client’s problem. Before embarking on a pitch, clients need to ask themselves: a) has the problem been defined? b) is the problem one that a pitch can solve? c) have the right selection criteria been applied? Nor does the pitch brief have to be a completely new campaign. The scope could be just a project – or one aspect of a brand.
The whole exercise is frequently unrealistic – it is based on the marriage analogy: one-to-one. Yet clients nowadays frequently have almost as many agencies to manage, as agencies have clients. So why is agency selection normally based purely on this agency’s capabilities and resources? Could we not borrow from HR and base it at least in part on synergies and teamworking?
The pitch has seriously harmed day-to-day agency professionalism. The pitch has become a problem-solving art form – quite distinct from everyday account handling. The agency’s best people are routinely working with other agencies’ clients, so new habits are formed. Time frames are telescoped, which is good for speed, but not necessarily for quality. Before pitch-mania it was acceptable not to be able to crack a problem in a fortnight. Now agencies feel they have to. Teams are smaller, which in one sense is positive. But servicing tends to suffer.
Clients and agencies are turning a blind eye to each other’s vulnerabilities thus magnifying theirs, and the sensible way out of this situation is to deconstruct the main hurdles, analyse and rebuild a better practice for the relationship. And this is the missing link in the marcoms industry in this region: relationships.
How many clients and ad agencies conduct a third-party neutral relationship assessment on a regular basis? And here, I don’t mean just an automated, form-filling exercise that produces spider-web diagrams and percentages. There has to be a human element to the assessment, its analysis and subsequent training to ensure the ‘brand’ is getting the best possible diagnostics and treatment in the market place. But this is another serious topic.
What goes wrong? The biggest issue in our market is lack of mutual respect and trust. However, deconstructing the hurdles reveal cracks in the following criteria:
- The brief: I have seen briefs ranging from a one-minute phone call to a 100-page technical document. One brief was an idea by a client because he thought people would love it. Some clients use the agency’s creative brief format to write their brief. This is an area of real struggle for agencies and clients get away with it because they are the clients.
- Responding to the brief: Some agencies take the risk of challenging the brief at the time of presenting their work, others merely reprise the brief or interpret their own requirements of it.
- Judging the work by the client is an area that requires more expertise than sometimes given.
- Executing what the agency promised at presentation stage often achieves disappointing results in budget, quality, or speed of delivery.
- Measuring effectiveness is hardly there.
- Poor service and letting accounts go stale.
- Value vs remuneration.
- Chemistry: New client or new agency personnel.
- Attitudes, ‘we know it all’, on both sides.
The cracks start to occur at any one of these criteria, so client calls for a pitch; incumbent is dismayed; invited agencies’ adrenalin rises; the ‘brand’ feels abused.
AAI have had considerable success with what they call the ‘No Pitch Pitch’. The bad news for the agency is that it has to pitch for its own account. The good news is that it doesn’t have to do so in competition with lots of other agencies. The client decides on a way forward for the brand, and shares problem solving and question asking with the incumbent agency. The new brief is written together, and the agency isn’t expected to waste time defending everything it has done in the meantime – which tends to be the fate of incumbents in a conventional pitch. It has the opportunity to get back to the high ground from which it surveyed the market, the competition and the brand.
Is there a behavioural benefit? Absolutely. Our experience shows that the No Pitch Pitch enhances the way client and agency interact. However, if a pitch is the only option, clients should look at it as a recruitment talent-hunt project, not as a catwalk outing.”
Great article, couldn’t agree more.
‘Relationship’ is a dirty word here because it’s been abused and corrupted.
Clients seem scared of building a relationship in case people think there’s more to it than a desire to work with an agency that does great work, gets results, makes them look good and makes the process stress-free and fun along the way.
I’ve watched clients defending why they’re using an agency that isn’t the cheapest. I’ve seen them pretty much go on trial and witnessed their fear while trying to prove their innocence. I’ve been ‘in the dock’ myself proving the value of using an agency with expertise vs a low-rent alternative. But how can it have come to this?
It seems that there would only be one dark reason why a client would use a more expensive agency.. how sickening.
On the other hand, I’m also bemused that clients in this region rarely request value added services.. (monthly planning meetings / developing their marketing plan/briefs / meeting with their other agencies etc), they don’t really like retainers and don’t seem to set any service levels.. they seem happiest when the agency is kept at arm’s length and given prescriptive briefs (usually with a quote as the first action) – and no agency likes working like that.
In my experience, the best work happens when you spend time with your clients, are able to really get under the skin of who they are and how their business really works. You need to know everything they’re doing and why they’re doing it and you definitely need honesty, integrity and trust – on both sides.
Everyone loves a good pitch – it’s why we do what we do – but it needs to be entered into with accurate odds, and it really needs to start with a level playing field. So the No Pitch Pitch sounds like a great idea to me and something any agency worth its salt would be happy to take part in.
great article, it’s all true and unfortunately all those cracks you mentioned are highly toxic individually, however it seems that several are in play almost all the time.
Before I start, I need to declare that I have known Imad Kublawi for may years. I know him to be incisive, pragmatic and an invaluable asset to agency, to client (and most importantly)to the brand.
There is much in his article with which I agree. I agree that “Many pitches are a waste of time, money and resources.” I agree that “Pitches often fail to solve the client’s problem.” I agree that “The pitch has seriously harmed day-to-day agency professionalism.” I even agree that “the missing link in the marcoms industry in this region: relationships.”
Where I part company with Imad, is with his list of cracks. In itself the list is fine, but I would suggest that these are symptoms not causes of the problem. The problem is entirely with Imad’s “Missing Link”; the problem is with the overall relationship.
Now if I’m right, then rather than bandage the broken relationship with a No-Pitch Pitch, I would spend time and effort in understanding why the relationship was breaking down in the first place; I would spend time in getting the agency to understand how the client perceives their agency, and as importantly how the agency perceives their client. And I would go further, I would seek to understand how the agency perceives itself; and how the client company sees itself as well.
When you look at these perceptions you can see if there are any disconnects. In these disconnects lie the roots of the relationship break up; and once the root causes are identified its far easier to fix them.
Now I believe this to be a logical approach as its far better to “manage” an existing relationship than start a new one. But for this approach to work both clients and agencies will have to step off their pitching merry-go-round, and think long and hard about their existing relationships with each other.
The fact this article has been shared just 4 times is criminal and in fact a pretty good indicator as to the ignorance some agencies have towards what else is going on in the industry in this region.