avoid the pitch - idcomms

AVOIDING THE PITCH Defining, Enhancing and Protecting your agency relationships in the digital age.

ID COMMS BEST

PRACTICE GUIDES Prepared by Tom Denford (ver. 12/5)

About these guides The ID Comms Best Practice Guides series is designed to help marketing and procurement leaders unlock greater productivity from investments in media.

They have been written by ID Comms consultants based on many years experience working with some of the world’s most demanding brands and their agencies.

Please use and share these guides freely, we ask that you reference us in any direct quotations.

Finally, we value feedback on everything we do. Please get in touch and share your thoughts. Thanks.

2 ID Comms Best Practice Guides

About ID Comms

ID Comms Ltd is a media consulting company with strategy and innovation at its heart. Based in Shoreditch, London, we are leading providers of media solutions to companies that need access to first-class media expertise in flexible and cost-effective ways.

ID Comms provides high-quality media resources – from specialist talent to innovative processes and tools – that increase value, optimize performance and improve accountability for international brands.

The company was founded in 2009 by Tom Denford and David Indo, you can find out more about us here:

http://www.idcomms.com


What this guide gives you

The following pages of this guide detail what we think are the main opportunities to avoid calling a media pitch and how to still unlock some of the benefits. We have grouped these actions into three areas:

Vision Value Accountability

Following these, we have created a 5-point Media Manifesto for you to use. Feel free to steal this, adapt it and use for your own business. We believe that by having a clear ambition for how your business uses media, you will be in a better position to brief your agency partners and will get more Vision, Value and Accountability as a result.


Context points for this guide 1.  The only people who like pitches are pitch consultants. 2.  Putting your business up for review can be a huge distraction and

drain on resources for both your marketing team and your agency. 3.  Many of the benefits of a pitch can be unlocked without the need to

instigate a full account review. 4.  Added to this, most pitches are badly run and tend to abuse agency

goodwill and leave most of them significantly out of pocket. A typical global agency review can cost each agency around $500,000 (not including the man hours) and carries risks to the client’s business from distracting the incumbent.

5.  Sometimes a review is the best solution, but it needs careful planning, proper management and a clear strategic ambition. It may be too early or too late in your agency relationship to implement these initiatives. In which case you may want to pitch.


Three ways to avoid a pitch

1.  VISION - Allowing the agency to provide independent and valuable thought-leadership to your business.

2.  VALUE - Ensuring that you receive sufficient value from your media investments.

3.  ACCOUNTABILITY - Creating a more transparent and accountable relationship with your agency where you are both invested in and incentivized by the same outcomes.


VISION ACCOUNTABILITY VALUE

Vision – our definition

“Allowing the agency to provide independent and valuable thought-leadership to your business. To have a shared vision for media and the contribution it will make to the company’s success. To be aligned on what success for both companies will look like.”



Vision: Some typical client challenges

“We want the agency to see us as an important client and an interesting challenge to work on” “We want to be a client that the agency’s best talent is really motivated to work for” “We want to feel we receive a bespoke service (not a me-too service) from our agencies” “We want to feel we get the attention, consideration and care you need and deserve from the agency” “We should be among the first of the agency’s clients to see innovations in media” “We want to work with people who care about our business”



Vision: How to get it •  Firstly, have a clear vision for your own company, your marketing and your media that you can share with agency (make sure this is consistent with the vision that is shared with other agencies) •  Be an interesting client to work for. How? Trust the agency and share information about your business with them. Your agency to want to help you, include them in your marketing vision, bring them into conferences and meetings where you can – this will allow them to be pro-active and bring a fresh perspective to your company’s marketing challenges. •  Think of the longer term (where possible), try not to cut too many corners financially. Sometimes a gesture such as paying the agency a project fee for helping solve a problem or agreeing to pay some additional travel expenses (or funding a small party) can make a huge difference to the overall value gained from the agency and helps you stay higher profile within the agency, which helps keep the best talent. •  Commit to the best quality briefings you can manage and create a culture internally that promotes good quality brief writing. •  Ensure that you are among the first clients that get to hear about innovations in media.



Vision: Potential solutions to consider Media brief audit: Investigate the creation of new consistent standard of agency briefing, bringing best practice and innovation. For example, develop materials that all your teams can use consistently such as “How to brief an agency in the digital age”

Consider a modern media agency planning process: Your agency or consultant can advise, ask them how they would work best and the types of briefings that agencies find the most helpful.

Workshops with procurement and marketing stakeholders: Set aside some time to define and align on media objectives and to define the best working relationships – soft and hard measures of evaluation.

Share innovation from the company side with the agency: This is an easy win to inspire your agency teams to share their innovations back with you. Define regular forums to share innovation properly.



Value – our definition

“Ensuring that you receive sufficient value from your media investments. In media, the real value you receive from the money you spend can be largely discretionary on the part of the agency. What you receive will sit somewhere between the minimum the agency is contractually obliged to deliver for you and the maximum which is huge over delivery of thinking, service and media value. What you actually get depends on having a few controls in place to monitor delivery, ensuring contracts and deals are sufficiently water-tight and maintaining a constructive working relationship with the agency.”



Value: Some typical client challenges “We want competitive media costs but we also want to avoid a race to the bottom on costs and lose our value” “We recognize the discretionary value delivery by agency, we see lots of pitches going on, are we missing out?” “How can we secure transparency of talent and resource – we want to have a clear scope of work for the agency, which is aligned to delivering against our higher goals.” “We want a simple evaluation process in place to monitor agency’s provision of resource and standards of service “Within our agency roster there are some key individual talents who make the greatest contribution to our marketing. How can I make them all work better together?”



Value: How to get it

•  Improve your contract transparency: Reduce the impact of media rebates on the agency’s decision making process and their performance. • Make it clear to agency that you are on top of your trading position. Within the agency’s client portfolio you want to be protected because you are keeping a very close eye on the delivery of your deals. •  Ensure internal stakeholders, especially finance and procurement leaders understand some basic media value definitions and get those agreed internally and aligned with marketing. •  Try to align all your agency partners to similar sets of metrics and remuneration terms. This will allow them to collaborate easier and share in joint success. •  No-one likes being a squeaky wheel, but as we know, that’s what always gets the oil. In the case of media, understanding how to be the squeaky wheel will get you additional media value. Its often that simple.



Value: Potential solutions to consider

Refresh the evaluation processes you have in place to monitor agency resource and service delivery.

More closely monitor your agency transparency and your media deal delivery.

Value creation analysis – how is the agency maximizing the value of your spend?

Workshops for finance and procurement to define media value, how productivity gains are to be reported and therefore what additional agency objectives will be required.



Accountability – our definition

“Creating a more transparent relationship with your agency where you are both invested in and incentivized by the same outcomes. Being able to reference the agency’s performance against a set of pre-agreed objectives, the outcomes of which have a direct influence on the agency’s success financially”



Accountability: Some typical client challenges

“How should we ask the media agency to report media performance, we need more than traditional media metrics?” “How can anyone account for the specific effect they have on our business performance, the weather may be more influential than the agency at the end of the day.” “Can the agency deliver an ROI that links the investments we make in media with the improvement in company success metrics?” “Is the agency prepared and happy to work within more modern remuneration terms, which incentivizes them to act in the company’s best interests and share some of our risks and rewards?” “Is the agency prepared to be more transparent about how they trade media, with special regard to media rebates?”



Accountability: How to get it

•  Take the time to define the agency’s full scope of work, which is entirely focused upon delivering the vision you have defined. •  Adjust the model of the agency’s income to be more encouraging and positive not suspicious and punitive about how they deliver value for the company. •  Establish a fair evaluation model for media success, perhaps linking agency reward to delivering a specific upside. Make the scope of work clear on how the agency is a stakeholder in that success and how they should deliver it •  If possible, over-invest in having a very strong account lead on the agency side who can police the agency’s delivery against the scope of work. •  Make it easier for the agency to see how they make money - by being more transparent about how their income can grow. In theory you'll be less likely to be ‘sold’ things you don’t need and you will also foster a better trust-based relationship. •  Share with the agency how your marketing teams are incentivized internally. What does personal success look like within the company? Can you link the agency’s own remuneration closer to these elements?



Accountability: Potential solutions to consider

Establish best practice and a process for writing your agency Scope of works Consider workshops with procurement and marketing leaders to define a set of higher-goals to use for your agency roster, these should be similar to some of your own personal objectives. Consider how to transition to a value-based remuneration model Define a consistent agency performance evaluation process Commit to constructive workshops with client and agency to define the commercial relationship and create partnership terms. If your agency relationship pre-dates Facebook (6 years +) this tells you that it really needs re-evaluating and your agency contracts need modernizing to account for the new rules of digital marketing. Make a commitment to do this as soon as practically possible.



Summary

•  Be the best client you can be, offer consistently high-quality briefings. •  Try as much as possible to align marketing and procurement leaders. •  Be the squeaky wheel – demand what you are entitled to. •  Link your agencies’ income to performance against company objectives. •  Demand greater transparency in trading, especially with regard to media rebates. •  Align the agency to a set of “higher-goals” ideally close to your personal objectives. •  Update agency contracts more than 4 or 5 years old. Media changes quickly.



Your five-part manifesto for managing the optimum agency relationship


1. We aspire to create a relationship of trust with our agency where both sides are working towards aligned goals. These goals will sit within the language of the client organization and be part of the company’s marketing KPI’s.


2. We want to inspire our agency to perform at their best abilities, to stretch themselves into new territories on our behalf and grow their own business alongside ours.


3. We commit to pay our agency fairly and transparently for the value they add to our company as a partner.


4. We will listen to our agency and help them, where we as a client can be better, to do their job in the most effective way possible


5. We will define the agency’s remit but we are flexible enough to allow them to innovate because we acknowledge that the media market is always changing and so should our company, our marketing and our marketing agency partners.


5. We will define the agency’s remit but we are flexible enough to allow them to innovate because we acknowledge that the media market is always changing and so should our company, our marketing and our marketing agency partners.


Five-part manifesto for managing the optimum agency relationship.

1. We aspire to create a relationship of trust with our agency where both sides are working towards aligned goals. These goals will sit within the language of the client organization and be part of the company’s marketing KPI’s.

2. We want to inspire our agency to perform at their best abilities, to stretch themselves into new territories on our behalf and grow their own business alongside ours.

3. We commit to pay our agency fairly and transparently for the value they add to our company as a partner.

4. We will listen to our agency and help them, where we as a client can be better, to do their job in the most effective way possible

About the author Tom Denford is a Founding Partner of ID Comms


A multi-award winning communications strategist, Tom has 15 years of valuable experience in the communications business having worked for a number of the world’s largest global media and creative agency networks and some of the world’s biggest brands such as adidas, HP, Diageo, Nokia, Novartis and Sony in recent years. Most recently Tom was Global Head of Communications Planning at Carat and before that worked as Director of Comms Planning at JWT in New York. Tom is very driven to innovate the productivity of the client / agency relationship, most notably how media resource is organised, how agencies can work better together and how resources should be paid for. Tom is an Associate Lecturer for the Marketing Communications MA at the University of Greenwich and a regular on media panels, award juries and trade press.

http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tomdenford

Right and licenses Thank you for reading, please share freely.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

All the words are our own, or credited where quoted. Images are found and have been credited where known / possible.

© ID Comms Ltd, 2012


@idcomms

slideshare.net/idcomms

avoid the pitch - idcomms

Business

media pitch

media investments

comms best practice

comms best practice

media manifesto

id comms consultants

id commsid comms

highquality media resources