Ten important considerations before an agency should agree to pitch for business

Here are ten important consideration every agency Managing Director / CEO should consider before agreeing to participate in a pitch / tender for a marketers business:

1. The product (or service) must be one which you would be proud to advertise.

2. Never accept an account unless you believe you can do a conspicuously better job than the previous agency.

3. Steer clear of products or services whose sales have been falling over a long period, because this almost always means that there is an intrinsic weakness in the product (or service), or that the management of the company is incompetent.

4. It is important to find out whether the prospective client wants the agency to make a profit.

5. If the account is unlikely to be profitable, would it give you the chance to create remarkable advertising?

6. The relationship between a marketer and their agency is almost as intimate as a relationship between a patient and their doctor, so make sure you can live happily with your prospective client before you accept their account.

7. Avoid clients for whom advertising is only a marginal factor in the marketing mix as they have an awkward tendency to raid their advertising appropriations whenever they need cash for other purposes.

8. Never take new products before they are launched unless they are included in a hamper of existing products as it costs an agency more to steer new products through test markets and eight in ten are likely to fail.

9. If you aspire to create great advertising, never take associations as clients.

10. Sometimes a prospective client offers you their business on condition you hire and individual when they believe to be indispensable to the management of their account.

These ten points are paraphrased almost directly from David Ogilvy’s – Confessions of an advertising man, 1963.

Clearly while the practice of advertising has evolved, the discipline of agency management could learn much from the wisdom of old.

If you are a Managing Director or CEO or a creative, media, digital or marketing services provider and want to be consideration for pitches or tenders managed by TrinityP3 in Asia Pacific, click here to register your details confidentially and free.