Kylie Ridler-Dutton, TrinityP3 senior global marketing consultant, has spent the past decade managing some of the most high-profile agency pitches in Australia and has built a reputation for being unflinching, fair and firm to both agencies and marketers alike.
In that time, she has heard many myths and misconceptions about pitching and pitch management. While she cannot speak for the whole industry, hearing her perspective on correcting many of the more egregious ones that float around the industry is interesting.
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Transcription:
Darren:
Hi, I am Darren Woolley, founder and CEO of TrinityP3 marketing management consultancy, and welcome to Managing Marketing, a weekly podcast where we discuss the issues and opportunities facing marketing, media, and advertising with industry thought leaders and practitioners.
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Now, next January, we’ll mark the silver anniversary of the founding of TrinityP3. In the past 25 years, we’ve heard a lot of the myths and misconceptions about pitching and pitch consulting. And while we cannot talk for the whole industry, it’s worth correcting some of the more gregarious of the many that have floating around the industry.
My guest today is well placed to debunk these myths. Not only has she worked agency side, but she’s also spent the past decade managing some of the most high-profile agency pitches in Australia and has built a reputation for being unflinchingly fair and firm to both agencies and marketers alike.
Please welcome to the Managing Marketing Podcast, TrinityP3 senior global marketing consultant, Kylie Ridler-Dutton. Hi, Kylie.
Kylie:
Hello, Darren.
Darren:
Thank you for joining me because just recently with the State of the Pitch Research in the market, it seems to have brought up for some of the agencies, some of the old myths and misconceptions that we’ve heard over the years.
And I think it’s probably a good time to address some of these head on. So, thank you for volunteering to come in and share a perspective as a pitch consultant of a decade’s experience.
Kylie:
I’m excited to get into it. I love answering these questions because they are things that come up not all the time, but frequently over the last 10 years.
Always the same agencies on the list
Darren:
Yeah, well look, let’s start with the one that I think we hear the most of or most often is probably a better way of putting it. It’s always the same agencies on the list. Sorry for putting the voice like that, but it is a bit whiny, isn’t it?
Kylie:
Okay. Well, I guess the first thing to say about that is it is not completely untrue. However, there are, I think on last count there’s over 9,000 agencies within Australia. So, we have heaps and heaps of agencies to choose from, but every brief that we get, so we get a brief from every client before we even start a pitch. And they’re all very different after different things.
We have to look at all of those agency and put a really long list of agencies together for our clients’ considerations. And then obviously it’s a process of elimination, but really up to the client to work through that with us.
However, a lot of the time … well, actually first I should go back and say, do you know what we’re under NDA. The agencies are under NDA, everyone’s under NDA, so I’m never quite sure how agencies presume that they know who or what agencies are on that pitch list.
But I guess even that NDA, there’s still industry gossips swirling around all the time as best as we try to sort of keep a lid on things.
Darren:
Well, there’s always someone either speculating or whispering who’s on that list. But you’re right, there is a very long list that we put together, the consideration list, not only has the agencies that are the best fit for the client’s brief, they also have a long list of agencies that we considered and we don’t think are necessarily a good fit for that particular brief.
Kylie:
Is that your John West list?
Darren:
Yeah, the John West, the ones we reject that make the others the best.
Kylie:
Yeah. Correct. But where I say that’s not completely incorrect, we do, as part of our briefing session with the clients, we actually ask them about agencies that they would like to see or they’ve heard of or they’ve had good or bad experiences with, whether they’d like to see them or not see them as well. So, it’s I guess what you call the captain’s pick, as well as our recommendations that we put in front of the clients.
However, sometimes we do hear the same agency names from our clients in that brief all the time. And the reason for that being is that those agencies are doing great work. They’re really good at their PR, so they’re out there promoting the business.
They’re also promoting all of the staff in that agency, and they’re very active in industry publications, industry events, really getting the word out there about their own agencies.
So, yes, some of the agencies do have a high enough profile that we don’t even have to suggest or explain the background of that agency to our clients. The clients already have a pretty good understanding of those agencies and are really interested.
Darren:
And it is interesting how that’s changed from my perspective over 25 years. In the early days it was sort of the big network agencies, Clemenger Melbourne was always one of those agencies in those days.
And more recently it’s all the indies that are getting the profile. I think probably BMF for a while was the hot agency that everyone was talking about in the year that they were voted or in the decade that they were voted agency of the decade. Monkeys were agency of the decade.
These are very high-profile agencies a lot of marketers have heard of. And so they’d like them to be put into consideration, right?
Kylie:
Correct. And just to that point that you mentioned there’s a swing between trends, networks or indies. Again, indies have done a great job at showing up to a lot of these industry events and debating and discussing the advantages of going to an indie over a network and vice versa. So, that really gets the conversation going.
Darren:
So, if someone perceives that we are constantly putting the same group of agencies on the list, which the facts are, we don’t, but there are agencies that will regularly turn up in pitches often because they’re requested by the client to include in that pitch, right?
Kylie:
Correct.
It’s up to the consultant to find the agency
Darren:
Yeah. Okay. What about the criticism that, you know, it’s up to us to find them, so if we don’t know who they’re, that’s our problem, not theirs.
Kylie:
Yes and no. So, first of all, I’d say it is really helpful to us as consultants if they do use the registers available to circulate their information. So, for anyone that doesn’t know TrinityP3 actually has an agency register, it’s free to use.
All you have to do is spend 5 or 10 minutes just filling in the details. So, we obviously have a database that has a search engine, just like a Google search engine. You put in the details, and it pops up with our list.
There’s obviously also industry directories that agencies can be a part of and keep on top of actually updating their information. So, that really helps us. But like any project that an agency’s on, we also have to do heaps of desk research. Obviously, it’s a very fast moving industry. There’s always changes with people moving from one agency to the next.
So, we do spend a lot of time in the background once we receive the client brief to actually look for those agencies and make sure that we give the clients the best options possible. And that it’s not all apples for apples either, that we give them some different perspectives that they can look at as well.
And just a personal little pet hate. But when I go onto a directory or try and hunt down agency information, there’s nothing more annoying than when there’s just an info@ email for new business people. My hint there would be make yourself more accessible.
Darren:
Okay. So, one of the things that is interesting when you do, for instance, a Google search, how there are a small group of agencies that are really good at SEM, and they’ll turn up at the top of the list. But a lot of them have really poor SEO, it’s very hard to find a lot of these agencies.
And we’ve had this growth of independent agencies that are often just really hard to find. But we do spend quite a bit of time trying to track them down because part of the value that we bring to the relationship with clients is giving them the broadest and deepest possible view of the marketplace.
But it does help if the agencies actually make life a little easier by at least being visible or flagging that they exist because it’s hard to spot someone when they’re hiding from you.
Kylie:
Yes. I mean, I’m doing a search at the moment and the clients recommended an agency that they had heard of, and I’ve discovered they don’t even have a website. So, it’s very difficult for me to sort of hunt them down. So, yes, as clear information as possible really does make our life a little bit easier and also makes their lives easier and gives them more opportunity.
The consultant participates in choosing the winning agency
Darren:
Now here’s a myth that I can only speak from a TrinityP3 point of view, but there is a perception that we actually participate in choosing the winning agency. Have you ever done that on any pitch that you’ve managed from TrinityP3?
Kylie:
No. So, again, going back to the point I was making before about how many agencies in Australia, there’s over 9,000 agencies. And we want to, as I said, match the brief that the client gives us. And every brief is different as well.
So, I often get agencies ringing and saying, “I heard you’re working on a pitch. Why didn’t we get a call?” But there’s probably a number of reasons why they didn’t get to be a part of that opportunity. And the most basic one is it’s a clash to a client that I know that they already have.
The difficult thing for us too, again, going back to that great NDA, but we often have publications reaching out to clients and someone at the organization tells them the pitch is going on, and then we get inundated with calls from agencies asking if they can get on the pitch list.
But I sort of thought this was a common understanding, but possibly not. But if you are finding out about a pitch that’s in B&T, et cetera, it’s probably too late to get onto the list anyway, so-
Darren:
And there’s the other part to that is, yes, we do put together a consideration list, but it’s still the client that decides from that list who’s going to participate. So, often we will have included agencies, but they’ve not even made the short list.
They’re in our consideration list, but they don’t make the invitation list, let’s call it. And then that means that they’ll never make the end position. But we don’t actually decide that, do we? That’s very much a process we manage, and the client decides.
Kylie:
Definitely. So, we arm them with all of the information to help them make that decision. We give them links to the work and the case studies so they can review that internally. We are not part of that internal meeting that the client team will have, and then they come back to us with their final selection.
So, but I think that’s something that we’re all very good at doing, and we are all very careful that we are not giving our opinion to the clients as well, because we know that that gets us into trouble if it doesn’t end up the way that we want it to anyway.
But and we’re not the people that will be working with the client day to day. So, the relationship, a lot to do with it, which we’ll get into a little bit later, is chemistry as well. So, we’re not the people that are going to be in the room working with the client. So, our opinion is not really productive to that client’s decision.
Darren:
Now, I’ve shared that with a few agency people, and you can see the incredulous look on their face. I’m sure they’d roll their eyes, if they were teenagers, at me.
But in actual fact, there is usually a point in every pitch where the marketers will say to you, they’re trying to decide on the final three or even the final one out of three, and they’ll say, “Who would you choose?” And it is a question that comes up a lot.
But as you said, our standard answer is it’s not our decision. You have to decide. But then what we’ll do is take them back to what they defined as success and then review each of the agencies as objectively as possible against those success criteria.
Just remind the client, well, you said you were looking for this. Which of the three agencies do you believe best demonstrated that ability or would bring that — it it’s part of managing the pitch rather than doing the pitch, and that’s what we’re doing.
Kylie:
Yeah. And that was really hard … I think it was the very first pitch that I worked on 10 years ago, that was a huge learning curve for me from being in an agency where you had to make decisions all the time to actually having an opinion and zipping it, basically keeping it to myself because that would be detrimental to the clients actually making sure that they stood firm on the brief that they’d given us at the beginning of the process.
Agencies must pitch
Darren:
Absolutely. Now, here’s an interesting one. I know I have written a lot about this and spoken a lot in the trade press and events and things, but that is that agencies think that they must pitch if we invite them to pitch. And I say to them, you don’t need to pitch, but they’re scared that we’ll somehow get upset with them and not invite them ever again.
Kylie:
Yeah. So, that’s something I learned very early on as well, that agencies do think that it’s all about the relationship with us, whereas that really doesn’t stand, therefore true to my point that I was making before about it’s not our decision and we need to put up every agency for consideration to the client without our opinion.
Believe me, there are a lot of agencies that are really difficult to work with and I don’t want to have to deal with, but I have to put that aside and I have to put every agency up in front of the client for them to make that decision.
But yeah, that was something that I really start out communicating to agencies at the start of a process when I’m doing an agency search is I let them know upfront, you do not have to pitch. If this doesn’t suit you, let me know. And it doesn’t mean that you won’t be considered for the next opportunity.
They need to know that it, if it’s not right for them, don’t go ahead. So, we only want agencies that know that they’re really up for the opportunity and really want to participate. And that’s why also we go through the process and it’s not the same process every time.
And I’m sure other pitch consultancies don’t run the same process as us, so no two pitches are alike, I guess. But we do definitely try and give them as much information transparency about what process they’d be expected to go through, I guess so they can decide do they have the resources, do they have the experience and are they up for the challenge to go forward with that.
So, yeah, I’m working on one at the moment and I think I’ve had so far today a 50% hit rate, so because it’s a busy time of year and agencies don’t want to do something they know they can’t do.
Darren:
Well, it is an invitation, you know?
Kylie:
Correct.
Darren:
We’re inviting them to participate, and they need to make a decision. And if they can’t make it and they don’t want to join in, that’s fine. There’ll be other invitations down the track is the first point.
The second is, I think you have to realize this is a business decision, and I have a lot more respect for the agencies that will actually go through and share their business thinking as to why they may or may not want to participate. Because it gives me a greater insight into the sort of commercial thinking, the commercial acumen that that agency, and particularly the management team has.
I think there’s nothing worse than, you know, there are certain agencies that you phone up and they’re saying, yes, we’re in before you’ve even told them what it’s for.
Kylie:
Yeah. And then they complain halfway through and say, whew, this is a lot of work.
Darren:
That is true.
Kylie:
And there’s agencies that I talk to that straight away I’ll give them all of the dates. I mean, you also have to be — it’s pretty hard for a big team at an agency to all be available for the dates that we need to be quite strict on to make the process quite fluid and keep running on time. We can’t just keep changing the information to suit agencies.
The end of the day, we work for the client so we need to make things work for them as a priority. But yeah, I think every process that I work on, I’ll always have agencies say, thank you so much for considering us, but yeah, we have to turn it down and that I love that.
Pitches are too laborious
Darren:
Yeah. Now, this is one that’s probably a general criticism of pitching, and that is that the pitch process is labor intensive and largely a waste of time. Now, I think the waste of time comes if they’re unsuccessful, but this idea of it being labor intensive, I think it’s a matter of horses for courses.
Kylie:
Yes. So, again, just as I said, what we do upfront and what we really make sure that we are clear on when we’re talking to agencies about entering into the pitch process, which is an 8-to-12-week process. So, it is a big commitment.
We are very transparent about the process they’ll have to go through, so they should know upfront the amount of work that’s involved, be happy to move forward. And I don’t think it’s any different to, if we weren’t involved as pitch consultants, clients these days have to be really careful about where they’re spending money, so they’re not going to jump into a relationship without testing waters.
The clients should pay pitch fees
Darren:
Absolutely. And look, the other thing for us is that we don’t get really small pitches. If someone’s got a 50,000, a hundred thousand dollars project, they’re not going to come to us to run a pitch for that. So, most of the pitches we’re organizing are actually quite substantial.
And so, there is actually a good end reward for the successful agencies. But we do try and keep that under control. That often leads people to say, “Well, I’m not going to participate unless the client pays a pitch fee.” Or they’ll say, “Why isn’t the client paying a pitch fee?” And what do you think about pitch fees?
Kylie:
I think we’ve always been very open to pitch fees. If a client has the funds to actually pay the agencies for their time, now we’re talking that would only be halfway through the pitch when you get to the actual short-short list. So, we’re talking perhaps three agencies at most, but that’s a huge investment for the client as well.
So, we’ve often had, or actually I wouldn’t say often that’s exaggerating. I’ve probably only had a handful in 10 years of clients that have wanted to straight up front say, we’d like to pay a pitch fee, but the pitch fee’s almost insulting, it would probably pay for the Friday agency lunch.
And they think a token offering is a nice gesture towards the agency, but it can also be seen as a little bit of an insult because you need to really commit to that investment and pay the agency enough of a pitch fee to actually cover the costs, which is ultimately what that fee should be covering.
So, and I think we’ve talked about in the past, and the industry often talks about the cost to an agency to pitch. It can be 50 to 100 K for a nice sized pitch process. So, if you’re going to offer the agency a thousand bucks, you may as well put that towards beers on a Friday afternoon.
Darren:
Yeah. I think putting together a credentials document, attending a chemistry meeting or a credentials presentation is pretty much a cost of doing business and certainly something that the agency should be willing to invest in.
But if the client then has particularly onerous or elaborate requirements beyond that, then there should be some sort of compensation, but it should be commercially relevant.
I think the danger is, and we’ve seen it not with us pitches we run, but where agencies have come to us and said, “Oh, the client’s offering a $5,000 pitch fee, but they want us to assign all our intellectual property of anything that we do during the pitch for that $5,000.” That’s where it becomes quite dangerous because it’s devaluing the ideas that the agency will be asked to produce during that pitch.
Kylie:
I think it does devalue. And that’s something where I guess we have the intellectual understanding of doing these pitches all of the time of what we should be addressing with the procurement departments and making sure that the agency’s protected when we are putting them through this process as well.
So, that’s one of the first things that TrinityP3 as pitch consultants look at. We do look at the Ts and Cs from the client to ensure that just because they’re participating in a pitch that both parties understand that that intellectual property isn’t owned by the client.
And I think we did have a situation, I remember going back a few years now where it was a non-for-profit and they actually did want to take one agency forward, but by the idea from the runner up agency. And I think they ended up actually doing that, but it was an agreed commercial arrangement between the two parties.
The incumbent agency does not need to do the whole process
Darren:
Yeah. It’s happened a couple of times where we’ll then negotiate with the agency to buy the intellectual property rights at a valid commercial amount, not a token amount because …
Incumbents, now, isn’t it interesting because yeah, often the incumbents will say, “Well, why do I have to go through a chemistry session? I work with them every day. Why do I have to show my credentials? Why am I being burdened with going through this whole pitch process?” What’s your perspective?
Kylie:
Well, I always like to flip that around for agencies and I really haven’t had any pushback when I actually explain to them that you need to look at that as an opportunity, not a burden.
So, the opportunity is that the client that you’ve been working with already may not have seen all the capabilities within the agency. There may not have been a brief that actually required those capabilities. You may have realized working with the client that there needs to be a little bit of change in structure of the agency personnel they want to put on that account.
So, what we try to do is give them a little bit of a guideline towards that chemistry session. Let’s address the elephant in the room. So, first off, we don’t want to spend the whole time, but let’s address any issues that both parties are aware need to be overcome and changed if in the future relationship.
But also, it’s an opportunity to re-showcase what the agency can do. So, it’s an opportunity, but we also want everything to be on a fair playing field. We want everyone to have a fair go. We want everyone to have the same opportunities, the other agencies.
Darren:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And some of the marketers say to us, “Oh, but the incumbent knows my business, and I know them and, and why should we put them through that? Only to then once the agencies had the chance to represent themselves, and if they do it well, we’ll often make their clients go, “Oh, I didn’t know that about my agency. That’s really interesting.”
And so, it refreshes or reframes their perception of the incumbent from being sort of comfortable, but somehow not that exciting to actually, this is quite interesting.
Kylie:
I’ve often found in situations when the incumbents actually gone through and re-presented their capabilities, some of the clients in the room have given briefs to other agencies, let’s say a digital specialist agency with a CX specialty, not realizing the agency they already have on the books can do all of that.
So, it’s just not something that came to mind. So, yeah, it’s a great opportunity for the agency to let them know what they can do.
Paying for the consultants services will get us on the pitch
Darren:
Now here’s one that’s controversial or could be controversial. We do offer a paid service where we advise agencies on the ways they present themselves in pitches to improve that. And some agencies have said mischievously, that that’s the way to get onto a pitch is by actually doing that.
Look, I’ll directly answer this if you don’t mind, Kylie, because for years and years I would meet with agencies, and they would present their credentials, and I’d give them lots of feedback and they would do nothing because they believed the whole purpose of the meeting was to get to know me and build a relationship. And that’s how they’d get put on more pitches.
When actual fact what was happening was they weren’t performing when you put them on pitches because their credentials and the way they presented themselves were so ordinary. It was amazing both charging a reasonable amount of money, but not ridiculous how that would focus everyone on the purpose of that meeting.
Because I don’t know about you, but I pretty much know most of the agencies, and so having a coffee and a chat and a drink isn’t as interesting to me as seeing them present themselves in a more winning way. What about you?
Kylie:
Well, yeah, look, I think, but given my age, I hate to bring it up, but I’ve got enough friends. So, I do appreciate the kind offer of lots of coffees, but I had to move rural just to get away from that. So, I’m not in a major CBD where I can just go out the front door and have a coffee.
However, well, in all seriousness, that was the perception I found when I first joined TrinityP3, that agencies did think that if they met with us, they’d automatically get onto a pitch. However, that’s not really how the pitch works.
Going back to the initial question about we do get a brief from every client, so not every agency is actually going to match that brief and get the opportunity to go onto that pitch process.
However, I think, TrinityP3 we’re all consultants and we’ve all got years of industry experience and we’re a consultancy, which is similar to an agency. Why shouldn’t we get paid for our time as just like the agencies say that they should get paid for theirs.
However, what we are doing in these consultations is we’re taking all of that experience, working on these processes, being in front of clients, hearing the client feedback of what they’re looking for, and we’re actually applying that information and that knowledge to the agency so they can do a better job.
You never provide feedback
Darren:
Absolutely. Now, one of the things that came up in the first state of the pitch report was this lack of constructive feedback or any feedback at all that would come. And it’s a real sticking point. A lot of agencies go, “You don’t give feedback,” when in actual fact, I know from day one, that’s a very strong point for us. One is giving feedback, the other is inviting feedback from our clients and the agencies, isn’t it?
Kylie:
That was a skill that I really had to hone in on and actually develop over the years of how to give radical candor as you call it. The feedback that is actually helpful. And it’s something that I’ve had to train a lot of our clients in how to do that, and they’ve really appreciated that experience to actually work out how to give feedback that is useful.
Because as I tell a lot of our clients, feedback is the currency of the agency in a pitch process. Especially if you are the losing agency, you want to know how you can improve things. So, the feedback is never personal, but it is straight up black and white. What our perception was, what the client’s perception was, and as well as the official feedback from the clients.
We also, as consultants, take a lot of our own time to make sure that we give that feedback. Only people I can’t give feedback to is the ones that don’t return my calls however, and there’s a few.
Darren:
And then complain that they don’t get feedback.
Kylie:
And complain. Exactly. However, I always make sure that I take the feedback stage really serious at each stage of the pitch process. And it’s funny because I find the losers in the pitch, the ones I’ve taken the time to give them really detailed feedback are the ones that are most grateful and say that that was a great experience.
And we take feedback too. We’re all open to feedback because every process we go through, every agency we deal with, we are picking up feedback ourselves so we can keep developing and making things better.
What’s the point, the cheapest agency will win
Darren:
Yeah. Look, constructive feedback is invaluable, and we know that, that’s why we give it to the agencies, but it’s also why we encourage it from the agencies and from our clients because it’s the only way we keep improving the service that we offer. What about this idea that it doesn’t matter about the whole pitch process, ultimately the cheapest price will win?
Kylie:
Well, this is the fun part of a pitch process. And I prefer to defer to you, but obviously TrinityP3, we have a lot of data from many, many years. I think you just said, we’re in our silver year next year, with collected data with rate cards, et cetera, from agencies. So, we can benchmark every pitch process.
So, we are not trying to — and clients mostly these days, they’re serious. They need their business to succeed. They’re not going to just go with the cheapest agency. They want a fair relationship.
And I think Australia as a market has matured a lot over the years. So, it’s not just about the cheapest, it’s about getting results and the partnership. So, I think gone is the word being used and thrown around as a supplier relationship. It’s more about a partnership and getting the best agency, getting the best resources. The best resources are going to be the better paid agency people because they’re good at what they do.
Darren:
Well, I think the danger with benchmarking is that a lot of people use an average as a benchmark, whereas we match the benchmark to the quality and capability of the agency. We have our tier one, tier two and tier three benchmarks.
And we don’t just look at rates because while rates give an indication, it’s actually the cost. What would it cost? What should the agency be paid to do the work that the client needs? So, that’s the first thing.
The second thing is that whenever we do the benchmarking, we don’t present that to the client until they’ve made the decision as to which agency they want. So, it’s not like it’s a major consideration in shortlisting the agencies, we hopefully have already got them to three by the time we ask for a financial proposal, an RFP.
But we will not then reveal how each one’s positioned, because ultimately that’s the value equation. If there’s an agency that should particularly want and think of doing an outstanding job or would do an outstanding job, then it’s probably likely that they will be potentially more expensive or not. But that’s where benchmarking comes in.
Okay. The next point, pitching’s just about getting the creative idea. And I’m sure there are pitches like that because we do know from the research that around 70 or 80% of pitches for creative have speculative creative as part of the selection process.
Kylie:
Yeah. Look, and I think if that’s ultimately what you want out of a pitch process as a marketer, then we’re probably not the right consultants for you. But I don’t come across it very often. So, these days things are a lot more complex with long-term relationships between a marketer and an agency.
So, certifications, we can talk B Corp, sustainability practices within the agency, the culture of an agency. I had a kickoff meeting with a client this week and she said one of the important things for them because of previous maybe bad experiences was the culture of the agency that it fit her business as well.
So, there’s multiple disciplines that marketers are looking for, not just the idea. Often the briefs won’t even progress to the idea stage. We’ve got lots of pitch processes which are all based around the capabilities and the processes that an agency has.
So, yeah, I think things have evolved a little bit with what clients are looking for. And as you said before, if it is about the idea, obviously it would be smart for the agency to make sure that if they’re putting ideas forward that they’re protected with who owns that work by the end of the process.
Government run pitches are so disruptive
Darren:
Well, there is a category of advertiser where it’s always about the idea. And that’s actually the next one, which is government run pitches are so disruptive. And I’ve worked with government over those 25 years. There are two things about government pitches that everyone has to be aware of.
The first is they’re more likely to be buying the idea than they are to be buying the agency because almost every government process will take ideas and put them into some sort of consumer testing or market research to see how the ideas test.
So, that’s a big difference because in most commercial pitches that we run, the client is choosing an agency to actually work with them over two or three or more years and doing lots of different work. Whereas government is very campaign focused. So, that’s the first thing.
The second is that being the taxpayer’s dollar, the government will not just have long-term relationships. They’re more inclined to have campaigns and it might be a one-year appointment and then they’ll go to market again and again and again.
Sometimes it’s longer if it’s a bigger campaign, but they will regularly go to market, which can be quite disruptive. But it’s the way that government procurement runs to protect the public purse.
Kylie:
Exactly. The public purse. And I think that’s the point in that with government, go in eyes wide open because you do have to realize, government obviously has the public person has to actually be transparent with where the taxpayer’s dollars are going.
So, know that if you’re going to work with the government that it may not be a very long-term relationship, but I think for me I run more private sector pitch processes versus government and I often get agencies a little bit alarmed or frustrated with the process that we have to put them through. If it is under the government tender process, it’s a lot more arduous. There’s a lot of paperwork. And some of it maybe not as fair or transparent.
Most pitches are decided before the agencies even pitch
Darren:
Yeah. And look, I think your point is right, if it’s government, the agencies need to be very clear about what is expected and the rules of those because they are quite different from more commercial arrangements.
This is one that I think arises when marketers, clients, or procurement are not particularly transparent in either process or feedback. And that is, most pitches are pre decided anyway. We are just going through the motions, which when I hear that, I say, well, why did you do it? If you think it’s predecided, why did you do it?
So, I don’t think they know that or believe that upfront, but somewhere along the line. Have you noticed many situations where the client’s gone into the pitch pretty much wanting a particular agency?
Kylie:
Definitely. And I really enjoy it when the information that we give the clients when we’re presenting them with an agency search report off the back of their brief at the beginning of the process, I really enjoy when the client actually goes through that information and their eyes are opened to the possibilities and maybe misconceptions.
Because that’s also, I find definitely with some of the networks these days, unfortunately, they have a very solid reputation in the industry and clients do have a preconception of what the agency may be like.
So, presenting them with fresh, updated information that we’ve gathered for them often opens their eyes to opportunities they didn’t think were there.
Also I think the industry is moving so often that having us do this research for them, they’re often surprised at the changes in agency profiles. And I know you said to me, apparently, it’s not PC anymore to use the term wild card, but we do often like to throw in agencies that the client has never heard of, which starts out as a little bit of a negative.
If the client says, “Well if I haven’t heard of them, how great can they be?” But then when we actually go through the process, their opinion has totally flipped.
Darren:
Right. And look yeah, I would say we put in agencies that fulfill most of their needs but may not be expected by the client, you know, just to challenge their expectations and see if they’re open to something that’s a little bit different to what they’re the run of the mill.
Kylie:
I often find and it depends on the process, again, if we actually break this up into two stages, but the start of the pitch process, when we perhaps have the requirement for a credential submission before they actually have the face-to-face chemistry meetings with the agencies, I do often find what’s on paper can be totally flipped around from when the client team actually meets the agency team.
So, and that’s either a positive or a negative. I have had a client recently that said, “Oh, that looks so good on paper,” and then it just didn’t come to fruition when I met them.
Darren:
Well, I think we’ve done a good job when I get the reaction having given them the market search results and they go, “Oh, actually there’s a lot more agencies than I thought,” firstly, because that means we’ve opened up their eyes to bigger possibilities.
The other one is at the end where they go, you know what, at the start of this, I would never have thought I’d be appointing agency, whatever. But they were really good, so that means that they’ve been opened to the idea that what they may have gone into it.
Now, having said that, I would absolutely advise any client that said, “I’m going to appoint this agency, and nothing is going to change my mind.” I would absolutely advise them not to run a pitch. Just appoint the agencies. Don’t waste everyone’s time.
Kylie:
And that’s a good point to go back to the discussion about incumbent agencies. We make sure that we do spend a lot of time with the client team before they make their agency selection. If there’s incumbents involved that the incumbent is included for good reason and has as much chance as winning as the agencies they haven’t seen.
We don’t want them wasting an incumbent agency’s time or resources if they really can’t see them proceeding.
TrinityP3 is part of the pitching problem
Darren:
Yeah. Okay. That gets us to the final one that we have on our list here, and that is that TrinityP3 is part of the problem, and I’m assuming when they say part of the problem that the problem with all of pitching in all of the industry is because of us, which is-
Kylie:
Sorry to interrupt. What’s the percentage of pitches that we run?
Darren:
Well, that’s what I was going to say. It’s quite gratifying because-
Kylie:
That we’re that important.
Darren:
Yeah. That they somehow believe that we run every pitch. And which is not true. I mean, the research again shows that consultants, not just TrinityP3, but there are other consultants in the marketplace. We’re only running about 15, 20% of all of the pitches that are happening.
So, that means there’s 80% being run by clients and procurement teams that are not us. So, if we’re able to cause a problem just by the small amount, the 20% that we do have, and that’s not just as I said, TrinityP3, I think the problem here is that in actual fact we are trying to drive change.
When I started as a pitch consultant, pitches were pretty much the beauty parade of getting every agency lined up and getting six to eight agencies and meeting with them and then giving everyone a creative brief and letting them go off and coming back with six to eight different solutions.
And then choosing one and then negotiating the lowest possible price with them, which is incredibly wasteful. So, yeah, that was the problem. If we’re perceived as maintaining that problem, then it’s probably by someone that’s never been part of our pitch process. That would be fair to say, isn’t it Kylie?
Kylie:
I think it is because I haven’t come across that feedback and I know there possibly is a perception also that no one tells us the truth. But I like to think that I actually have a lot of friends in the industry that I’ve developed through these processes because agencies have appreciated my candor, my transparency and not using them, so to speak, which I think was an old school style of pitch process.
And I think given honest feedback from agencies and marketers to us and our feedback to them, we are developing and we’re evolving a better fairer pitch process. And not forgetting a lot of agencies don’t even have the resources to have a new business dedicated person.
So, us coming and involving them in a pitch process is actually assisting them, putting a hot lead in front of them to actually get business that they couldn’t have perceived getting before. So, yeah, my feedback has always been positive.
I truly believe that we’ve made a difference and that working with the agencies and all being very open and honest with feedback that we’ve developed a better process for the industry.
Darren:
Well, I think we’re working on it, it’s always a work in progress. That’s what I’m trying to say. But I think that the other thing is this idea that we are not open to feedback because it’s just garbage.
Over 25 years, I’ve had a lot of agency people give me very forthright feedback. Some of it incredibly constructive. But what I’ve never done is not included an agency in consideration because they’ve given me forthright, and often blunt feedback because, first of all, I’d be doing a disservice to my client.
Kylie:
Agree. Yeah.
Darren:
By eliminating an agency that could be perfectly right for them. And secondly, I’m really not that shallow and I’m certainly no snowflake that won’t put up with a bit of constructive criticism.
Often, I find when they do speak up, there’s often a misunderstanding rather than an actual issue. But I’m still willing to learn from other people’s perspectives.
Kylie:
That being said, we can lead a horse to water, as they say, but not all clients listen to us and take our feedback, but we definitely make sure that we’ve given that feedback and we definitely take feedback from marketers and agencies alike.
Darren:
Well, look Kylie, this has been a terrific conversation. Thank you for taking on debunking and busting a few myths here about pitch consulting. I really appreciate it.
Kylie:
I would love anyone out there who listens to this to think of some more myths. So, if they want us to bust them, happy to do so. Happy to have a chat informally or on the airwaves.
Darren:
Well, they can either send us their myths through the website or email us at people@trinityp3.com. Before you go, I do have to stress test you a bit here. And that is, seriously, do you have a favourite agency?
