Scott Knox is the President and CEO of the Institute of Canadian Agencies, with a mission to Amplify, Protect and Transform the agency sector through advocacy, awards, community, consultancy, insight, networking, research and training.
But when it came to pitching, instead of publishing another industry guideline on how to do it or joining the chorus of those wanting to ‘ditch the pitch’, they launched Pitch Watch. This confidential service enables agencies to report both negative & positive experiences with client pitches and throughout a client relationship.
Scott shares the inspiration for launching Pitch Watch and developing a solution to the outdated pitch process – the Qualification Based Selection process.
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The thing is, the budget has to go hand-in-hand with the outcomes you want to achieve. And if they’re not realistic, then you’ve got to change one of those two.
Transcription:
Darren:
Hi, I’m Darren Woolley, Founder and CEO of Trinity P3 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.
The advertising agency pitch process has remained largely the same for the past 50 years, but during this time, the advertising industry’s gone through huge transformation that’s added a broad range of capabilities to the agency offering, and a layer of complexity, making the traditional pitch process largely obsolete.
But instead of calling for change, there is a groundswell of voices calling to ditch the pitch. Other organizations provide pitch guidelines that end up reinforcing that there’s only one way to manage the pitch process.
One of the more innovative approaches is being led by the Institute of Canadian Agencies. And today, I’m sitting down with Scott Knox, the President and CEO of the ICA, to find out more.
Please welcome to Managing Marketing Scott Knox, welcome Scott.
Scott:
Glad to be here; nice to meet you and the team.
Darren:
Now, Scott, just for those unaware listeners, the ICA represents the advertising agencies in the Canadian market, don’t they?
Scott:
That’s right, yeah, we’ve been around since 1905, we’re one of the oldest of the associations around the world. And unlike some of the other markets, we represent all of the types of agencies in the country.
So, we do have advertising media, PR, marketing design, digital search, the whole gamut. The agency sector is what we represent as the Canadian marketplace.
Darren:
And one of the things I like about your mission, it first of all is that you’ve managed to condense it into three words, which is amplify, protect, and transform, which I find incredibly powerful. But secondly, it’s not just about looking after the agency’s business but also, promoting the advertising industry for the value that it creates for society.
Scott:
We’ve recently updated and put a sentence before the Amplify, Protect, and Transform, which is that the ICA exists to impact the business environment for agencies to thrive positively. And that means working with clients to improve relationships and how they select agencies, working with the government, working with education to make sure we have future talent ready for us, and working with society.
So, it’s about us, the ICA, being in front of the agency sector to make sure that they be the best they can, but the business environment around them is right to help them thrive and flourish.
Darren:
Yeah, because that’s a much broader view, and in doing that it actually helps as you say, the whole industry flourish. Because I think sometimes, people are inclined to take advertising for granted in many ways, in fact, or even position it as somehow an evil when you hear all of these people talking about banning advertising for certain categories.
Scott:
But the good thing is that certainly most of the countries that I’ve had experience of have amazing self-regulation in place. I mean, the ICA together with the Canadian organization, the Association of Canadian Advertisers representing the client side a few decades ago, founded Ad Standards which is recognized by government here in Canada as the self-regulator for our industry.
And there’s a global network. There’s ASA in the UK and so on and so forth. And so, it was good to actually separate the self-regulation, the how we do things for consumers, good, bad, and indifferent.
And the management of that two separate organization is leaving us, the ICA or the IPA in the UK, the forays in the United States or the ACA in Australia, to be there to look at the business environment the agencies work in, and how can we help them be better? Because ultimately, it ladders up how is marketing better. And if agencies are better, clients are better, more product sale, better share price, et cetera, et cetera.
Darren:
Healthier economies, better lifestyles for people, better quality of life. And that’s what I mean, is making that connection. People are inclined to look at advertising in the context of the ads and what they’re saying, rather than remembering that it’s part of the overall capitalist system. It’s the very basis of our economies that it makes a contribution to it.
It struck me that I see a lot of industry bodies around the world, and for the ICA to take that broader consideration for me, was incredibly insightful.
Scott:
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I mean, I’ve been 22 years running nonprofit trade bodies for the agency sector, 15 in the UK now approaching seven here in Canada, and it took a bit of a while. It does take you a bit of a while to work out who the hell you are and what the hell you’re here to do.
And so, there’ve been many iterations of positioning statements, whether it be my old outfit, the MAA in the UK or here at the ICA. But I think what I really enjoyed was getting to the point of going, actually, we are not here to tell agencies about their craft capability, that’s for them to do. And they’re going to be better at talking about that to the world than we are.
The ICA, the body’s job is to make sure that the environment allows them to be the best they can at what they do in terms of their craft and ability and consultancy. So, it did take a bit of a while because the often thing with positioning statements is who are you trying to speak to? Are you trying to gain more members, talk more to the government? I mean, you end up playing this darling game around all of it and we just decided, “Look, this is what we do and you either buy into it or you don’t.”
Darren:
Well, and in some ways, ISBA in the UK the voice of advertisers is their positioning line. And I think that’s such a powerful thing, in some ways I see the same thing here with the ICA, it’s the voice of advertising as practiced by advertising agencies.
But we’re not here to talk about the overall positioning because as I said in my introduction, when I first heard about Pitch Watch, I thought that it was an incredibly innovative way, and in many ways, living up to the idea of being the voice of the advertising agencies, to actually start to hold the industry and particularly, clients, accountable to a standard when it came to pitching. Because pitching is a significant part of any agency’s day-to-day life, isn’t it?
Scott:
It is, and running Pitch Watch here in Canada has been an interesting journey because of course, when we launched it, which was I think my second month in the country, there was a lot of murmuring.
And even when I went to some events, direct challenges to what I was doing, and I think the interesting thing about Pitch Watch was that people saw it and made assumptions about what it was, what is it actually here to challenge.
And in the first instance, people thought I was here to just kick at clients, and that was said to my face by various people, and of course, agencies who were then agency leaders who either the side of me when that statement was being made would suddenly go a bit quiet and think, “Oh my God.”
Darren:
And step one step back.
Scott:
Step one side. Or actually, there is one agency leader here in Canada who did say, “Yes, Scott, that’s a bit much.” But then called me afterwards to say, “No, keep going.” But agencies have got clients to remember.
But the thing is, the fundamental truism behind Pitch Watch for me is, we intervene in a pitch process, an agency review, an agency search to get a better outcome from the process, it isn’t to have a kick at the client.
And in fact, if you look at the number of reviews we’ve intervened on, which is approaching 200 now in the past six years, the bit that people seem to remember is when we’ve called those clients out publicly, there’s only been eight of that near 200.
And that’s because the client did get to the point of going, “Yeah, I don’t recognize you, not changing a thing, we’re going.” If the client starts to make progressive steps to amend the review, we back off and allow the agencies to make a better commercial decision.
So, yeah, the premise was, “Oh, you britts come over here to Canada to shout at our Canadian clients,” when actually no, my objective is to get a better result for them which in a knock back effect is a better result for the agency.
Darren:
Yeah, of course, I mean, improving the pitch process has to be the driver for anyone that cares about the industry because it’s so fundamental. I often worry because as a pitch consultant, I’ll see clients and procurement particularly looking at the fee, and it could be a million dollars, it could be several million dollars, depending on the size and the investment of the client.
And yet I say, “Well, let’s just look at the broader picture, which is what’s the overall investment by this company for marketing” because the fee is often only a very small percentage of their total investment. And then let’s look at the overall revenue of the business, because that’s ultimately what you’re hoping to impact by getting your marketing right. And so, that becomes a very small part of the overall picture.
Scott:
The thing is that we live in an economic time where the focus on the monthly spreadsheet or the quarterly spreadsheet is where every desire line is, it’s what procurement are driven to look at.
Darren:
Quarterly reporting.
Scott:
And the problem is-
Darren:
Shareholder value.
Scott:
That’s the wrong conversation because if you’re going to look at quarterly analysis, that’s going to push you into short-term misbehavior, which ultimately, is most impacted by cost cutting.
If you were to take a zoomed out longer-term view on what’s happening in terms of your marketing effectiveness, and that can be done to an individual brand on how that is, what that is determined as, whether it’s share price, whether it’s sales, whatever they want it to be. But if you look at a longer-term view, your quarterly spreadsheet analysis will often play against that.
And so, when procurement look at those lines of how much an agency costs, I just say, “Shut up, wrong job, start looking at what the outcomes you want to generate on the basis of that marketing investment.” And if that’s not where their eye line is, then they’re going to make mistakes and drive down the effectiveness and ultimately, the quality of their brand, which will ultimately, hit share price.
Darren:
Well, yeah, and it’s one of the reasons we introduce this idea of benchmarking, but we’ll get onto that later.
Just for those that don’t know, I see on the website, Pitch Watch is the ICA’s confidential service that enables agencies to report both negative and positive experiences with client pitches throughout a client relationship and throughout the client relationship.
And I saw that you’ve introduced some traffic lights, which I think is great. The idea of red light means that there’s something fundamentally wrong, and we should stop and reconsider this. Amber is caution and green is it’s all going.
Scott:
Yeah, because we have to celebrate. I mean, to be quite honest, I think in the six years here, we’ve only had two positive review processes ever brought to mind, reported to us.
And that’s not helpful because we want to shine a light on those clients who do it well and ultimately, track and see what the marketing effectiveness outcomes of that great relationship starting point become. And so, we introduced the traffic light system in order to say, we want to evaluate, we want to shine and showcase all three and-
Darren:
Well, carrot and stick, isn’t it? You only get people to change if you’re acknowledging good behavior and also …
Scott:
But ultimately, see the outcomes of that good behavior. We need to be able to, as an industry, look at, if you start a relationship with your agency in this way, what eventually happens to the marketing effectiveness? If you remunerate your agency in this way, what ultimately happens to the marketing effectiveness? And that is the only answer to that situation.
And marketing effectiveness has to be the indicator of whether it’s right or successful. It’s not because we are poor as agencies. People have assumed that what I want to do is get out there and say, “Oh, don’t treat us like this, go back to Dekenzie in England and please sir, can I have some more?” That is not what this is about.
This is about the clients getting more, this is about share price going up, sales going up, and innovation occurring for the brand in the eyes of their consumer. And so, the idea of just looking at the dollar signs on the input costs is going to deliver you absolutely no insight into what the outcomes and the values you’re generating in that marketing spend, none whatsoever.
Darren:
And a lot of that goes back to the marketers are often being … their budgets are set as a cost of the business. And then what they’re trying to do is make that cost go as far as possible by squeezing each of the elements on a cost basis.
The trouble is that when it comes to actually the strategic and creative idea that’s going to be driving their business and the results, squeezing that can have catastrophic effects compared to looking for efficiencies and productivity in other areas.
Scott:
I mean, look, there’s nothing wrong with efficiencies. But I do, and I’ve always had an issue with productivity. Productivity is a mugs game analysis, this idea that economies and companies and businesses all assess how productive their people are.
Some of our best thoughts come from being in the shower or on the toilet. So, let’s vulgar analogy, but in essence, it is not how much you can tell … we are not production lines, although some clients treat their agencies as that, and some agencies have set up models to respond to being production lines of things going out the door.
But if what you’re looking at is for success, marketing effectiveness, driving sales — if you are looking for that innovation to happen, productivity’s going to kill that. Because you need to have great minds, have the space to create and deliver, and you need to give them the environment to do that in.
If you say you’ve got to do it, and you’ve got to do it 20 times, and you’ve got to do it in the next 10 minutes, you wouldn’t even ask your children to behave like that. So, why do we do that from a business perspective?
Darren:
I think I may have a different version of productivity. You are talking about time and motion studies, I’m talking about how do we eliminate waste?
Scott:
Oh, okay, of course.
Darren:
Because one of the things that we use productivity for is to actually identify how the client’s processes and behavior are actually driving the agency, and agencies are very good adaption organizations.
They adapt to the inefficiencies of the client and often make up for them. And so, we use productivity as a way of identifying where that’s occurring, because in some ways, consuming more agency resources, just coping with the inherent inefficiencies of …
Scott:
And we both know that for the years that we’ve been in the business, that inefficiencies in that sense is really key. I mean, for example, the client making assumptions that they can do a really crappy brief, because ultimately, they’ll get the chance to amend it 48 times. Well, whose interest is that? Whose best interest in terms of efficiency is that to happen?
Darren:
That’s why I set up the business.
Scott:
Getting brief right up at the front, then there’ll be two amends, job done, out the door, everybody’s happy, but that’s not how we work. And clients will often say, “This is what we are giving you and we want that out the door,” but the journey to getting there may be arduous and like a bloody rollercoaster.
And that’s not effective, and actually that’s not good marketing, that is not good business sense, that is not good business pragmatics. And so, yeah, I’m with you on certain elements of businesses and productivity, but the idea of time.
Darren:
Oh, yeah, time and motion studies for-
Scott:
Because we’ve got to get away from time sheets in agencies. I mean, they are just the death of creativity.
Darren:
I know. I was a research scientist before I became a copywriter and ended up creative director. One of the reasons for creating TrinityP3 was sitting there as a creative director in my analytical science mind going, “Why are we going around and round in circles on this until we’ve run out of either time or money to make a decision.”
And in some cases, we’ve seen — and it wasn’t until we’re able to demonstrate the fact that in one case, an automotive client was making their agencies typically go through 27 iterations of creative work, and then we’re able to put a dollar value on that to show them how changing their behavior could have a huge impact on the way they worked.
Anyway, we’re well off the pitch side, but this is such a great conversation and I really appreciate it.
The Pitch Watch, I think, for me, was terrific because it was a very high profile, and some would say potentially, controversial because it hasn’t been done in many markets, to draw attention to the issue around how to be better and the benefits of pitching the right way.
But then you went on to do the next, what I’d call innovation, is that you didn’t then sit down as the ICA and write out here’s how to run a pitch. You actually came up with some principles or guidance, which you call the qualification-based selection process.
Scott:
Yeah, so two things converge there. The interesting thing about running Pitch Watch is I was intervening in reviews, and then trying to point clients in direction of doing it in a better way and finding actually, most of the review process guides out there in the world are rubbish.
And I found that very irritating, and don’t get me wrong on the amount of work and hours and things that everybody’s put into it and all very well-meaning. But actually, what it was doing was just reiterating and tweaking existing, or even enhancing, as you said at the top of thi — enhancing bad practice that’s not in the benefits of clients or agencies.
And so, I hired a woman called Leah Power, who’s my EVP here at the ICA. Leah’s background is she was a COO at Grey and DDB, and umpteen other agencies. And when she joined the team, I had just read an article about architecture and engineering. In the United States, in 47 states, I could have my number wrong because I’m trying to do this off memory …
It is illegal to select an engineering or an architecture practice on the basis of price because of risk issues. And I was really interested in what that meant. And we met with the bodies for architecture and engineering in the U.S. and in Canada and decided could this qualification-based selection process apply to marketing services supply?
And that’s where it started, and we then basically just condense it down, there are 12 principles on this process and if you follow these, yes you can adapt your own current process to work around these. There are of course, in the toolkits 150 pages long, which agency people don’t like to read because they don’t like to read anything more than two paragraphs.
But in there, there are grids and everything you would need in terms of tools, but ultimately, if you follow the 12 principles, you will get to selecting an agency business on the base of their qualification to deliver what you want to deliver.
And it gets us away from this dog and pony show of let me turn out the jazz hands moments of putting up poly boards and PowerPoint presentations — I’m showing my age now on essay poly boards on pitches. But putting up those jazz hand moments to go, “Look, here’s a sparkly shiny thing we think you should do,” that’s having spent … anyway.
But at the end of the day, QBS is about going, “Can this business deliver what I need, that makes my marketing work within this budget?” And that’s the line.
And the interesting thing is, we’ve done some training with procurement departments here in Canada on how to apply it. And the penny drop moment is when you compare QBS to how you hire your best people.
When you hire your best people, you have a job spec, you have a budget, and you go out to the market, you take in CVs, resumes and then you will whittle that down, and then you’ll ask people in for an interview, and the last thing you do is price.
Why is it the last thing you do? It’s because you may get somebody who sort of sits in the budget that actually, they’re a bit junior with a bit more training. And we could do that within the budget, we could create a rising star, or by chance, you get some absolute lightning blazer who applies for your … and you know you’ve got to put an extra X of $10,000 on the table and you go, “But that’s going to be instrumentally challenging, but that’s going to be … actually let’s do it, let’s make more budget.”
You should do the same with your agency, which is leave the price to the element to the last, have a budget, and the agency’s got to respond to the budget. But when you get to seeing that point where you go, “You are qualified, okay, and we could go in that direction, or we could go … okay, I’m interested in aiming higher so we could put more money on the table or we could put less money on the table,” whatever you decide to do.
But the minute you make price a determinate factor in an agency search, innovation goes to the floor because the client’s looking at how many hours as is the agency, and the client’s trying to work out how many fewer hours and the agency’s trying to work out how many more hours, at which point where has innovation fallen? In the cracks.
Darren:
And it becomes even worse, because then you get into this game on the agency side of, well, I can’t afford to put my senior more experienced people, so I need to find ways of putting more junior people in there. And the client’s not getting what they really perhaps want or need because they’ve created this artificial construct.
And that’s where this moving away from being an outsourced labor-based model to more at least, a pricing model. I know sometimes, the industry’s been using value model, but it’s actually a pricing model where we’re saying, “Yes, there’s a cost associated with this, here’s the price for it.” It’s the way we buy cars, for instance. You don’t buy cars on the cost basis, there’s a price and you make as the buyer, a decision on whether that represents value to you.
Scott:
Consumers by very few things on the basis-
Darren:
Of cost.
Scott:
Of cost. Corporations know that, and it comes down to perceived value, we know that. The interesting-
Darren:
Which is where we are because the link to then the true value delivered by that agency is one that’s outside the ability of many organizations to-
Scott:
But that’s the main thing that has to absolutely change.
Darren:
Yeah, absolutely.
Scott:
So, we need marketing, and we need financing behind the marketing department to understand what works and what doesn’t. To look at when you invest this in the following ways, what does it deliver?
And unless you know that before you go to a review, you are just looking at jazz house movements, that’s all you’re doing, and costing a huge amount of money and stress to all and sundry to look through speculative ideas and everything because you want to be surprised and delighted. Go to the bloody theater or a cinema if that’s what you want, don’t waste your time doing it in the review process.
Darren:
Because I think one of the other problems is many marketers never become expert in running pitches because it’s not something that happens every day for a marketer. They may, if you buy the-
Scott:
But they should be an expert at what they want.
Darren:
Yes, but not the process-
Scott:
Of what their brand needs.
Darren:
But not the process of how to get there.
Scott:
And that’s fine, and that can be where procurement has a role to play in organizations like your own, have a role to play to guide that. But unless the marketer is coming with what I want to have as my outcome, the conversation with you or procurement is irrelevant.
Darren:
We spend more time — people ask how long does the pitch process … I say, “We’ll spend two or three weeks before we even consider looking at agencies, just getting clients to clearly define what success would look like.” What’s a successful outcome?
Scott:
Well, you mean a client shouldn’t just run over you because they’re bored?
Darren:
Or that it’s the end of a contract. But anyway, if you don’t mind, I just want to read through those guidelines quickly, are they? I think the guidelines for the QBS.
Scott:
Oh, you mean the principles.
Darren:
The principles, sorry; disclose the budget, absolutely agree.
Scott:
Yeah, and the thing is I do understand, my sister’s ex public sector and she tells me that there’s a very much a belief in the public sector that what you do is you talk about what you want to achieve and then expect a supplier to come and tell you what that might cost. That’s fine if you’re buying tires, pens, or beams but this is not a commodity, but this is consultancy purchase.
Darren:
It’s how long is a piece of string? Because I can give you the multimillion-
Scott:
If you disclose the budget, what you immediately do is you take out those agencies who won’t work for that budget. And that’s right, you don’t want them tendering and then go, “Yeah, why did I get this?”
Darren:
And we even say to clients that are even more sensitive around giving a price, “Look, at least give a range, like half a million to 700,000.”
Scott:
But the only reason not to do that is often … or the reason some clients don’t is because they haven’t worked it out themselves. So, don’t go to market if you haven’t worked out yourself.
Darren:
And the irony is it’ll be last year plus over the CPI-
Scott:
And if that’s what it is, that’s what it is, disclose it. But the budget has to go hand-in-hand with the outcomes you want to achieve. And if they’re not realistic, you must change one of those two.
Darren:
Yep, price compliance is mandatory but not evaluated.
Scott:
Yes, which is interesting for some people to get their head around. What we’re saying is here is the budget, these are the prices within that, and we will debate that at the end. The process of QBS is to find the agency or say three agencies that are qualified to deliver what you want them to deliver.
Once you’ve done that, then you negotiate with the top agency at the end, you do price last because it’s important. The minute you put price as an evaluated criteria on a review, innovation will drop to the floor because everybody will focus on the dollars, cents, that’s all they’ll do.
So, if you move that to the end, it means that it’s an important factor, it is compliant. As part of this review process, you will negotiate a budget and a dollar sign at the end of it. But you won’t do that to select the agency you want to do that with.
You want them to be qualified and capable and meet your needs within your suggested budget. And then at the end of it, you negotiate with them, once you’ve selected who is the best possible partner. Don’t put price into the evaluated criteria because it will kill you getting the right solution.
Darren:
And then the next one is define the decision criteria, which I think is really important. But a lot of procurement people seem to struggle with it, and I say to them, but the agency needs to know where to play to.
Scott:
And your decision criteria can be what you want. If you want an agency to behave like this, be structured like this, have this point of view, you say it. That way, the agency knows what it’s got to speak to and what your management structure are looking towards. If you define that clearly, they know what they’re talking to, and that gets you closer to a partnership as opposed to a supplier relationship.
A supplier relationship is arm’s length, and you want these things to come off a line. If you want a partnership is because you’ve got to meld with us. And if you have decision criteria that you are going to evaluate, and the agency can respond to that, you’ve already started a pathway to a partnership.
Darren:
I noticed down further, there’s one that says limit proposal pages, which I love, we introduced that a long time ago. We then had to provide guidance on the point size because we ended up with the agency wanting to get as much information that we were getting down to the six point and having to get a magnifying-
Scott:
Oh, interesting, that’s where it goes hand in hand with don’t share proprietary questions. So, if you have a very tight briefing, whether you are working with an agency or whether this is part of the search process, you keep it short and you type and you say what you want, then what you do is you change how … there’s a really odd thing that procurement have brought into our industry, which is that every question asked by every agency, the answers to which we shared with everybody.
We are not in church, it’s not a hallelujah moment, you don’t have to give to all. In fact, what you’ll do is if you shut down sharing the questions, you will start to, at that point, understand the mental capabilities of the agencies to ask you questions, to interrogate the document you’ve given them, and your perspectives, and the conversation will begin.
Darren:
Of course, the questions that the agency asks are incredibly revealing to their strategic thinking and we explain that-
Scott:
And they should be challenging to the client’s thinking and broaden the client’s thinking, and challenge where they’re going in this review process because that’s what they will expect from the relationship in situ once they’ve selected the agency.
Darren:
So, we encourage procurement to separate questions into process questions, and then non-process questions. Because you’re commoditizing the market by sharing those non-process, those strategic questions that are revealing someone’s approach to responding to this. And particularly, government because they have such rules around compliance and accountability.
Scott:
But that’s because public sector funding comes with fear. Because there’s vouges attached to all that.
Darren:
Good answer, and look, I would encourage people to download this report from the website, you said it’s 150 pages.
Scott:
Yeah, the principle’s part is shorter, the principle’s part is on the website, but the actual full guide is 150 pages long.
Darren:
But the one debrief and feedback, I find is one that is really confronting for marketers. It’s almost like marketing attracts people that are people-people as a generalization, and they don’t want to say anything to anyone that they fear will upset them.
Scott:
Oh, get over it. I mean, look, take the Simon Callow way of being in the world. Sometimes people need to hear the truth because it will improve them. And if you are invested in the agencies who’ve just spent all this time, money, and resource, pitched into your business, then do them the respect to feed them back good, bad, and indifference so that you know the next time you meet them, the next time they meet a client, they will be better.
If you’re all bothered about yourself, you shouldn’t have been in this game in the first place.
Darren:
Well, I had a pitch recently and at the end of it, there was two agencies that were unsuccessful and one that was, and I had a very senior, very experienced CMO, global experience, and I said, “Right, so we’ve prepared, here’s all of the feedback for each of the agencies, and it’s all constructive criticism of ways that they could have been better.”
And “Yes, yes, I’m on board,” we get onto the call and “Look, you were really good. You came a close second,” and it went on for about 10, 15 minutes. We had a 30-minute call and I had to jump in and say, “Yes, yes, all of that, but let’s specifically get down to the five or six.” And I went through each one.
Afterwards, the agency phoned me up and said, “Oh, thank God you did that,” because it was heading nowhere. I think marketers in their desire to be liked or not to offend, end up doing more harm than good.
Scott:
They do. We should be in business not to be liked, but be to be respected, it’s a simpler … we’re not in elementary or primary school where everybody gets a badge for sitting on the carpet. You need to point out how people can be better and that’s the investment that every client should absolute as a minimum give.
And that’s where the debrief … and honestly, they say, “Oh, you came a close second.” Funny enough, all 85 agencies came a close second, what are you talking about?
Darren:
It’s also like winning the silver medal at the Olympics, no one will remember.
Scott:
Well, yeah, but sometimes a silver or bronze is fine.
Darren:
Is better than nothing.
Scott:
But don’t tell everybody, don’t suddenly … you get to the podium, there’s one with the gold, and the entire rest of the stadium has silver. That’s what clients do right now, and it’s relevant and actually, it’s disrespectful.
Darren:
No, because you should treat people as professional businesspeople, not children.
Scott:
You should be treating people that you want to be better. You should be invested in them if they will be invested in you.
Darren:
We use radical candour. This is being very direct, but it has to come from wanting the person to be better.
Scott:
Absolutely, the only way to do it.
Darren:
People talk about brutal honesty. Brutal honesty comes from a place of I want to hurt and upset you, that’s why it’s called brutal honesty. But radical candor is that it’s not about what you say, it’s where it comes from and your intention.
Scott:
Brutal honesty is about the person delivering it, radical candor is about the person receiving it.
Darren:
That’s a great distinction, really good distinction. Now, apart from the principles, which I thought were fantastic, you also put forward in this report that Leah … so Leah was the main driver of this project — some terrific myth-busting perspectives and the first one is around speculative creative: how can I know they can do the job unless I get them to do the job, which has been discussed at in infinite.
My biggest concern about spec creative (because I’ve seen it happen) is where people fall in love with an idea that may never be reproduced. You’ve got to define what you’re buying. Are you buying a long-term relationship that’s going to be productive over a number of years, or are you buying a one-off campaign?
Scott:
But also, you’ve got clients who will … “We want to revolutionize our brand, we want to go in a different … we’re about innovation and enterprise and blah, blah, blah.” You see all the wording on the brief. And then when you see the campaign that comes out the other side, you go, “Well no, but that’s about three seconds away from what you did before.”
And if you want to stay the same, stay the same, be unapologetic for that. But the misnomer about speculative work is really, to me, speculative work is time-consuming in multiple ways. The time to do it, the time to review it, and so it becomes irrelevant, it’s about looking at pretty pictures.
Or as we’re seeing increasingly more, we want a strategy, a media strategy or a creative strategy — in fact, actually do a media plan, in fact could do 20 media plans. Look, the end of the day, the agency’s not going to know you enough unless they’re your incumbent to respond to that properly. So, they’re coming up with ideas in a vacuum.
But equally, what if what you want to see is their creative chops or their planning chops or whatever they’re capable of doing, then ask you then to present the case studies of work they’ve already delivered on, but unpack what was the process that actually delivered that successful work.
And one of the things I’ve very, very rarely heard in a pitch presentation, “Where did it go wrong and how did you overcome that?” So, you want to know there can be a consultancy and be able to do, not present shiny gold pieces but actually deliver work that works for you.
And so, the speculative thing is cost ineffective, and the cost to the agency sector is astronomical. And ultimately, that’s got to go somewhere back to clients.
So, take this spec out and take me through a business-framed case study: what was the objective? How did you get to the insight? What is unique about you as an agency that delivered that amazing work? Okay, thank you, so you could take me along that direction.
The other thing about spec work is it really hampers innovation. Because spec work often means do a thing, please give me a piece that speaks to me. Well, hang on a minute, but shouldn’t you learn from other sectors? Isn’t there a case study from the agency that they can talk you through … I’m a CPG brand, I’m a brand that sits in a supermarket shelf. But actually, the case study I’m interested is the one you did for that financial institution, where you took innovation and did something different.
Spec will give you what they think you want to hear, a case study presentation that should be broken down-
Darren:
Rather than innovate.
Scott:
Will speak to innovation and how the challenge of process and how the agency works, and how their thinking can benefit you. So, spec is giving you nothing but a whole load of wasted time.
Darren:
Well, because ultimately, in a spec pitch, the agency is putting forward what they think will win, not the best solution.
Scott:
They are not the best ideas. I remember back at the MAA in the UK, we did a survey of the industry and worked out that less than 10% of ideas presented through pitches saw the light of day.
Darren:
I’d be surprised it’s that high.
Scott:
Yeah, and that tells you what wasted time is. So, the point is, it’s not about what the agency can do; it is how you get there and how do you get over problems.
It is not about a “ta-da” moment; it’s about the journey and why you are uniquely placed to replicate that for me.
The only two questions a client should ask during the agency selection process, not talking about the price determinant at the end – is one, show me the case studies that speak to what I need and show me your processes why your agency is uniquely placed to replicate that success again for me, that is it.
Darren:
And then, myth two goes straight to pricing because it’s about benchmarking. And one of the big bugbears that we have, because yes, we use benchmarking, but the thing that we find is that the benchmarkers create an average, and it’s only one benchmark.
And then it’s implemented on you have to conform to it or not, whereas we use benchmarking at multiple layers and use it for clients to make decisions around value. Because if we’ve got a high benchmark of medium and a low, and an agency is above the high, does the agency represent that value?
Scott:
See, I don’t think benchmarks should be used at all. If a client sets out what it wants to achieve with the budget it’s got, then it’s for the agency to say how they can deliver that under that budget. At this point, you’re focused on the outcomes. Benchmarking is about input costs.
Darren:
The outputs.
Scott:
Outcomes and outputs.
Darren:
Yeah, the outputs because the outcomes will only happen after it’s gone in the market.
Scott:
But if you are focused on, “I want to achieve this with this sales … this is my brief, I need from a business challenge this to be done, and you agency can do that under that budget, let’s go.” But instead, benchmarks are focused entirely on inputs, it’s why we’re fixated on hourly time sheets.
Darren:
So, the area that I see that approach is potentially flawed is where the marketers will change their requirements of the agency.
Scott:
Ah, but that’s where the price has got to go back to the scope.
Darren:
Okay.
Scott:
If you have not sorted the scope, and if you change the scope-
Darren:
Or if you’ve sorted the scope-
Scott:
You’ve got to renegotiate, it’s that simple.
Darren:
Or have a pricing model which allows you to negotiate those prices upfront.
Scott:
Or agencies should be, when they’re working with a client, “Here are your options; this is what you could get for the budget you’ve got. This is what you could achieve if you spent a bit more, and this is what you could achieve up there; you pick which you want.”
Darren:
I’d love to go through the rest of these myths, but we’ve run out of time, Scott. It’s been a-
Scott:
Because I talk far too much, it has been said.
Darren:
But it’s been a terrific conversation, a very engaging conversation. And what I particularly like is the passion in your approach clearly, you have a vested interest and a passionate interest in not just agencies being better and being the best they can be, but their clients as well.
Scott:
I’m interested in agencies being better, clients and marketing being better, and marketing as a profession not being seen as a commodity.
And the other thing I’m really passionate about is trade associations for our industry being better. Being leaders and innovators, not just playing to the lowest common denominator of our industry. And that’s what I’ve always driven here at the ICA, and I certainly drove in the UK with the MAA.
Darren:
And that’s why I wanted to have this conversation because, through both of these innovations, it was clear that you’re setting the bar higher on behalf of your members so that the whole industry can step up to it. So, I value that.
Scott:
Thank you.
Darren:
One last question before we go, and that is: do you find that there are particular categories of clients that are lagging behind the rest of the market when it comes to innovation?
