The big debate : Why clients should pay agencies to pitch , and why they won ’ t
The big debate : Why clients should pay agencies to pitch , and why they won ’ t
There ’ s an ongoing debate among marketers about whether agencies should be paid by clients for the time , effort and energy they put into the pitch process . The argument is that , even when agencies don ’ t get the contract , they still deserve some compensation for valuable time , human and material resources invested in the process , as they try to crack a brief and come up with the best creative solutions for their prospective client . But is this also fair on the client ? Why should a business pay for mere ‘ ideas ’ which may or may not eventually be adopted and activated ? Here are some of the key points from both sides of the argument :
Why clients should pay
• Paying would reduce the rate at which clients call for pitches , ultimately leading to a reduction in creative or technical churn within the industry . Paying for pitching readily assures an agency that the client means business and is not just out to waste time on a wild strategic goose chase which leads nowhere .
• Some clients would steal take ideas from a pitch process and run with it , without hiring the agency that originally presented the idea . This is intellectual property theft . If clients start paying for pitches , maybe they can then own the ideas generated for that pitch ?
• It will save everybody ’ s time by reducing the long lists of agencies that clients usually invite to pitches . When you know you have to pay for everyone ’ s time , there ’ ll be more attention paid to the shortlisting of appropriate agencies who meet certain standards that will eventually receive invites and RFPs .
• The agency ’ s work is hard , long and now more complex than ever before . In today ’ s landscape , to pitch properly against the client ’ s business challenge , an agency has to present a much wider selection of creative work to properly demonstrate how an idea is going to work across all touch points . It ’ s much broader than it has ever been in marketing comms . Think creative , PR , outdoor , print , radio , TV , video , digital , experiential , events , influencers , AI , VR , and so on … All different ways to prove that BIG IDEA .