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.