Arnold on ethical marketing

CHRIS ARNOLD

Seems we in the UK aren’t the only ones to get exploited when it comes to mass pitching. The Spanish government’s equivalent of the Department of Transport, DGT, has just held a pitch involving 18 of Spain’s top agencies and managed to upset 17 of them.

Now 18 seems extreme, Publicis has successfully handled the account for the two previous years, so why a review is questionable. Given that a pitch can cost the average agency £10k - £20k, that’s a lot of money being wasted in a recession, and probably a lot of jobs going as a consequence in the loosing ones.

There really isn’t any argument that supports mass pitches other than indecision. Any good marketing director can see how good an agency is from the work they’ve done for others. A chemistry meeting, a proposal and a trial period is what it takes. It’s also no coincidence that the bigger the pitch the shorter the lifespan of the account. We all know that pitches are the equivalent of asking a good chef to knock up a quick meal to evaluate them for a future banquet. Often pointless and certainly unreasonable expense in a recession.

But what the DGT has done is not only managed to anger the advertising community - some call it a “massacre” - but unite it against this kind of unprofessional behaviour. I doubt the government will be able to get some of Spain’s top agencies to pitch for other accounts as a consequence, it’s just not worth the pain. It takes guts to speak out against this kind of fiasco for fear of reprisals but unlike us modest Brits, Latin people say what they think and don’t stand for this kind of thing. Rafa Anton, Executive Creative Director of Leo Burnett and president of CdelC (similar to our D&AD) has done just that. Good on him.

The real point that has upset the professional agencies, and Spain has some very creative shops that produce work just as creative as many London agencies, is the scoring system. Typically civil servant in style, they scored the agencies out of 60, not uncommon in beurocratic pitches, but you don’t then publish the results with an arrogance reserved usually for agencies rather than civil servants. The winning agency got 42 points, the rest (all 17) got just 3 or 4 points.

That’s not only condemning but insulting. It also suggests a bias. Quite rightly, the ad industry are questioning the professionalism and competence of the panel. To give top professional agencies just a few points suggest that those judging are totally inexperienced and unable to judge marketing campaigns, which questions if they have the capability to plan and run a publicly funded road safety campaign well. Anton has written an open letter to the Spanish ad press, Anuncios (the Spanish equivalent to Campaign & Marketing) asking for an explanation and payment for the pitch, quite right too.

This opens up a similar moral debate over here, should pitches be paid for? There’s a cost and someone has to pay that cost, there’s no such thing as a free pitch. Trying to unite an industry in good practice has proved unsuccessful over the years, both the IPA and DMA have not managed it yet because there are too many agencies who will break ranks. Yet in one piece of research many clients were open to the discussion, so why don’t more agencies ask the question, who pays? With increasing procurement involvement and lengthy RFIs (request for information) chasing business is getting expensive, especially for small businesses.

And if there’s more than 4 on a pitch list, financially too high risk (if only the best agency did win every time). It’s important to be aware as a client that a pitch is a financial investment by the agency, real money gets paid out. Surely that cost should at worse be shared and at best covered by the client. Even when you do win the pitch that cost comes out of the bottom line, so you’ll see little return on the business for at least 3 months. But it’s not just the ad agencies, pitches often involve media planners, printers and data planners, all expected to donate their expertise and time. I know of one story where an agency gained documentation that revealed a pitch was a show only, the client had already decided who was getting the business.

The agency demanded their costs back – they threatened the client with fraud based on the documentation. This is a real issue, fake pitches could well end up with a client in court one day. The last mass pitch fiasco was in 2001 when over 38 agencies were asked to pitch on video for a well known client at a cost of over £600,000 to the industry. The real joke was that the pitch was conducted by procurement, without even consulting marketing. Both agencies, marketing departments and trade bodies were incensed. Discussions were had about legal action. It fell upon me do what Anton has done and to be the lone voice that actually got up and spoke publicly about the situation.

As a consequence, changes and promises were made. In these times of recession it must be tempting to throw briefs about to hungry and even desperate agencies but a recession is no excuses for a lack of morals or honesty, because when it ends people will remember those that abuse others, and remember great men like Anton who made a stand. Pitches are not the most ideal way to judge agencies but they sadly are the current way of the industry. The only way forward is a cooperative approach involving all aspects of the business. There is a better way, we just need to work towards it.