A level pitch - but is it a level playing field?
We were recently invited to tender for the production of a school prospectus. Nothing unusual about that, we have done a few and although we don’t usually have to pitch for this kind of work, we didn’t mind in this case as it was a cracking one to have a go at and, after all, we had approached this school a while back as part of a direct mailing to encourage that sort of work.
So far so good, and we received a detailed brief telling us nearly everything we needed to know to do the job properly. I say nearly, because I felt a site visit was worth it to fill in a few gaps and to give me a feel for the place.
We did a thorough job - it is simply not worth doing anything other than a thorough job if you really want to win the work - but this sort of work takes a lot of man hours and resources.
As a slight digression here, it is worth making mention of the merits and morals of pitching: it has become the industry standard to ‘invite’ selected design agencies to pitch for projects along the lines of an ad agency pitching for an account. The trouble is, in an ad agency situation you may be pitching a couple of grands’ worth to win a multi-million pound account; if you are pitching for a one-off design project, exactly what is the prize?
Anyway, to get back to the subject, we assumed - as one would from being in this situation many times before - that we were one of, say, four or possibly five (at maximum) agencies pitching against each other. Why would you assume anything else? Who has the time to invite and select more than that? Perhaps I am being naïve here, but after all these years I have sort of come to know what to expect in these things.
I’ll bet you know where I’m heading with this one.
So, we put together a fab proposal, some really creative stuff with all the bells and whistles, written report and full costings to go with it, perhaps about 75 man hours in total.
No, we didn’t win - again we have been here often enough to know that in a five-horse race, there can only be one winner and four losers. And it doesn’t really matter if you come second, to be honest, because you might as well be at the bottom of the pile when it comes to end results. We’ve won some of these, and lost others; it happens. And we were happy that we had done a good job, even if it wasn’t exactly what they wanted to see.
What did surprise and shock me rather was to hear that we were one of 17 (yes, seventeen) agencies invited to pitch, and this to make the shortlist. I was so dumbstruck that I didn’t have time to even feel sorry for myself before experiencing every other kind of emotion, from anger to frustration and onwards to having a good laugh.
Is this really a professional way to conduct business? A colleague of ours, when told this story, reacted with the following words: “If any major PLC asked 17 agencies to pitch for an account worth millions they would be lambasted”.
I can’t help agreeing with him. Next time, I won’t be so naïve as to not ask the question: “How many are playing on this pitch?”.
Tags: business practice, design, Pitch, tender, win
March 17th, 2008 at 11:51 am
PS I was reliably informed this morning by a miffed colleague, who also pitched in for this one that there weren’t 17 bidders. There were 20.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
This is when the role of the BDD / Suit / Planner / Strategy Person can be so useful.
I have often found that whoever owns the strategic high ground will win the business. When a client buys into a plan for the future they sometimes get nervous of losing the guide.
A technique I used in the 90’s when the market contracted just a little was to ask if there was a budget to get to concept and visualisation stage. If not we declined to take the risk. It routed out the inexperienced, gave us and the client confidence, and if successful was taken off the final invoice.
Speaking as a strategist you need to take a look at what you have created and the significant credibility you have built up over many years. I am and have always been about 20% more per day than others. Only once was I asked to justify my rates and my response was “ I don’t charge by the day I charge by the year”
May 28th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Hi David,
If you think that’s bad, here’s an even more horrific example. A large organisation (name removed to avoid embarrassment) invited a number of agencies to pitch for a framework agreement last year. After completing a rigorous PQQ which included satisfying whole host of defence compliance and quality management criteria, our consortium beat 164 agencies and got through to the last eight. Among others, the agency that had previously designed the client’s identity were on the list. The next stage involved a huge amount of work. The brief - Lot 1) to suggest ways of developing the existing brand identity, Lot 2) to submit creative work for an internal communications campaign strategy which would motivate a relocated and demoralised workforce. All in all, about 6 weeks work - multiply that by 8 agencies and the man hours start to stack up.
The client didn’t even inform us that they’d decided not to award the contract for lot 1. Lot 2 was awarded to a ‘company’ operating out of a cottage with no website and no Companies House listing that we could find. Contract value - £300,000. All we know is the proprietor is a local Parish Councillor. A vague whiff of something ugly there don’t you think?
We don’t undertake unpaid pitches anymore.
Deborah Fleming, Managing Director, Native Communications Ltd ( a real company!)
July 15th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Here we go again - I’ve just been informed that a local government tender which we are interested in going for, and for which we have submitted a pretty detailed PQQ, has attracted enquiries from over 400 design agencies. Will we pass the first hurdle or are we totally wasting our time here? Should we take up basket weaving, I wonder?