Trinity P3 ANZ business director David Angell discusses changes to pitch activity, volume and skillsets.
We’ve seen an uptick in the level of sophistication with which marketers and procurement teams are thinking about pitching – something that we wholeheartedly welcome in the industry.
This takes a number of forms, but there are three primary developments to highlight.
First, marketers are thinking harder about agency appointments as part of a supplier ecosystem, rather than as standalone.
The structure of an agency roster – roles and responsibilities, scopes, the treatment of overlapping areas, performance targeting and remuneration methodology, and the role of the client in leadership of a roster – are all things that should be properly considered and we’re finding that such considerations are playing a bigger role not just in agency selection but decisions about when the right time is to pitch, and what may need to be rectified prior to a pitch taking place.
Second, there’s now a lot more consideration regarding in-housing of agency services – particularly creative production, and elements of digital media buying.
These discussions have been around for a while but difference we’ve noticed over the last 12 months or so is that organisations now are thinking much more about ‘hybridisation’ – bringing in-housed teams together with agencies to best effect – rather than the ‘agency or us’ approach.
And, there’s a more realistic and transparent approach to road-mapping a route to in-housing, and working with the agency to achieve it, rather than keeping them at arms length – for example, we’ve run two pitches recently where it was made clear to the competing agencies that in-housing of certain elements was going to happen over the next 12 months, but that part of what the organisation was looking for was a strategic partner to integrate and adapt to that new model over time.
Third, we’re finding that marketers are becoming more willing to make nuanced choices about agency selection, rather than adhering to more traditional and often more binary approaches.
The biggest example of this is consideration of ‘networked agencies’ and ‘independents’. Previously, choices made particularly at the initial selection stage of a pitch involved discussions about the merits of ‘independents versus networks’. There was a lot of talk about ‘buying clout’ of large media agencies – in simple terms, big = strong, small = weak. We’ve certainly encouraged clients to move on from this kind of initial assessment and think much harder about specific skillsets, about the ‘value out’ of an agency relationship rather than taking a ‘cost in’ approach, about cultural fit, about an agency’s place in a broader roster. It shouldn’t really be about ‘independents v networks’ any more – it’s a dated way of looking at things.
This is particularly true of the increasing amount of clients who are asking for a more specific range of skillsets from their agencies. It’s no longer just about strategy, creative and media – it’s about data and analytics, performance media, CX capabilities, digital animation and various other areas, all of which means that we need to think harder about which agencies to put on a list. Our clients are generally embracing this and we think that’s a good thing both for them and for the agencies.
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