Specsavers and Markus Winkler via Unsplash.
The Specsavers media pitch, estimated to be worth over $50 million, became a whispered high-stakes contest among agencies because of its unconventional processes.
It had all the elements of a typical pitch - but the marketing team made some key changes which piqued the industry’s curiosity and left it divided.
On face value some elements of the pitch - such as a lengthy shortlist, a 48-hour briefing task and the involvement of 30-something client-side people - attracted negative attention from outsiders who saw it as an exhaustive process.
Sources close to the pitch saw unfair timing to incumbents and the appointment of NZ incumbent EssenceMediacom also drew attention.
But opinions ranged from outright criticism—“if every marketer behaved this way, there would be no industry,” one pitch consultant told AdNews—to praise, with one participating agency calling it “the best pitch we’ve ever been a part of.”
The positive aspects included: Every agency received detailed feedback; meetings were moved to fit around school holidays; no intellectual property (IP) was handed over; and all tasks were given time frames to match complexity.
Specsavers director of marketing planning ANZ Shaun Briggs saw the process as fair, respectful and uniquely designed to suit the brand’s exact needs.
“Yes it was unconventional, maybe from the perspective of an industry, but from the perspective of us and how we work, where in our 500 stores around Australia and New Zealand we work with partners, we were looking for a partner and that is how we did it,” Briggs told AdNews.
“The pitch was definitely oriented toward us, but it was a tender for something we needed. I don't feel like what we asked was particularly onerous at any point.
“Would it be for everyone? No, which is why we let anyone opt out at any point if they were uncomfortable.”
One source told AdNews a senior executive stopped his agency’s chemistry session in the middle of the presentation claiming “I know we’re not the right agency for you, let's stop this now”.
“It was a respectful process but that respect is much harder to show when you let agencies know they're unsuccessful. That was hard because there was disappointment in the room of course and they were challenging hours for sure," Briggs said.
“If it was a boring vanilla process, then I think the result would probably not be the one for us because I don't think we're a boring-vanilla marketing team.
“From my perspective it was a couple of hours of providing information, a couple of hours in a meeting and then a presentation of another couple of hours - so I don't think at all it was tough.
“I've worked on pitches where it is all weekend polishing a deck, the questions are vague and I don't think we did that. I think we were as specific as we could be, and I didn't get a lot of feedback saying this was hard work.”
Specsavers lifted the NDA for some agencies to speak with AdNews on the record.
Shaun Briggs. Specsavers' store image via Erina Fair Facebook.
The open invitation
A traditional pitch is generally closed which sees the marketing department, procurement team or pitch doctor invite a list of businesses to bid on a contract.
An open tender sees an invitation extended to anyone and everyone interested in the business to bid, in order to assess the whole market. This is the typical process for government procurement teams but from time to time brands run similar processes.
For example, in 2021 Guzman y Gomez Global CMO Lara Thom held an open tender and received interest from more than 110 agencies.
Similarly, in April 2024, Specsavers publicly announced through trade media its media account was being reviewed and any agencies interested were welcomed to take part in a short RFI.
Briggs told AdNews that this decision was one of the biggest conversation points internally - as the marketing team debated using consultants, the brand’s in-house marketing procurement and other options.
Ultimately the open-tender became best-fit as fundamentally the brand, which had not been in market for eight years in Australia and 14 years in New Zealand, wanted to ensure all agencies in the market could equally be involved.
“We didn't want to exclude an agency through our ignorance or our lack of knowledge - we also wanted to remove any sense of preconceived bias or experience that we might have,” Briggs said.
With it's well-known 'Should've gone to Specsavers' platform and a budget estimated as at least $50 million, the account was highly coveted, particularly for local holding group agencies.
AdNews understands around 50 agencies submitted applications for the first round which saw them answer a RFI around simple capabilities that took one hour to complete.
Although of course not every agency was interested. One senior agency leader told AdNews they didn’t apply for the contract because they knew the process would be a “big song and dance” and did not want to waste resources on it.
Specsavers was surprised at how much interest there was in the tender.
“We did not anticipate the level of interest we ended up getting and we had at least eight to 10 agencies we had collectively never heard of before,” Briggs said.
“There was some really clever, opportunistic behavior from the small guys that we never heard of, who knew they couldn’t fit the lead agency brief, but 100% got themselves on our radar which I don't think would have happened otherwise.
“We’ve held onto some of those submissions because we're doing some projects over the next couple of years that might need specialist help.”
The shortlist then whittled out 80%.
Ten agencies, which included three-to-four omnicom agencies, were invited to a chemistry session to assess team and cultural alignment.
One opted out, bringing the chemistry shortlist to nine.
After the chemistry sessions, which were hosted at the agency's offices, the shortlist was down to five: New Zealand incumbent GroupM's EssenceMediacom, Australian incumbent IPG Mediabrands’ Initiative, independent Principle Media Group, independent The Media Store and OMD. These agencies were moved onto the 48-hour brief.
The Media Store’s COO Jacquie Alley and CEO Stephen Leeds appreciated these first steps.
Instead of a demanding and exhaustive RFI, Alley and Leeds told AdNews they enjoyed that Specsavers focused on key non-negotiables, avoiding the usual guesswork and time consuming documents agencies sometimes face.
They also enjoyed the chemistry session, welcoming the client team with custom out-of-home ads.
The Media Store's custom posters welcoming the client to their office.
The 48 hour brief
A mock brief is another common part of a pitch process, except instead of having a number of weeks to complete it as is typical, Specsavers gave just 48 hours.
From an outsider's perspective this task may look unreasonable with a strain on resources, potentially imagining employees working tirelessly through two days.
But the complexity of the questions were reflective of a 48 hour turnaround, according to the marketing team.
“I did not want people working 20 hour days for this task, because I've seen it happen and we didn't think that that was fair,” Briggs said.
“Maybe it was a little challenging in some places, but I think the balance was fair.
“When our side reviewed the work, the aim was not to get hung up on the absolute specifics, instead about how the agency has taken the challenge, broken it apart and what they've gone through to get to their answer.
“We were not idea-fishing, it was more about getting a sense of ways of working and chemistry, much more than the actual idea.”
The inspiration behind the 48-hour deadline was to semi-simulate the real working situation as Specsavers regularly gets quick turnaround projects.
“We don't really have two days to do stuff, but we certainly don't have six or eight weeks, so we thought the best way to semi-simulate that real experience was to do the brief in a short time frame and make it not too complex,” Briggs said.
“What we thought would happen if we gave everyone six weeks and one question is that all these people would work on it and every agency's answers would converge into the same thing especially for media purposes.
“I felt that way because I've worked on a media pitch where in those six weeks you're constantly reworking on the brief so much, creative I think is really different but in media, you can get to a lot of the same places.”
Most pitches do require sharing intellectual property (IP) in order for agencies to impress the client with uniquely-tailored ideas, but the fear for agencies is that the client can steal the idea and appoint a different agency to implement it.
One solution to this issue is remunerating the pitching agencies, but Specsavers was not able to do this.
Instead it was important for the marketing team to ensure agencies provided little IP.
“We did pay for concepting in the creative pitch a couple of years ago but couldn't do that with the media guys, which is not a regret, but I would like to have been able to do it. In future I would try and carve out a budget to do it,” Briggs said.
The Media Store also enjoyed the 48-hour brief which they found to focus on thinking and creativity, rather than handing over precious agency IP, and the concluding Q&A session with middle managers.
EssenceMediacom Melbourne head of media solutions and investment Ant O’Callaghan loved how the process enabled more genuine interactions.
“On the pitch day we had a diverse team in the room, with all levels of experience, half of which hadn’t ever been on a pitch before - it really showcased who we are and how we work – and that goes a long way. In a way it removed any element of pressure and enabled more genuine interactions,” O’Callaghan said.
“What was awesome is that everyone on our twelve-person team answered questions, all off-the-cuff and unrehearsed. It meant we really showed our collective expertise and how we work together.
“And afterwards, we weren’t ushered out, the Specsavers team hung around chatting to us for quite some time. That never happens. It felt like they genuinely wanted to connect with us.”
EssenceMediacom team on pitch day for Specsavers.
Full involvement of the marketing team
Whereas typical pitches only see the most senior employees get involved - this pitch saw involvement from both ends of the corporate ladder.
The majority of the process and the final decision involved the entire marketing team of around 30 people. This was important as Specsavers wanted to ensure a deep cultural fit.
“We wanted to give cultural-fit an equal weight in the process as you would for the media buying capability, strategic capability, etc,” Briggs said
“It's difficult to get that day-to-day working come to life in a pitch situation because the marketing managers, account managers and campaign execs who interact with the agency almost every single day, normally don't have much of a voice in that kind of process.
“So we got our team of 30 really engaged in the process and that is true of the agencies as well because we had a lot of junior people from agencies in the room, which definitely brought a different energy that's for sure.
“If we’d done the process not involving my team, the agency decision would be just given to them, as opposed to genuinely, actively and democratically being part of the decision.
“At the end of the day, they are more their agency than they are mine.”
Another benefit of having more opinions in the pitch was that it helped eliminate bias.
“When you've been around the industry for a while, it gets difficult because you've got history with people all of which are varying degrees of good,” Briggs said.
“You need to stay objective and I think a great way to do that is to have a lot more voices in the decision than three or four.
“I don't know that there'd be very many pitches where the client does not have at least some familiarity with the people on the other side.”
Timing
One point of frustration was that the pitch was called almost one year before the contract with the incumbent ended, insiders said.
The incumbent was contracted until the end of February 2025, with the pitch launching early April 2024.
Typically in this scenario the incumbent agency team, having lost the pitch, has to continue work on the account for months knowing the work was halting, leaving staff speculating if they will continue to have a job or not at the conclusion of the contract.
However Briggs said he received no complaints on the timing of the process and both incumbents were crystal clear on that decision.
“If anyone raised it as ‘absolutely not we couldn’t do that’ we would have had to adapt, because it would have been a problem and we would have just gone faster,” Briggs said.
The retail category sees a peak period over Christmas, starting in October until the end of January, making it difficult for the Specsavers team to divert their attention away from usual operations.
“We felt the only way we could give the process the amount of attention we needed to was to do it at the start of our year, and it almost had this hiatus because we couldn't onboard through that period - so that's what we did,” Briggs said.
“Could we have moved faster and onboarded late last year? Yeah but we would put ourselves under pressure to do that.
“EssenceMediacom is taking over March 1 which is aligned to our financial year and the end of our peak period.
“Yes, it is definitely an awkward situation in some ways for the incumbent to have five months of working when we know we're not going to be the agency - that is challenging.
“But to the credit of the team here and the team in Initiative especially, I don’t have any complaints. Those guys have continued to do a really great job.”
For example, the incumbents produced the brands latest ‘Should’ve gone to Specsavers' media campaign in September, which garnered lots of love from the industry.
Feedback sessions
One of the most positive reviews of the process was the detailed feedback sessions that were provided to all 50-something agencies that applied for the contract.
“We committed to writing to everyone, it took a couple of weeks longer than we expected because I generally thought 15 agencies would apply - we got nearly four times that,” Briggs said.
“That also created a bunch of unexpected work, letting everyone know why they didn't get through, so that took a while, but I don't regret doing it that way.
“If someone goes to the effort to fill in the RFI - which is probably an hour - then I think we should be able to find the hour to give some sensible reasoning, rather than just I'm sorry you weren't successful - which I think we did an okay job at, there's always room for improvement.
“We did have some robust feedback conversations but I fully respect that because they stand for something and they care.”
The result
Despite this unique process, EssenceMediacom, which was the incumbent in NZ, won the combined ANZ account.
Briggs acknowledges that, at first glance, the outcome may appear predictable. However, he emphasizes that there was “absolutely no preconception going into the pitch” and the decision was based on merit.
“I wouldn’t do it another way because that would mean we would have had a predetermined outcome, which we didn't have,” Briggs said.
“In every stage of the process nothing carried over, every stage we almost sort of started again, it wasn't like there was this cumulative approach. We did that really deliberately to make sure we held ourselves accountable.”
Briggs noted when EssenceMediacom was selected there was no sense of awkwardness and his team had no prior professional relationships with the Australian team.
“The competition was close among the final agencies, but we committed to awarding the account to whoever came out on top - regardless of the result. That’s why we ran the process the way we did,” Briggs said.
“Sitting in meetings letting agencies know they weren’t successful was not enjoyable, because we met great people with really good ideas, but you can't work with everybody, and so you have to put yourself on the hook to make that decision.
“Maybe some people are still really disappointed by it and I get it, it probably does show that it's a good brand to work on - even though we just sell glasses.”
But some insiders speculated that EssenceMediacom had an advantage in the process due to its strong NZ relationship.
While EssenceMediacom Melbourne managing director Carl Colman said while their NZ team had a strong existing relationship with Specsavers, the agency approached the pitch as a unified AU-NZ business.
“Our NZ team already had a great relationship with Specsavers and knew the team really well, which definitely helped, but we made a point of treating it as one piece of business across AU and NZ, respecting both markets equally,” Colman said.
“I think that resonated well. The other really important thing was that our NZ team helped us understand the importance of both sides of the brief for both optical and audiology.”
Fair or not fair?
The Specsavers agency pitch process received mixed reactions, with some criticizing its structure and others praising it as innovative and fair.
One pitch doctor criticized it as inefficient and lacking empathy, arguing that reviewing 50 applications wasted the time of both the agencies and the marketing team.
“If every marketer behaved like that we would not have an industry,” they told AdNews.
“This process shows a lack of empathy, and inability to make a decision, especially from a marketer that is globally famous, they should just do the right thing and be friendly to agencies.
“What a waste of the marketing team's and agencies time to look through and submit 50 applications. That hurt a lot of people. That's taken a lot of people's weekends away for nothing.
“We need to stop that from happening in the future.”
But two shortlisted agencies AdNews spoke with viewed it as refreshing to the norm, despite being tough in pockets.
The Media Store’s COO Jacquie Alley and CEO Stephen Leeds described the pitch as a “breath of fresh air”, appreciating each step for its simplicity and fairness.
While The Media Store didn’t win, they felt the experience was worthwhile, with the generous positive feedback from Specsavers boosting the agency’s confidence and positioning for future pitches.
“Honestly, we don’t participate in a lot of open tenders as if you don’t have a warm lead in with the client already, it’s a long shot,” Alley and Leeds said.
“However our team were all so excited about the possibility of working on such an esteemed and brave client, we put our hat in the ring. Despite the outcome not being what we hoped, we don’t regret being involved. It gave many of our team the opportunity to be involved in a pitch for the first time and therefore an invaluable learning opportunity.
“We may have been beaten at the last hurdle by EssenceMediacom, but we went away with our shoulders back, our confidence high, and more hungry than ever for new business.”
Despite the positive aspects, the duo also found the decision making process ‘interesting’.
“We find it astounding that a $50M+ business can be awarded without any discussion of commercials. Secondly, in the end it came down to a vote of 15 senior and middle managers – equal weighting. And 10 of those only got to see the final brief response,” Alley and Leeds said.
But the positives outweigh the negatives for The Media Store and they would like to see the pitch consultants learn from this process by scheduling chemistry sessions earlier.
“Often phenomenal indie agencies, such as ourselves, are being knocked out at the RFI document stage but it’s the people (and capabilities and client results of course) you are buying,” Alley and Leeds said.
“Once clients meet indie owners, they understand they have true skin in the game and are committed to seeing their business succeed rather than feed the agency’s bottom line.”
EssenceMediacom Melbourne MD Carl Colman also praised the process, saying it was tough but extremely fair.
“I really enjoyed the process. The majority of pitches follow a similar pattern and this was different,” Colman said.
“For us it was a refreshing change, it wasn’t better or worse than other processes, it was just different. The entire process was geared to a range of specific questions, all pointed to what they actually wanted to know
“Specsavers prioritized really understanding our team and culture, finding the right fit and finding the best agency partner that their team would want to work with every day. It was clear that Specsavers really values the team, they didn’t ask a question that they weren’t interested in the answer to. It was really refreshing.
“Another unique element was even giving us a draft contract early on to review and feedback – it really emphasised transparency from the start.
“The 48-hour brief, while intense, prevented us from over engineering things and second guessing. With enough time anyone can turn up fully-rehearsed and polished, but this forced us to be ultra-authentic.
“Throughout the process Specsavers wanted to see the people who would actually service the account, not just the senior management, and to see how they think.”
Briggs also defended the process and encourages people with negative opinions to reach out to him.
“We were really light touch all the way through, I don't think we took any liberties on what we asked of any of the agencies,” Briggs said.
“When it was the April school holidays we moved stuff for the agencies out of the holidays because we respected that, especially for the indies, parents wanted to get away - I've submitted pitches on the 24th of December that's harsh.
“No one was required to continue at any stage, I don't think in any way it was unethical at all - probably the opposite.
“I'm glad people are disappointed because it means that we've got a brand people want to work on. I do want good people to want to work on us, because good people have good ideas. And I guess the flip side to that is that there's disappointed good people.
“Probably some people loved the process, there's probably a heap in the middle, and there's some who didn’t but if anyone in the process thought it was unethical you've got our contact details and I'd like to understand why, because it was definitely not the intention and I really don't think that's a reasonable take at all.”
Looking to the future, Briggs said he would do this process again but not necessarily in the same steps because in the future the brand might have different needs and requirements.
“We would do this process again only in the sense that we would go through the same work to get exactly what is important to us,” Briggs said.
“You've got to be really honest with yourself at the start about what you're looking for, and that's what we were looking for, and that's what we procured for.
“If every client actually went to the effort of running a pitch by what really mattered to them and procured for that, I think there’d be better agency relationships, better remuneration, better tenure, produce better work, and I think that would result in a healthier relationship.”
IPG Mediabrands had no comment on the process.
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