How Do I Find a New Branding Agency for Our Company? Sensible Alternatives to the Outdated Pitch Process

This is the starting point: together with the marketing department, the management has decided to have the company’s corporate image revised. Now those involved face the task of finding a new service provider, in other words a new agency. This is not an everyday challenge. It usually arises only every few years. As a result, many companies are not particularly experienced at selecting a creative service sensibly and to the benefit of their own business. As harsh as it may sound: over the past 15 years, we as an agency have received countless tender enquiries whose form and content suggested that little to no prior knowledge of creative procurement was present.

The usual practice – for many, many years now – is the pitch. That is, the non-binding approach to various service providers, who are then, in most cases, expected to submit free proposals. The company then picks the idea and agency it likes best. For completeness, it must be mentioned that price naturally also plays a significant role. In most cases it is probably even the main criterion, especially in public tenders.

What may seem quite plausible and fair at first glance is often a process fraught with problems. This article aims to examine it more closely. At the same time, I would like to make suggestions on how it could be improved for all sides, in order to create the famous win-win situation. After all, together the two parties can achieve great things.

As mentioned above, “countless” agencies are usually approached and asked for designs – sometimes without any preliminary discussions. Briefings are incomplete, and content needed for the work is missing. The time frame offered is mostly too tight or completely unrealistic. Fortunately, we have only had to read the condition in a few enquiries that we are to assign all rights to the designs to the company upon participation – free of charge, of course, or for small pitch fees (5,000 euros at most). Demands like these and similar ones naturally do not inspire excessive enthusiasm. In my opinion, there are no “bad intentions” behind this, but merely ignorance and a lack of experience.

For agencies, taking part in such tenders is a great risk. You do not know exactly how many agencies are taking part – in other words, how high the chance is of winning the contract. Moreover, developing concrete solutions up front is extremely time-consuming. In some tenders, a complete concept is even expected straight away. But if the parameters are not yet defined and you do not know the client and their specific wishes and goals at all, the whole thing becomes a lottery. It is precisely here that inexperienced agencies often sense the chance of a big contract. At the same time, it is often the large agencies that offer a solution using interns or freelancers in order to be part of the competition. In any case, in my experience the results delivered mostly do not correspond to what the client truly wants.

A brief digression on costs: in a competition with five agencies, there are logically four losers. And if each of these four puts 100 working hours into such a tender – at an average working-time value of 120 euros per hour – 48,000 euros of economic output goes up in smoke. The agencies suffer the direct damage. The companies suffer indirectly. After all, they want to win committed agencies, ideally partners for many years, who deliver top creative performance for them. Such a tender is not a particularly sensible or trusting start. Creativity arises under different conditions.

At this point I would like to report on a challenging experience we had with a pitch for a respected German construction company. It invited us to take part, yet admitted to having no clear idea of how to select an agency, and presented an unprofessional written briefing. The tender contained no information on the fee or the number of participants, and had unrealistic timings. This lack of preparation on the client’s part forced me to initiate a feedback call in order to clarify essential details. The whole process revealed the client’s inexperience in agency selection, which led to considerable extra effort on our side.

At the rebriefing, the client already demanded sketches for a new brand and a name – and for an agency fee of only 1,000 euros, without stating an overall budget. I proposed a workshop to clarify requirements before serious proposals could be prepared. The reaction of the marketing director and the project management was dismissive, unprofessional and arrogant. As an agency, we cannot accept clients shifting their unclear requirements onto our responsibility and demanding considerable advance work. The client’s question of how else one is supposed to find agencies underlines the uncertainty many clients feel when selecting.

Further important aspects are appreciation and loyalty. When an agency is invited to a tender such as a classic pitch, nobody is actually delighted. From the outset there is mistrust and uncertainty: do we even have a chance? If we take part, do we quickly throw something together and collect the pitch fee in the spirit of “après nous le déluge”? Or do we risk putting our heart and soul into it, only to receive a rejection by email at the end? These are typical questions in agencies. So we should allow for the thought that an agency is not only concerned with the profitability of its work. Creative people live for their job. They fulfil creative tasks with passion and heart and soul. It hurts them when creativity is not valued. If the process of enquiring about creative services begins respectfully and professionally correctly, the agency is significantly more motivated and immediately has a different attitude towards the enquiry. In short: the more trusting and professional the enquiry and the exchange are, the more the company gets from the agency for the same money and the same amount of time.

So what could the solution be? How can agencies and companies be brought together sensibly in order to deliver top performance in a targeted way? From our perspective, a tender has never been a good solution – which is why we have not taken part in a single tender for almost 15 years. Here is an alternative suggestion: how about companies inviting three to a maximum of four agencies to an initial conversation by video or “in the real world” to allow genuine getting-to-know-each-other? Incidentally, the best option would be an appointment on site at the agency. After all, premises reveal a lot about the spirit.

The great advantage for companies would be that they would not have to write a project description or tender many pages long: an experienced agency works out the briefing entirely by itself through conversation or later workshops. In doing so, the agency draws attention to aspects the company had not thought of at all. And so the briefing would only then become truly complete and comprehensive.

If no final decision has been reached after the first conversations, one could, for example, arrange a half-day workshop with the two favoured agencies. In it, creative methods could be used to work on a specific task. In the end, it is then not so much about the final result but rather about the process: this is how the agency works – are we a good match? For a standard day rate, one could also hold a brainstorming session: companies could pay a few selected agencies to share their ideas and perspectives on a particular topic or project. In this way, agencies would be paid for their time and effort without having to deliver concrete creative work.

In our experience, this kind of communicative exchange through conversations and workshops is enough for companies to make a good decision. That costs, or rather quotes, also play a role goes without saying. However, comparable agencies are often not far apart in this respect. Speaking of which: had the three to four agencies approached for the pitch been paid, say, 5,000 euros per team, the getting-to-know-you process would have cost 20,000 euros. A considerable sum that the company could easily have saved.

I argue that companies and agencies should talk to each other more. Creative services are not demanded and purchased through classic procurement departments (price comparison, service comparison). It is much more about interpersonal exchange, in-depth conversations and the definition of goals. Of course, one has to trust the agency’s competence on the basis of its references. You have to get to know each other in order to work together meaningfully and, on that basis, find optimal solutions. This process always begins with communication on an equal footing.