10 Things Every Pitch Gets Wrong! | Review of the new ANA & 4A's Agency Pitch Principles
In this special #MediaSnack, I'm joined by Greg Wright from the Association of National Advertisers and Matt Kassendorf from the 4As to unpack the new joint principles for agency pitches – and what they really mean for CMOs, procurement and global media leaders.
The ID Comms Breakdown
The new ANA and 4A principles for agency pitch best practices are a practical checklist for CMOs and procurement leaders who want better agencies, faster outcomes and fewer horror stories. They focus on transparency, tighter shortlists, realistic timelines, fair compensation and relationships built on mutual respect.
These principles were launched around the ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference and are already shaping how sophisticated marketers run reviews.
They start from a simple truth: pitches are expensive, disruptive and emotionally draining on both sides. ANA and 4As joint research found the average major review now costs clients over $400,000, with the full three‑agency process often topping $1 million when you include agency costs for all parties. You do not want to get that wrong more than once a decade.
We dig into how to avoid the legendary 'never‑ending pitch', why feedback is such a powerful gift, and how to reframe agencies as long‑term partners instead of commodity suppliers. The goal is not to make pitches nicer for agencies. The goal is to make them a genuine accelerator of growth for advertisers.
You can follow along with the principles, download for free from the ANA or 4As site:
4As '10 Positive Pitch Principles'
So...What's going on?
The ANA and 4As have heard years of horror stories from both marketers and agencies about poorly run reviews: sprawling longlists, vague briefs, unmanageable timelines and radio silence when decisions are made.
In response, the ANA and 4As worked together to publish 10 core principles that define what a good pitch looks like today. They cover everything from mutual transparency and realistic shortlists to how you handle RFIs, speculative work and pitch fees. Both trade bodies have made these principles publicly accessible on their websites so every advertiser, not just members, can benefit.
For us at ID Comms, this collaboration is a landmark. It reflects what we have been telling CMOs and procurement leaders for years: You cannot treat an agency review like buying widgets. You are selecting a strategic partner who will shape your media advantage for the next three, five or many more years.
ID Comms is one of the world's leading advisors to marketers running agency pitches and agency reviews. We have designed and managed pitches for many of the Fortune 100, involving over $100 billion of advertising investments. You can find out more about the way we run pitches which meet and exceed all the best practice principles on our Guide to Running An Agency Pitch page
What are the implications?
If you are a CMO or Head of Media, these principles have direct implications for how you plan your next review. First, 'begin with a mutual commitment to transparency' means you share the real business problem, the reasons for the review and a realistic budget range. Agencies need to understand the size of the prize, or they cannot decide whether to participate or design the right solution.
Second, 'carefully consider agencies invited' means you narrow the field quickly. The ANA and 4As recommend getting to a shortlist of three or four serious contenders after any initial screening. Every extra agency multiplies the cost and complexity for you, not just for them. You also need to be honest: if the incumbent has no real chance, do not invite them just to create theatre.
Timelines matter too. Endless pitches cause objectives to drift, teams to change and enthusiasm to fade. We talk about the 'respectful timeline': avoiding final presentations that force teams to work through major holidays and designing a process that can be completed in a few focused months, not a year.
When you respect agency time and show up with clarity, you get better thinking back. You also build a reputation as a client people want to work with. That matters in a market where the best talent can choose where they invest their energy.
How should marketers be thinking?
Marketers should see these principles as a coaching framework, not another piece of procurement red tape. Start by mapping your current pitch process against the ANA and 4As checklist. Where do you overcomplicate RFIs, invite too many agencies, or stay vague about budgets and decision criteria?
Next, look at how you handle chemistry. The principles say 'chemistry counts' for good reason. ID Comms often takes clients into agencies rather than running everything in anonymous meeting rooms, because it is the best way to feel the culture, see how teams collaborate and imagine what it would be like to solve real problems together.
You should also rethink speculative work and pitch stipends. Many sophisticated advertisers now either avoid heavy spec creative or use it sparingly, supported by clear rules of ownership and fair compensation. That compensation is not about buying IP. It is a token of respect for the time and talent you have asked agencies to invest.
Finally, adopt 'feedback is a gift' as a non‑negotiable principle. Even a brief, structured debrief grounded in your scorecard can turn a losing pitch into a learning moment for the agency. It also signals that you run grown‑up processes where everyone is treated like a partner, win or lose.
Why ANA and 4A pitch principles matter for CMOs
For senior marketers, the core pain point is simple: you cannot afford to lose a year and seven‑figure sums on a pitch that delivers the wrong agency, or no decision at all. The ANA and 4As principles exist to protect you from that scenario by forcing clarity on why you are pitching and what success looks like.
The Cost of the Pitch research from the ANA and 4As found an average client spend of over $400,000 per review, with around a quarter of that in internal staff time alone. When you layer in the opportunity cost of delayed campaigns and stalled innovation, the real price tag is even higher. That is before you consider the agency side costs that are ultimately funded by client fees across the industry.
For a CMO, the strategic implication is that every review must be treated as a rare, high‑stakes intervention. You do not run a pitch to decide what you need. You decide what you need, then design a focused review that tests that need intelligently. That means sharpening the scope before you issue an RFP, using a simple RFI only to confirm basic credentials, and aligning internal stakeholders around a realistic timeline and decision process.
Greg Wright talks about the need for internal education, especially with legal and procurement colleagues who may approach MSAs like buying any other supplier service. As he points out, you are not buying a box of media. You are buying thinking, talent and a working relationship. That requires flexibility on both sides of the contract table.
Matt Kassendorf adds the agency perspective: an agency that is well‑run and profitable can invest in the tools, systems and people that make your media perform. When you cut too deep on fees or insist on unbalanced terms, you weaken the very partner you are hiring to grow your business.
Designing a smarter, fairer pitch process
A smarter pitch process starts with a very short checklist:
- Are we clear on why we are pitching and what 'better' looks like?
- Have we defined a realistic budget range and scope?
- Do we know what type of agency we need, or are we using the pitch to work that out?
If the answer to any of those questions is 'no,' you are not ready to go to market.
The ANA and 4As have even published a streamlined RFI template to stop RFIs and RFPs being muddled together. The principle here is that an RFI should be easy to answer using information the agency already has to hand. Detailed thinking, bespoke data work and speculative creative belong later in the RFP and pitch stage, once both sides are confident there is a genuine fit.
On numbers, ID Comms is often asked to assess up to a dozen agencies at the very top of the funnel. That is fine as a desktop exercise, but you should narrow rapidly to three or four finalists for the heavy lifting. Anything beyond that is waste for everyone involved.
Timelines are equally important. The principles highlight the danger of pitches that drift over six, nine or even twelve months. Business objectives change. Key people move roles. Agencies win other business and have to reassign talent. A review that drags on rarely delivers a better decision. It just delivers a more exhausted one.
Making chemistry, spec work and fees work for you
Chemistry is where many reviews are won or lost. Yet it is often treated as a short 'get to know you' meeting bolted on to a deck‑heavy presentation. The ANA and 4As encourage marketers to schedule proper working sessions, ideally in the agency's own environment, where you can see how teams solve problems, challenge each other and respond under pressure.
We talk about chemistry as alignment: of values, ways of working and expectations about how to handle problems. Every long‑term client‑agency relationship will face tough moments. The question is whether you feel trust, respect and confidence that 'they have your back and you have theirs.' That cannot be judged from a single polished presentation.
On speculative work, the key principle is clarity. If you are going to ask for spec ideas, you should explain exactly what is required, be realistic about the time involved and be transparent about ownership. As Greg notes, agencies retain ownership of work unless there is a separate agreement and monetary exchange in place.
Compensation is another sensitive area. Some advertisers offer pitch stipends, particularly when they ask for complex strategic or creative work or require significant travel. That stipend is not a license to own the output. It is a token of respect for the investment you have asked agencies to make. Where you do wish to acquire specific ideas or assets from a pitch, that should be contracted separately and transparently.
Negotiating the final agreement is where the partnership mindset either holds or collapses. The principle to 'negotiate a fair agreement' is a reminder that the healthiest client‑agency relationships are built on mutual sustainability. An agency that is squeezed so hard that it cannot field the right talent or invest in innovation will not help you win.
Turning principles into your practical media pitch playbook
Turning these principles into action starts with an honest internal conversation. David and I often help CMOs, procurement and media teams run a quick 'pitch surgery' on their current approach. Where are you over‑complex? Where do you unintentionally disrespect agencies' time? Where are you hiding behind process instead of making decisions?
From that, you can build a simple playbook:
- Use the ANA and 4As principles as your internal standard.
- Align leadership on the real business problem and success metrics.
- Design a respectful timeline that reflects major markets and holidays.
- Limit finalists to three or four agencies with a real chance of winning.
- Build in meaningful chemistry sessions at the agency offices.
- Be explicit about spec work, fees, ownership and pitch stipends.
- Commit to timely, structured feedback for every participant.
For reference and further detail, you can review the ANA and 4As Cost of the Pitch research on the ANA site: ANA/4As Cost of the Pitch, along with the broader guidance on agency search available from the 4As: 4As Cost of the Pitch resources.
If you are planning a significant media or integrated pitch, now is the right moment to align your senior stakeholders around these principles. Treat them as a shared charter between marketing, procurement, legal and your future agency partner.
To confidentially discuss your 'gameplan' and your options to protect your competitive advantage in media, get in touch with the ID Comms team.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why did the ANA and 4As create new pitch principles?
They were responding to years of complaints from both marketers and agencies about wasteful, stressful reviews. The updated principles give both sides a shared standard for what good looks like and help reduce the financial and relationship cost of pitches.
2. How expensive is a typical large agency pitch?
Joint ANA and 4As research found that a three‑agency review can easily cost around $1 million in combined client and agency resources, including internal time, consultants and travel.
3. How many agencies should we invite to pitch?
You can start with a broader scan, but you should narrow quickly to three or four serious finalists. More than that adds complexity and cost for everyone and rarely leads to a better decision.
4. Should we always include the incumbent agency in a review?
Only if they have a genuine chance of keeping the business. If you already know they cannot win, it is better to be honest, agree a transition and avoid asking them to invest heavily in a process with no upside.
5. Why is transparency so important in a pitch?
Agencies need to understand the real business problem, the reasons for the review and the scale of the budget. That allows them to decide whether to participate and to shape solutions that are realistic and relevant.
6. What makes a good chemistry session?
A good chemistry session is a working session, ideally in the agency's environment, where both sides explore culture, ways of working and how they handle real problems. It should go beyond formal presentations.
7. Do we have to pay agencies a pitch fee?
Pitch stipends are not mandatory, but many sophisticated advertisers offer them when they ask for significant strategic or creative work or travel. They signal respect for the time and effort you have requested.
8. Who owns speculative work produced during a pitch?
By default, agencies own their work. If you want to use or own specific ideas or materials from a pitch, that should be addressed separately through a clear agreement and appropriate compensation.
9. How quickly should we give agencies feedback after a decision?
Ideally within a couple of weeks of your final decision. Feedback should be grounded in your scorecard and focused on what drove your choice, not a line‑by‑line critique of every detail.
10. Where can I read the full ANA and 4As guidance?
You can find the Cost of the Pitch study on the ANA website and complementary guidance and tools on the 4As site. Both organizations have made key resources publicly available.
Episode Transcript
It's who do you wanna talk to and who do you feel comfortable with dealing with problems? That you wanna feel trust, you wanna feel respect, you wanna feel confidence that they've got your back and you've got theirs. You're gonna work together to drive a business solution that is gonna work.
Hi, I'm Tom Denford, and I'm in New York.
And I'm David Indo, and I'm in London. 15 years ago, we came together to create ID Comms, the world's first specialist media advisory and analytics consultancy. This is our show, MediaSnack, where we share our bite‑sized expert view on how procurement and marketing leaders are winning in media today. We appreciate you tuning in, and we're excited to dive into today's show.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of MediaSnack Live. This is a special episode because I have some special guests to introduce to you. Uh, you may be able to see on screen here, we're joined by two very esteemed gentlemen who represent two of the most important and powerful trade associations in marketing and advertising in, here in the US.
We have Greg Wright. Hello, Greg. Greg's Exec VP of Financial Management and Marketing Operations at the ANA. And Matt Kassendorf from the 4As, which is the agency's representative trade body in the US, and Matt is the SVP Business Intelligence and Insight. Welcome. Welcome to MediaSnack.
Thanks for having us.
Thank you.
David and I and the ID Comms team have been talking a lot in the last few episodes about the ANA's Advertising Financial Management Conference, which is the big procurement conference each year. Anyone who's been to that for the last decade will have seen you, one of you at least, on stage, presenting something interesting. And this year, you released 10 amazing principles for best practice in agency pitches, and so today we're gonna unpack that big update.
The ANA has joined forces with the 4As to build this as you do now commonly. You collaborate together and build these best practice principles. So should we get into it? Pitches. We talk a lot about pitches, as you know, and we love speaking to you guys about pitches.
So first off, thank you for doing these. I said to you in Orlando, 'We really, really appreciate it' when the trade associations give some best practice on pitches because we hear some horror stories. Hopefully not on the work that we do, but we do hear some horror stories.
Greg, let me start with you. From the ANA's perspective, you have the advertiser perspective. Just give us a bit of a setup here. What was the ambition behind creating these principles and why was it important to collaborate with Matt and the team at the 4As to issue them jointly?
Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, we've heard over the last, I'll say six years or so, some really horrible stories, as you alluded to, around the pitch process. Things that agencies were doing, things that clients were doing that were just really not okay and not conducive to creating a long‑term viable relationship.
We've had various conversations over that time period about what to do about this. Ultimately, Matt at the 4As brought us a really well‑thought‑out draft of these 10 principles. We said, 'This looks like a great starting place. Let's share this amongst our client‑side members and understand what their perspective is and if this aligns with their thinking.'
Ultimately there were a couple little spots where we did some massaging in the language, but overall it was a really collaborative process, and I think we got to a place where we're both very happy with it.
And then the second part of your question, I think it's incredibly important for these two trade associations to work as closely as they can together. Ultimately, we're all in this industry, and we're all looking for how to do it better and the trade associations can certainly help provide that direction.
Very good. And Matt, from the agency perspective then, what's the biggest piece of advice that you find agencies want you to get to marketers? What do we need to tell the clients?
First of all, I just wanna say it's one of the reasons we wanted to do this with the ANA, and this is just another in a lot of work that Greg and I have pioneered through our organizations, because we have to have that collaboration together.
From the agency standpoint, if there's one single thing, it's that this is a very important process. The pitch is a very, very important process, and hopefully there is respect shown both ways. I think that's one of the most important things we've tried to get across here.
Greg, you've termed this just good business practice. Whether it's an agency pitch or something else, it's good business practice to have respect on both sides because you can get to a far better outcome.
Very good. Excellent. Well, we love that. A great setup. Okay, so this is joint thinking of the two sides, and you're listening to your respective members who in some places are at tension, but you can help solve that by finding where there's common understanding. We always say where there's common understanding, there's common action, right? You can then lead to solve that with some principles that the industry can organise themselves around.
I'm just looking at the list now. Let's start. I'm gonna fire them out because I think we agree with all 10 of them. I think they're all really sensible, good practice. I'm gonna fire them out, and you help us understand what's behind them and what is the good practice that we're looking for.
Number one is you say begin with a mutual commitment to transparency. For a marketer, that is sharing a lot more information in the process: the reason that you're actually pitching, which sometimes is missing, the desired business outcome, the objectives, and some revelation of budget or expectations so agencies know what they're pitching for.
Just talk us through that one because that's a great one to start with, commitment to transparency on both sides.
Yeah, I'll jump in from the client perspective. I think the biggest challenge that clients have is we don't know what we don't know. If you're looking to solve a problem that your organization has but you don't know the solution, it's hard to go out and get pitches for that because you don't necessarily have all the details and information.
That certainly happens with clients in different projects and reasons. Ultimately you wanna set up all of the agencies that are participating in the pitch for success because you're really looking for the best possible agency for you to create this relationship with. In order to do that, you have to have this transparent mindset.
If you've got data that you can share around the business problem you're trying to solve or the problems if you're re‑pitching and trying to replace your incumbent, what were the reasons that it didn't work out with that incumbent? If you can provide a budget or a budget range, that's also incredibly helpful for the agency because it helps them understand what they're pitching to.
Nobody wants to pitch a million‑dollar project and you only have $1,000.
I think the idea, Greg, just to build on that, the size of the prize, if you will, is pretty important because it also not only gives an agency an idea of whether this is something that we should be pitching, is this an appropriate thing from category experience, audience experience, but the financial side of it: does this work for us?
It also helps an agency understand what type of solution to bring. Agencies totally understand the marketer may not have an exact budget, and that's fine, but again, the scale. Is it a three to five million dollar solution? Is it a fifty million‑plus solution? Is it a smaller solution? It just helps the agencies bring the right thinking to the problem.
Then certainly the idea of committing to transparency on the agency side, and this is something that Greg and I have talked about at various AFMs and other places, the idea that an agency does not necessarily have the full staff ready to go for that particular piece of business.
When you get to the pitch and you introduce your team members, just explaining these folks will be working on the business, these folks are the caliber of people that we will have, but they are assigned to other things, having that conversation is a very powerful thing because it's setting up positive expectations in both directions.
Very good. We like that. An encouraging place to start.
That leads us quite nicely on to the second point. The second principle is carefully consider agencies invited. That is definitely relevant in terms of budget size because some agencies have capabilities at different levels. But I think here you're talking about the numbers involved: the numbers of agencies that get invited to pitch. Sometimes it's a bit unwieldy, maybe too excessive, in your view. Tell us about that one.
From a client perspective, I think the important thing to note here is, and actually I'll back up a little bit and say when we did Cost of the Pitch a few years ago, we identified that on the client side there are costs involved with running a pitch. They may not be cash out costs, but they are inherent costs in time and expense of the staff.
Most clients who run pitches are doing it as an extra project. It's part of their main responsibility, but they're not running pitches constantly throughout the year. Often the pitch is an extra project that's added on top of things.
When you start involving more and more agencies, you're expanding the amount of time you need to invest in reviewing each of those pitches, meeting with them, and not just you but your team, whoever else needs to be involved in that review process. If you're able to really narrow the field for what kind of agencies you're looking for in advance, that will ultimately help the entire process be more streamlined and manageable.
Very good.
From the agency's perspective, when you're invited to a pitch and it has three holding companies, eight independent agencies, a couple of specialist agencies, you start to wonder, what exactly are they looking for? That goes back to the first point, which is a true understanding of why we are holding this pitch in the first place.
Agencies are very open to meeting with clients and to pitching, but again, looking at that range, and Greg, we've talked about this, it can be helpful not to use a pitch to decide what you need. It can be helpful to step back and say, 'This is the kind of thing we need. Let's look at agencies where that's a key core competency.' It makes some sense.
In the guidelines you say the initial invitation list might be longer for various reasons. It could be eight, ten, twelve agencies that you ask us to do some analysis on. But you wanna get down to those three or four finalist agencies pretty quickly. I think that's your recommendation in terms of the scale of these things.
We can all agree that if the incumbent has a true chance of retaining the business, by all means, please include them. If for whatever reason the incumbent doesn't have a chance, it's better to just tell them, work out some kind of a workflow and a scope of work to finish up. But having them be a part of the pitch when you already have decided they're not gonna win is not kind.
These principles flow in, I don't know who put them in this order, but it's exactly the right logical order, which is great.
The next principle is establish and adhere to a timeline. We've all had those pitches that run on, and there are some legendary never‑ending pitches that are probably still going on. Tell us about that. What are you trying to counter there in terms of best practice?
I'll say it's important, going back to the Cost of the Pitch, this is extra time that folks on the client side are putting into this. If you can keep that timeline shorter or more appropriately timed, then it allows the client to invest more of their thought process and time into the overall pitch and reviewing the responses and having chemistry meetings and so on.
From our perspective, it's incredibly important to really know your expected timeline for those that are participating.
From the agency side, it's a question of resources. A simple example is when you say, 'This person's gonna run your business,' and then the pitch extends out six, seven, eight, nine months. The agency wins another piece of business, and that person has to go work on that. There is an interesting thing that happens when pitches are delayed too long.
I said this a couple of years ago at an AFM: there's also the respectful timeline. Let's not call for the big presentation to be January 3rd or something like that. We've talked about taking into account the culture, the holidays and everything else that people would enjoy as opposed to making them work over that particular time frame.
Sometimes the objectives change. We've had members tell us this, where by the time they got to the finals, the business objective had changed, the needs had changed, and it's kind of, 'What are we talking about now? Why are we doing that?'
So it's important to keep it structured and try to keep to the timeline, and everybody knows there'll be some exceptions.
Everybody wants them to be as fast as you can make it whilst being thorough. We've done a huge amount of work just trying to reduce all of those frictions, and we're finding that it suits everybody.
One thing in the surgery that we've been doing on pitches to try to streamline and reduce these frictions, the RFI was a real sticking point. That upfront bit that you might do with a number of different candidate agencies just trying to assess their general capabilities. Talk us through that. How do you want us to keep the RFI simple?
For clients the challenge is that a lot of folks maybe are in marketing procurement or in agency management, but those are very specialized roles. There's a lot of intelligence and knowledge that goes into those roles in order to really do them effectively.
When it comes down to agencies and clients and the RFI, it doesn't need to be that expansive. There's some limited information that every client needs about an agency, but a lot of that information is also publicly available. You can find out where they're located. You can easily find out who the leadership team is.
The idea here was we really just need to keep that RFI process more streamlined. That really helps to set up the rest of the pitch process.
Late last year, the 4As and the ANA came together again, and we created this standardised RFI template with that in mind exactly, to narrow the process and keep it more streamlined.
Often what we would find is that the RFI and the RFP got conflated, and there was a lot of information asked in an RFI which really should be in the RFP, and that was the intent here.
As one of the task force members when we were on that RFI template said, 'There really should be nothing in an RFI that the agency can't answer by itself, because this should be mostly about the agency.' We thought that was a really great place to start.
On to principle number five. We're nearing the midway point. We've set up the perfect pitch now. We're going into the process. Principle five is chemistry counts, and what you're asking for here is significant time dedicated to live in‑person meetings where we can work on chemistry and culture and working styles. Tell us the thought behind that one.
I would just say that chemistry counts. That's the title of it. That's really the focus. You can do something online and virtual. You can have a chemistry or a tissue session, whatever you wanna call it. Can you really get an agency's culture, and can you really understand the leadership team's perspective, in an online environment? Some people may be able to. I think in person, personally, it's a little bit easier to really understand, and you also have more dynamic conversations when you're in person versus trying to do something over Zoom or whatever.
At the end of the day, the client is looking to make sure that this agency's culture and perspective aligns with their culture and perspective, and that there's an opportunity to move forward there. I think the best way to do that is ensuring you've got an opportunity to showcase that in a chemistry session.
You use the key word aligned. The cultures are aligned. The thought processes are aligned. The way that they like to work together is aligned. Having had the privilege of a number of long‑term client‑agency relationships, it's who do you wanna talk to and who do you feel comfortable with dealing with problems.
Every client‑agency relationship, every personal relationship, has problems, and that person on the other side of it, you wanna feel something there. You wanna feel trust. You wanna feel respect. You wanna feel confidence that they've got your back, and you've got theirs, and that you're gonna work together to drive a business solution that is gonna work.
Apart from the obvious years where we were unable to get together in person recently, which produced some quite good, interesting relationships, which to our knowledge are still thriving because we had to. But always the chemistry sessions, which are like working sessions, are critically important.
We always try and take the advertiser, the client, to the agency. I think it's very difficult for them to come and bring it to the client's office somewhere. We try and get the clients to come and see the agencies, and we go in for a couple of days into the city and we show them around the agency so they really soak up that culture and that way of working.
Moving into the second half of the list. We're at principle number six, which you call define the role of speculative work. Again, just be really clear what the ask is and particularly who owns the work. This is more applicable to when we're doing creative or content pitches or production pitches. Tell us about that. Why does that make the list? Is that a problem that you see agencies struggling with?
On the client side, I would say that this is something that's come up for my tenure at the ANA, which is almost 12 years now, and I think it's come up every year as a point of conversation, not necessarily contention. We thought it's important to continue to relay our perspective on spec work. If a client's going to ask for spec work, that's a whole separate conversation we can have.
The important thing is to identify and know that if an agency is doing spec work, the client does not own that work unless there's some sort of monetary exchange or prior agreement. That really comes from our legal counsel. You can't expect to own somebody else's work in a pitch process.
We appreciate that a great deal because that is one of the key sticking points. Some of our agency members think 'Spec work is great, it lets us show some interesting ideas that we have.' Others have a different perspective, that it's work that is often shown without necessarily a full disclosure, as we talked about earlier, as to what the business challenge is.
So is that work really done in a vacuum, and is it necessary, or can a client take a look at the case studies and look at the work that's been done and how that work has impacted an existing client business and say, 'They've shown me that they've got what it takes to do the kind of work that moves business forward, and that's what I need.'
Very good.
Principle number seven: compensate for pitch labour and ideas. I know this is quite a contentious one that required a bit of debate. Tell us about that. Do you think advertisers should be prepared to pay some fee or stipend to agencies participating in a pitch?
Ultimately it's up to the client whether or not they wanna offer that. We know agencies incur costs, a significant amount of cost and time, just as on the client side, in order to respond to these pitches, whether it's spec work or chemistry meetings and what have you.
There are some major clients out there that absolutely pay a pitch fee, and they make that clear right up front. I think that's important. If you're going to extend a pitch fee or compensation to the agencies participating, that should be identified up front.
Ultimately clients can make that decision, but we know that agencies put a lot of effort and time into these pitches and so it may be necessary for a client to consider reimbursing or compensating them in some way.
That is a token of appreciation. It is a token of respect in some ways too, and it's a really appreciated thing. The one thing we've said over and over is that an agency is very happy if a client wants to provide some money for travel, some money for time, whatever it may be, but that should not imply ownership of the work, as we touched on before.
It's very nice if there's some kind of a pitch stipend, but again, that should be separate from the ownership issue.
That's perfect. I was about to ask you exactly that, what is the agency giving up maybe sometimes? Hopefully nothing. Or at least the advertiser should be very clear if they intend to or want to purchase the work. Have that discussion. We've had that work very successfully.
I think if payment is to cover costs, if those costs are seen as significant, if you are asking agencies to travel across country, we find it a lot in the US. We've got a West Coast client and they wanna see a couple of New York‑based agencies or invite them along. We will help subsidise some of that cost incurred just to put them on an equal footing with everybody else.
Principle number eight, I love this one: stop the pitch once you make a decision. I saw that up on screen when you were presenting these, and I thought, 'Well, that's obvious, isn't it? Before you drive off a cliff, stop drilling, you've hit oil.' So why is that in there? Does that not happen?
I think there are instances that we've heard where, and in fact, I think at AFM one of the presenters even talked about having a three‑year pitch. That's way too long to keep anybody on the hook for.
Ultimately clients wanna make a decision as far as who's gonna move their business forward, and agencies need to know whether or not they've won or they didn't win or what the status is because as the pitch moves forward, there are certain things that the agency needs to do in order to keep participating, and they need that knowledge.
When you think about it from the cost standpoint, if a client has seen an agency and has decided, 'I really like these people, I wanna work with these people, I respect the work they've done. I think we're gonna go with them,' just because you've said there's gonna be a lot more things in the pitch process doesn't mean you have to do it.
The other agencies are all gonna incur costs, and yet you've already made a decision. It does happen and the idea here is just, again, be communicative. If you've made that decision, as hard as it may be for other agencies to hear, it is far harder for the agency to understand later that the decision was already made and they went ahead and spent all this money to continue with the pitch.
Which leads us on perfectly to principle number nine, my personal favourite: feedback is a gift. I literally say that to people, not about pitches, just in life, like self‑awareness is a gift. To your point, both of you, the amount of energy and money that's invested into these processes that can sometimes last weeks and into many months requires a level of respect that means we give feedback always to every agency, even the winner.
We give a proper, healthy debrief as to why they won and where the gaps were. I'm assuming that that's something which frequently gets brought up by agencies.
Of course. I've posted many years about this idea of don't ghost, stop ghosting, ghosting doesn't work in business. It is so hard for an agency who has put their heart, soul, money, blood, sweat, tears into a pitch and then they're told, 'You didn't win,' and that's it. There's no why.
Again, it goes back to respect to some degree. If an agency is committing to doing their best possible work in the pitch, it really behooves the client to explain to them why they didn't win, and it helps the agency get better. It's again, I hate to keep using the word, but it's a kind, respectful thing to do.
Greg, we're gonna point at you on this one because you are very close to the financial management community within the ANA, and they're the ones that often get the stick for this, that procurement, we don't get a call back from procurement. They're running a process and we never hear from them again. So why is that? How can we make that better?
It happens for a number of reasons. I think a lot of it from a client perspective is you're protecting your organization to some extent, maybe too much. You're trying to protect your organization without necessarily burning bridges or releasing information that you can't or don't wanna release right away.
Sometimes that trips folks up and they end up in this never‑ending, 'We're never gonna share who won this pitch or why.' I think that's a challenge.
It's important, as Matt has said, agencies need to know why they didn't win that pitch. If they were completely 180 degrees off of what the client was looking for, that's important for an agency to know. Because as Matt said, they're only gonna be able to get better with that.
So it's incredibly important, whether you're a procurement person or brand‑side person running the pitch, that you close the loop fully once it's done.
Within your guidelines, you've got some good direction, the kind of feedback that agencies want. Again, this is just if we create a common understanding. Agencies want to hear constructive reasons typically related to how we made a decision. These were the areas of the scorecard, and you were stronger here and weaker here, and we went with somebody else.
That constructive, objective, timely feedback that you put in the principles is critical.
I'm gonna say one thing from the client side, which Greg, we heard when we did the agency search simplification study. One reason, maybe it's not as widespread, but one reason clients sometimes don't wanna give feedback is because the agency uses that as a time to try to convince the client they made the wrong decision.
The reality, and this came through in that previous work, is that the decision's been made. It may have gone all the way up to the client's CEO, certainly to the CMO, and no, it's not gonna be undone.
I think that's a fair point in terms of how the agency receives the feedback and how you receive feedback personally. Are you defensive about it? Are you open about it? I think that's something that has to be considered as well, that feedback is given in an open way and should be received in an open way as well.
Great point. Really good. Love that. That's something which would be really interesting to track, to come back in a couple of years and see if that's a situation that's improved. Are you still having agencies complain that they're not getting feedback? We hear that all the time, and we really try and make sure that agencies do get feedback.
Okay, final principle. We've gone through this amazing pitch process. We've just done the best pitch ever. Now it comes down to contracts, money, terms, all that stuff. This is where a deal has to be done. There is leverage and tension and opportunity cost. The principle is negotiate a fair agreement, so that makes it sound quite easy. How do you guys see that from each side, from advertiser and the agency side?
If an agency is well‑run and profitable, they can invest in tools, systems, approaches and people that will benefit the client. It's important for a client to have an agency that is profitable and well‑run.
When you think about some of the major costs that are involved inside an agency, it's people. It's the people that the client wants on their business. If you want these people, they come at a cost, and that's all part of doing something that is fair. I think the mutually beneficial is really critical because the right people are going to do the right job in helping the client's business move forward. That's what the agency's being hired to do.
At the end of the day, the client in this case is not buying something tangible. It's buying a process, an idea, this ideation. You can't approach an MSA or a contract in the same way as you would if you were buying something that's tangible.
I've heard stories on the client side where procurement just threw their hands up because legal was so annoyed that an agency attempted to make red lines to an MSA. I think there's a little bit on the client side, that internal conversation of 'Look, this is not just a transaction. This is a relationship.'
Ultimately, this relationship is supposed to help the business grow, and if that's what's happening, you have to also support the business that's supporting you. It really comes down to supplier management strategies when you're making sure that the folks that are supplying you, whether it's widgets or ideas, are doing it to the best of their ability, and it's hard to do that if you cut them off at the kneecap.
Again, you're leading us to that good place of common understanding, where each other's side is coming from. That's what this is all about, giving some air to both sides so they understand where they're coming from.
We find that as long as the agency feels that they are aligned to the same outcomes and the same objectives as the advertiser, they can price those, and it's easier then for the advertiser not to look at them like some commodity supplier but more invested in delivering outcomes for the business. In our experience that makes the agreement.
Fair doesn't mean cheap, Matt. To your point, we're not looking for the cheapest, negotiate a cheap agreement. Fair is respectful of the resources that we can use for the agency to deliver the ambitions for the advertiser.
Really good. I love that. Lots of sustainable, strong partnership agreements in place.
Where can viewers or listeners to this find these principles? You have written them up, you've published them. Where should they go and get them?
I think they're available on both the ANA and the 4A's websites. I believe they're both publicly available as well, so you don't have to necessarily be a member to view them. Either of our sites are a great place to go to get that.
We'll link to both of those. I should say, credit to you. I always say to Bill, the fact that you guys publish these things and make them public domain is so important. Not everyone can afford to be a paid member of the ANA, but it's a great gift to the industry and it helps us. It makes us all better, so thank you.
Well, I think our collective opinion on that is if it can better the industry in total, that's great.
Perfect. What a beautiful place to end.
Greg, Matt, thank you for joining us, walking through the updates on this. We'll share all the links that we've mentioned through the show onto your websites, and just appreciate your time and your team's efforts on pulling these principles together. So thanks for joining us.
Thank you.
Thank you for having us.
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