Partner or Supplier, it’s up to you…

After discussing the recent Sears RFP and the subsequent fallout in the Advertising industry, Barry our CVO asks the question; Partner or Supplier, it’s up to you…

We are involved in an industry that is very difficult to define for many clients. Unlike most industries that have a tangible service or product, our industry is based on intangibles such as creativity, technical innovation and consumer insight. We don’t offer electrical or plumbing services nor do we sell a product per say. What we offer is strong business acumen wrapped in creativity with a touch of consumer insight that, when mixed properly, delivers more market share and sales while making consumers love your brand more than it did before. So, how do you sell this capability? Are we vendors with goods for sale or are we something more than that? It seems that many clients want to purchase agency services the same way they would a plumber or an electrician, by the hour. Other clients want to purchase your agency services the way you would buy a car, giving them an assortment of options at the lowest price. For a variety of reasons, all of the above seem to be off the mark for me. Why? There is a disconnection between asking your agency to be a supplier of goods or services rather than treating them like a partner and a professional.

Personally, I don’t want my accountant, lawyer, professor, or any other professional for that matter, acting like a supplier to me. I want them to understand me at a deeper level. To know my needs and my future desires while using their professional experience to help give me the best advise possible. If you were building a house, wouldn’t you want to hire a great architect and discuss your needs based on your personal taste, how you live and how you will use the space before you build a home? When budgeting, isn’t it better using their professional input to determine that you may not be able to afford hardwood throughout, but you could use a floating laminate in certain rooms to achieve the same effect while reducing your costs. You know that you give up something, but the balance of cost saving makes it worthwhile without sacrificing too much. The architect understands you and your budget and accommodates both. There is a conversation where both parties are mutually trying to find an outcome that satisfies the homeowner while allowing the architect to apply their professional experience in creating a home that the homeowner could not create without them. Or, do you simply tell them to build a house and give them your budget with the hope that you will love what you see as you pull into the driveway for the first time after it’s built? Worse yet, you never know what they could have done for you had you included them early in the process and relied on their experience to give you something even better. Believe it or not, more RFP’s seem to prefer the supplier approach over the partner relationship.

RFP’s seem to be about presenting an already defined solution and asking for the cheapest way to build it in an already defined amount of time that usually doesn’t extend thought into the future needs of the brand. Typically, they don’t rely on reviewing agencies based on their past work and relationships, including how they have achieved their best successes with their already established clients. They do review your work and you usually end up on their RFP list because they loved what you did for client x. But the process falls apart from there as they want you to win their business using a process that no agency uses for their own established clients. For instance, most RFP’s  give you a real or imagined problem with a defined scope that tells competing agencies to solve it in a bubble within the following two to four weeks while pricing and confirming the timeframe for delivery. There is little client contact and no deep understanding of the brand, category or business objectives. It doesn’t seem matter that you didn’t go through that process to get the great work for client x that placed you on their RFP list to begin with. What matters is that the RFP system removes anything that makes agencies unique in their own creative and business methodology so that all agencies can be compared on a checklist with a mutual reference point pertaining to pricing. Usually, the process contains the expectation that agencies provide creative and strategic thinking to the client for free on the off-chance that they may win the business. (In the case of Sears, they don’t hide the fact that they own and may use the thinking from all agencies.) This is similar to asking several chefs to prepare multiple meals while stating that only one chef will get paid in spite of the fact that all of the dishes will be at least partially eaten.

In my opinion, this is a process that sterilizes all agencies and removes the unique factors that allow each agency to create unique solutions for their clients. It also removes the partner and any respect from the equation. Build me a box with these dimensions and tell me how much and when you can finish it. At Dashboard, we would rather have a potential client review our work, talk with our clients about our methodology and then sit down with us for a conversation as to how we would approach their business. We would use the time that is usually wasted on fake problems to discuss what their real business issues are and how we could help solve them. We would discuss our past experience and how this experience could benefit their brand. We would discuss how we could find solutions that are tailored for them and show them that we will be budget conscious, but equally aware of their needs and finding solutions that fit that budget. We would show them that we offer a professional partnership and that we aren’t just selling them another widget. By the end of that meeting, we would show them how we will become a crucial component to their future business success. We believe that this approach would do more good towards establishing stronger agency/client relationships and developing better work for everyone.

We’d love to hear your thoughts and comments.