Agency selection: do it yourself, or get a consultancy to assist?

Then a 30-minute drive to work... followed by a nine-hour work day involving as many meetings, phone calls and presentations as possible... thereafter a 20-minute drop-in at Woolies, to organise the family's dinner for that evening... then a 30-minute fight against traffic to get home... next... an hour to cook and eat dinner... another hour to sit down and watch an episode of a favourite series or chat to the family... next ... a 30-minute review of the children's homework and prepare them for bed.

Finally... an hour to read a book or the daily news on an iPad... then ... five minutes to fall asleep...

Unexpected surprises

A marketing executive's daily routine and activities do not always cater for unexpected surprises. One "surprise" faced by a marketing exec, who leads a marketing department and manages relationships with key ATL and BTL agencies, is the realisation that the strategic relationship between her company and their ATL or BTL agency needs to be terminated.

The agency, which has had a long and successful relationship with the marketing exec's company over many years, is not delivering what it should be and it seems impossible to get it back to its high performance levels... The marketing exec is faced with "Agency Fatigue".

After releasing built-up frustration on one of the marketing assistants because yet another campaign deadline has slipped by two weeks, and after engaging in many 'knock-head-on-wall' discussions with the internal marketing team about the agency's performance, the marketing exec decides to pull out the dusty agency contract from the bottom of the filing cabinet. For a fleeting moment, it dawns on the marketing exec that the contract has not been referred to since it was signed.

Crucial clause

The marketing exec continues to search for one crucial clause - the termination clause. What a great relief! There is some time. The clause states that there is a six-month notice period for termination. This means that they have six months to serve notice, select, and handover to a new agency. Phew!!!

After this brief moment of relief, a bleak realisation washes over the exec. A six-month notice period is not nearly long enough.

May seem like a long period

This length of time may seem like a long period, but when looking for a new ATL or BTL agency (depending on the size of the account), there is a considerable amount of work that needs to be completed. More specifically, the entire pitch process can take up to three months to complete - that leaves the other three months for the essential handover process. This handover process is vital and essential - it ensures that no balls are dropped during any of the marketing campaigns when the outgoing agency is passing over to the incoming agency.

Marketing execs need to be aware that, internationally and in South Africa, external help with agency pitches is at hand in the form of agency search and selection consultants. If you, the marketing exec, are considering appointing one of these consultants to manage your pitch, a prevalent and necessary question is: is it necessary to get external consultants to help you to search for and select a new agency?

The pros and cons of appointing a pitch consultant

Before appointing a pitch consultant to assist you in the daunting task of a managing your pitch, one must seriously consider both the pros and cons of such an appointment.

On the one hand, the tangible benefits of using consultants are :

• First, they have the knowledge and experience in conducting an agency pitch, from the long listing process right through to the agency selection process.
  
• Secondly, they can assist you with determining the selection criteria and the weighting of these selection criteria, in order to ensure your objectives are met and that the agency selection process is fair.
  
• Thirdly, they can streamline the process so that you are not inundated with queries from agencies. These queries are critical to the agency pitch preparation; however, you have little time to address them.
  
• Additionally, these consultants can assist with the commercial negotiations, analysing agency costs and drawing up key performance indicators and performance-related fees for you to use during your final agency negotiation, prior to selection.
  
• Also, the consultants can engage the market without the incumbent agency or press getting wind that a review or pitch is about to take place.

• Finally, these consultants follow a global industry best practice, which ensures that the selection process is fair to both agencies and to you, the client.

On the other hand, if you have the time, resources and the internal skill set for comprehensive support on commercial areas, it may be best for you to opt for internal route. More specifically, here are a number of reasons why it may not be best to allow a consultant to manage your agency pitch:

• First, you must consider the additional cost of using an external consultant. A full pitch can take anything up to three months to be completed, and this cost will obviously be borne by you, the client.
  
• Secondly, often the relationship with your incumbent can be restored with a bit of TLC; however, pitch consultants may try to persuade you to move straight to a pitch, rather than seeing if the incumbent can turn things around. Going straight to pitch is costly, not to mention time-consuming.
  
• Additionally, because time is money for consultants, any delays would erode the consultant's profit. This profitability, based on the completing the work in a certain number of hours, may result in the consultant rushing for completion and not attaining the best deal for your company.
  
• Lastly, appointing a consultant does not mean that your time spent on the pitch is minimal. The reality is that, while most of the management of the pitch process and the communication with the agencies are handled by these consultants, your role as the key stakeholder still requires a number of hours to be spent on designing the pitch brief, evaluating agencies, attending chemistry meetings, negotiation meetings and pitches and, finally, choosing the winning agency.

Deciding on which consultant to appoint

Now that you are aware of the pros and cons of selecting a consultant to conduct the agency search and selection, and you are opting to use a consultant to manage your pitch, your next question should be - which consultant should you appoint?

My advice would be to look for experience and expertise, and also ensure that there are no conflicts of interests.

If you need support on the commercials, use a strong commercial consultant as a project manager. This project manager will be responsible for drawing up the RFIs and RFPs, and drafting the agency contract. The consultant will take care of all the mundane, yet vital tasks in this process, which constitutes majority of the project, and allows you to focus on the critical and essential role of selecting an agency based on its ability to deliver against your company's objectives and strategy.

It is important to note that South Africa is following the trend of the rest of the world with regards to the use of pitch consultants. A main reason for this is that pitch consultants vehemently ensure that best practice pitch process is followed. This best practice allows for a fair pitch process to both the company and all agencies involved. So if you are going to appoint a consultant to manage the pitch on your behalf, make sure you consider all the pros and cons of the appointment, together with considering which consultant will deliver the right results for your brand.