Just about every day, someone asks us how we judge a marketing agency's relative quality and appropriateness to client briefs.

In many ways, selecting a PR firm is a lot like selecting a life partner. Companies must select a firm in which they have confidence to operate with good judgement as their proxy.

The typical marketing procurement manager within a big, global corporation faces many challenges. And in speaking with them, we’re regularly reminded of how tough their job can be. So, our aim here is to take a bit of a journey in their shoes.

Taking a step back for those unfamiliar, marketing procurement professionals work within large corporate firms. These individuals, if working for a firm which adopts an agency roster, may manage the selection of marketing and communications agencies full time. However, other marketing procurement professionals arent afforded the luxury of focus. Instead, they may be sourcing an accountancy firm one day (or worse, toilet roll!) and a marketing agency the next. So, the primary challenge of non-dedicated marketing procurement folks is lack of focus. And this lack of focus means that in many cases, procurers will have to start fresh in re-educating themselves on the industry whenever a new firm or agency network is required, as selection may occur just once ever three or more years. Of course, they’ll have their network of internal marketers’ ears whenever they need help or advice, but it can be a lonely world as they are in some cases feared (if not unpopular) amongst agency management.

There’s an old, trite saying which goes ‘there’s no such thing as a silly question’. However, in the case of the agency pitch process, I beg to differ. Questions, which drive a discussion forward are well appreciated by everyone, of course, but other questions which show ignorance are obviously best avoided.

As an agency intermediary, we chat with clients and marketing agencies daily in an effort to properly match firms to appropriate briefs. So, it’s not at all strange for us to be the conduit for questions and answers. Many of those questions are worthwhile and important. But, sadly, others are time-wasters and hurt rather than help the agency’s impression in the eyes of the client contact.

Too often today, project briefs start with prescribing a solution. ’Mobile application to connect with youth’, ‘in-store graphics and POP display appropriate for high-traffic retail outlets’….the list goes on and on.

So, we can’t help but ask ourselves who has their eye on solving the Business Problem? In the old days, clients would sign up with an agency they trust and give them a bit of money to think about achieving their business objectives. The agency would go off and spend the time their clients’ funds allowed figuring out how to achieve the business objectives while spending as little as possible (keeping the remaining funds for themselves as profit). The model certainly had its flaws. But, it allowed agencies to think and kept them aligned toward achieving business objectives.

As a first step, we often receive briefs from client-side marketers with a couple key problems:

Day in, day out we meet with client-side and agency-side marketers. And while agency-side hours and strong personalities can be a challenge to manage, client-side marketers don’t have an easy time, either.

Increasingly squeezed to perform and achieve the same results while coping with reduced marketing budgets and lower internal head counts, many client-side marketers are stretched too thin. They haven’t made it to the bottom of their inbox for days. They don’t have time to do the work that’s agreed within all the meetings which command a majority of their working day. And between the meetings and the inbox, there’s little to no time left for client-side folks to clear their minds, or even rush out for a proper lunch.