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

According to some counts of late, there are over 16,000 marketing and communications agencies in the UK. And as someone who spends most of every business day speaking with, reading about and selecting agencies to be put forward for client briefs, I’m continually disappointed by how many marketing agencies neglect marketing themselves.

I find myself in conversations with clients daily to the tune of ‘Believe me, they’re a good marketing firm with talented people onboard…they just aren’t great at marketing themselves.’ How sad.

While some of our clients boast decades’ experience, some are new to the industry and unsure of the traditional agency pitch process, or what level of bespoke effort is appropriate to ask of agencies in responding to their brief.

The traditional formal pitch process may look something like this:

• Request for Information (RFI) to Longlist Agencies: We recommend limiting RFI’s to include clients’ 5 most pressing questions,. Limiting the number of questions will increase the chances that agencies will respond personally rather than providing templated responses.
• Credentials (creds) meeting: Ideally a discussion of the client’s needs; agencies should avoid the temptation to speak too much about themselves and instead ask good questions, which demonstrate their ability to listen and truly understand their clients.
• Chemistry check: Whether purely social, or a working session to explore an element of the brief together, this portion of the pitch is to test personality fit. As such, the people who will actually work together on the business (not execs and new biz folks) must attend.
• Briefing: By this point, the number of agencies is trimmed to 3 (+ the incumbent in some cases). At a minimum, client briefs should include a clear statement of the business problem, measurable objectives, a clear budget and timeline. The best briefings will be done in person and allow adequate time for questions.
• Tissue meeting: This is mid-way review of agencies’ progress in responding to the client brief. Ideas are rough, unpolished and are shared only to gain early feedback from the client
• The pitch: Competing agencies present their final responses to the client brief face to face, allowing time for discussion thereafter.

As we discussed in our previous post, which you can catch here, the mobile market is a rapidly growing industry, with 58 per cent of Britons are accessing content via apps and/or the mobile web each month (Comscore). In response, many brands and agencies are now turning to mobile agencies.

To many brands and marleting agencies, mobile is still largely seen as an experimental ad spend.