Aloha from Detroit … a very cool city (with lots of talented marketers).
Back in the day, the RFP was something that energized agencies. The prospect of new business, in addition to perhaps snapping up an AOR relationship, rallied everyone together for the common agency good. Over time, the RFP changed. The goalposts moved. Now, it seems, those same goalposts are not even in the same stadium and, based on some conversations, the RFP makes agency folk shudder.
Yesterday, Patrick Coffee reported on an RFP being sent out by General Mills to agencies that included the following: 120-day payment periods (fairly common, but not great), no compensation for the pitch process and, get this, complete ownership of ALL creative concepts … even if the brand doesn’t hire the agency that pitched.
Out of this triumvirate of doom, the first (payments) could be swallowed. The second? Well, it’s not an ideal situation, but it might be manageable. The third, however, is ludicrous. (You're definitely going to want to read the full story about this insane RFP here).
Imagine that you have spent a lot of time and money to bring your talent together, rally around creative concepts, only to have the potential client tell you, “Nah, we’re not going to hire you, but we’ll go right ahead and take these wonderful ideas you came up with and use them.”
For some of us of a certain age, this is akin to that unpaid internship we had in agencies. But, instead of getting experience, this amounts to a slap in the face and the message that the services of agencies are simply a commodity.
We hear quite a bit on marketing stages about the “partnership” between agencies and brands. And, yes, there are quite a few of them that could be considered legit. However, this General Mills thing smacks of a vendor/client relationship. Are agencies vendors? To some degree, yes. But it’s also true that when an agency and brand truly “partner” with each other, the results are generally much better.
Indeed, there are some external factors in play here—the economy, an increasingly complex consumer ecosystem—but, again, this approach to the RFP from brands is becoming increasingly common. It’s true that agencies can and should adjust to this new reality, but, this approach from General Mills feels like an overcorrection to the nth degree. We also feel like there is probably more behind this story that has yet to emerge.
But, in the meantime, your agency would be entirely in the right to walk away from such a mess.
In other news …
We celebrated this year’s class of Adweek Media All-Stars. Learn about the 14 execs that were chosen, and read Erik Oster’s pieces on rising star Nadalie Dias of Hearts & Science and executive of the year, Carat CEO Michael Epstein.
Adam&eveDDB had a very good week.
Wunderman Thompson had a not-so-great week.
Uh oh. J&J is cutting its budget.
Someone is going to hit the Disney lottery.
Liz Taylor is moving to Leo Burnett.
Grey wants to retool healthcare marketing with its new agency.
Dentsu is off the hook (kind of) in the Woodstock 50 case.
And here’s what Accenture Interactive might really think about creativity.
As always, we invite you to visit our sister site, AgencySpy, where I might have been a little harsh on Mother. Emphasis on the word “might.”
Reminder: I will be in Cannes. If you’d like to try to schedule something while you’re there, please go ahead and fill out this nifty, snazzy form so that I can organize the chaos. If you have other stuff going on, hit me up at doug dot zanger at adweek dot com.
Have the loveliest of weekends, and we’ll see you back here next week.
Warm Regards,
Doug Zanger
Senior Editor
Creativity + Agencies
