Media pitch is typically quite exciting. It’s usually a tremendous learning experience, but it is always a lot of work. It’s a game of getting the right ducks into the correct rows, and all within a tight critical-path schedule. But before you go through it all, pre-selecting the agencies, sending out the invitations, sharing briefs and pitch tasks, negotiating the scope and the contracts and getting the most competitive pricing, how do you get started with a media pitch that is set up for success?
The work streams I just mentioned often take place simultaneously throughout the four main stages of the project, so planning the right sequence and engagement of the right resources is key. These main stages are:
- Preparation – from the moment you decide to have a pitch till the RFP has been shared with the participants.
- Pitch conduct – it covers four main work streams that culminate in the pitch meetings. These are:
- strategic & tactical capabilities
- media cost commitments
- Scope of works (SoW), team and fee structure
- Contract terms and conditions
- Evaluation, shortlisting and final negotiations – it’s the culmination of the process, with its final step being the award of business
- Transition of accounts – often this stage gets overlooked, but it sets foundations for a smooth start of operations by the newly appointed agency.
It’s a truism that preparation is half the battle, but it definitely is the case for the successful conduct of a media pitch. The first step is the comprehensive project charter.
This formal document describes the project, covering all relevant aspects of it’s conduct:
- Project goal: it clarifies the main objectives and rationale for conducting the pitch, ideally consistent with the aligned media delivery strategy described earlier here It also describes its core scope: which media, markets and services (both planning and buying or only one of them?) will be part of the project.
- Project participants: this element clarifies, who will be involved in the project, both internally and externally, and what will their role be.
- Stakeholders: these are people who are affected by this project in short and long term. Here, one defines the RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed) and identifies the decision makers.
- Requirements: in this point one covers, which resources are needed to meet the project’s objective
- Constraints: one should outline the potential roadblocks, bottlenecks or other issues that may occur during the project. Understanding the constraints is crucial to be able to mitigate the risks in advance.
- Implementation milestones, together with the specific deliverables or events that need to take place for the project to proceed to the next stage
- Communication plan describes how the project manager / team will communicate internally and with the broader team and how often.
- Deliverables specify, what the agreed possible outcomes of the pitch are. For example: can the pitch result in more than one agency getting the business and if yes, is there a limit on the number of agencies globally/ per region. What is the minimum expected value from the project? What is the “incumbency premium” or any other value calculation adjustments?
- Cost: the charter should define the estimated cost, the budget available, as well as needed, and who is going to provide it. For example, which department finances the project or what is the cost split between them? If the latter, will this be shared equally or is there a lead “sponsor”? It’s important to make realistic assumptions about the costs and ensure the money is carved out from any other, more “fluid” expenses. As an example, the money should not be part of the overall marketing budget subject to periodic “freezes”.
- Decision and award criteria: this one is an option for this document, because it may need to take more time to develop and align. It determines which criteria are being taken into account in the award decision and what their weights and scales are, who makes the decision and what’s the weight of the stakeholders’ votes. It should also spell out the minimum criteria for the agencies to participate in the pitch as well as to be awarded the business.
Once the charter is aligned, a more detailed preparation starts. The first things you will need is a good understanding of the status quo of media processes management, which resources you currently have and which ones you will need to arrange.
- Status quo:
You should be clear about the current state of your media before you can proceed to defining your desired go-to state. This means you should:
- Have all details of your baseline media spend, ideally split per campaign of every brand and per medium. This means detailed cost and quality information on all buys, not a topline campaign delivery summary. The data set should contain spot lists with detailed costs, granular ad server data, etc.
- Have the most recent Scope of Work of the incumbent agency and know the state of delivery. This means you should verify what the agency is obliged to do versus what they actually do. The differences can go either way, for example the agency skimming on the SoW delivery or the client demanding more deliverables without adjusting the fees or team structure (a.k.a. “scope creep”), but the important thing is to verify the actual scope from both the agency and client’s point of view to get a good picture.
- Have an up-to-date agency team structure working on your account. Especially in the % fee setup, the clients often do not know who is working on their account (except the account lead) and what they are supposed to do.
- Understand the agreed compensation model and any performance-based components, together with the KPI’s and the state of delivery against them
- Evaluate agency performance, even if not contractually agreed or due. Its purpose is to give you a good understanding about the service level and any improvement areas as well as any discrepancies between the current scope and what you need.
- Have the most recent version of the agency contract and understand the key provisions: scope, duration, compensation model, cost commitments, KPI’s, etc. Termination, extension and transition clauses will be of vital importance.
- Resources
Define which resources (both in terms of money and the personnel) are available and which ones are needed. If there is a gap, have an honest internal discussion on how to bridge it. Presuming that the process is run by procurement and marketing, ideally you should engage the following:
- Sponsor(s): someone in top management, who will support you and be your champion in any potential internal discussions. Their role is to remove your barriers and ensure the project gets the sufficient priority and attention from all supporting functions.
- Steering committee: an advisory group that helps the project team set direction, scope, goals, budgets, and timelines. It consists of key stakeholders across marketing, procurement, finance and compliance.
- Legal: since in the majority of companies the legal department needs to review and approve any major commercial agreements, and (from my experience) their availability is usually scarce, securing their support early on is vital to deliver the project in the agreed timeline
- Market/regional SPOC’s: in multinational pitches, the central team needs people on the ground to help gather the data, manage local pitch meeting logistics, etc.
- External support: while a pitch can be run completely by the advertiser, unless you have both the know-how and the capacity, it is definitely an investment worth considering. Apart from the knowledge, experience, resources, computing and project management capacity, an external party can be used in the negotiations process.
After both the status quo and the resources are clear, you can proceed to outlining the detailed pitch process and gathering the required documents constituting the pitch package. These steps will be covered in detail in the next article.