By Brian Howlett
Our industry is constantly beating itself up for being unable to resist submitting pitches. There is a loud, ongoing debate about why we keep giving away our best thinking for free. Bankers don’t do it. Lawyers don’t do it. Why do we?
Clients have responded to our complaints with the “pay-to-play” pitch—as if $10,000 is going to do anything to mitigate the impact of spending the hundreds of hours it takes to develop a 360-degree best-in-class solution to their stated problem. (Still, we do cash the check.)
The fact remains that no other industry gives it away like we do. And we are likely cheapening our work by doing so. But to focus on the money is to miss the point entirely—we aren’t like bankers or lawyers or architects or engineers. The bottom line is, we just can’t help ourselves. When an RFP appears, it’s like a fly in the room. We can huff and puff all we want about having to come up with a killer idea for free; we can try our best to ignore the document. But still, the fly buzzes.
Soon enough, we give in. We flip through the 70 pages, straight to the ask. Like skimming the first 20 chapters of a detective novel to find the whodunit, we go right for the challenge. Often, the language is coy: “No creative necessary. Please, no storyboards or layouts. Just your first thoughts on your overall approach.”
Yeah, right.
So we can complain about how unfair it is, but the RFP doesn’t go away. It drills into our brain, like the worm dropped into Chekov’s ear in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It doesn’t matter what it is—a car whose sales need a tune-up, a soft drink whose popularity has gone flat—we turn the problem around and around in our minds. We don’t even like ourselves for doing it, but it’s just the way we’re wired.
So anyone who thinks it’s the money that gets an agency excited probably shouldn’t be in our business in the first place. Sure, the bean counters in New York will drive right to the bottom line in the RFP and dispassionately stay there until they have figured out exactly how much revenue this client might bring. That’s their job. But for the rest of us, we just love to solve problems, and as it turns out, new problems are the best problems of all. Whether it’s $50 million or $10 million or $1 million, it’s not the dollars that get our synapses firing.
So sure enough, we find ourselves back in the boardroom, divvying up the RFP, figuring out the request. Solving the problem.
And then there’s the second part of the process, which is equally charged and addictive: the presentation. No matter how rewarding a long relationship with a current client can be, there is nothing quite like having a chance to show your agency’s finest thinking to someone new. It’s simply a validation for the team. We love how we think, we love who we are as an agency and we want others to love us, too.
And of course, every one of us believes we’re going to win, whatever the industry prognosticators may be saying. That, too, is just the way we’re wired: hopelessly, ridiculously optimistic and just as hopelessly impressed with our own abilities. The day of the pitch is always electric. It’s like bringing your shiny prize car out of the garage on the first day of spring—your presentation is waxed and buffed to perfection.
It goes without saying that all of this springs from a deep-seated insecurity that other industries would never understand and, frankly, would likely find appalling. But insecurity is actually quite valuable in an applied art like ours. It keeps us pushing for better solutions. In spite of all the plumbing that technologists have introduced to the marketing mix, the real innovation still lies in creating the right story and finding the right platform on which to share it.
And finally, as any creative person will tell you, there’s nothing like having an audience. Think about it. Why does somebody who once played music for thousands of fans still happily play, years later, for just a couple of hundred? Sharing their work with an audience is part of what they do. And it’s the same for us. We are driven to find new stories to tell, and whatever the outcome, we are at our most alive the moment we stand up, face our audience and share that story for the very first time. ca
Brian Howlett is chief creative officer (and chief insecurity officer) at Agency59, Toronto. You can send all 70 pages of your RFP to bhowlett@agency59.ca.
Clients have responded to our complaints with the “pay-to-play” pitch—as if $10,000 is going to do anything to mitigate the impact of spending the hundreds of hours it takes to develop a 360-degree best-in-class solution to their stated problem. (Still, we do cash the check.)
The fact remains that no other industry gives it away like we do. And we are likely cheapening our work by doing so. But to focus on the money is to miss the point entirely—we aren’t like bankers or lawyers or architects or engineers. The bottom line is, we just can’t help ourselves. When an RFP appears, it’s like a fly in the room. We can huff and puff all we want about having to come up with a killer idea for free; we can try our best to ignore the document. But still, the fly buzzes.
Soon enough, we give in. We flip through the 70 pages, straight to the ask. Like skimming the first 20 chapters of a detective novel to find the whodunit, we go right for the challenge. Often, the language is coy: “No creative necessary. Please, no storyboards or layouts. Just your first thoughts on your overall approach.”
Yeah, right.
So we can complain about how unfair it is, but the RFP doesn’t go away. It drills into our brain, like the worm dropped into Chekov’s ear in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It doesn’t matter what it is—a car whose sales need a tune-up, a soft drink whose popularity has gone flat—we turn the problem around and around in our minds. We don’t even like ourselves for doing it, but it’s just the way we’re wired.
So anyone who thinks it’s the money that gets an agency excited probably shouldn’t be in our business in the first place. Sure, the bean counters in New York will drive right to the bottom line in the RFP and dispassionately stay there until they have figured out exactly how much revenue this client might bring. That’s their job. But for the rest of us, we just love to solve problems, and as it turns out, new problems are the best problems of all. Whether it’s $50 million or $10 million or $1 million, it’s not the dollars that get our synapses firing.
So sure enough, we find ourselves back in the boardroom, divvying up the RFP, figuring out the request. Solving the problem.
And then there’s the second part of the process, which is equally charged and addictive: the presentation. No matter how rewarding a long relationship with a current client can be, there is nothing quite like having a chance to show your agency’s finest thinking to someone new. It’s simply a validation for the team. We love how we think, we love who we are as an agency and we want others to love us, too.
And of course, every one of us believes we’re going to win, whatever the industry prognosticators may be saying. That, too, is just the way we’re wired: hopelessly, ridiculously optimistic and just as hopelessly impressed with our own abilities. The day of the pitch is always electric. It’s like bringing your shiny prize car out of the garage on the first day of spring—your presentation is waxed and buffed to perfection.
It goes without saying that all of this springs from a deep-seated insecurity that other industries would never understand and, frankly, would likely find appalling. But insecurity is actually quite valuable in an applied art like ours. It keeps us pushing for better solutions. In spite of all the plumbing that technologists have introduced to the marketing mix, the real innovation still lies in creating the right story and finding the right platform on which to share it.
And finally, as any creative person will tell you, there’s nothing like having an audience. Think about it. Why does somebody who once played music for thousands of fans still happily play, years later, for just a couple of hundred? Sharing their work with an audience is part of what they do. And it’s the same for us. We are driven to find new stories to tell, and whatever the outcome, we are at our most alive the moment we stand up, face our audience and share that story for the very first time. ca
Brian Howlett is chief creative officer (and chief insecurity officer) at Agency59, Toronto. You can send all 70 pages of your RFP to bhowlett@agency59.ca.
Brian Howlett is partner and chief creative officer at Agency59, one of Canada’s most enduring independents. He loves many more aspects of the business than he hates and continues to actively write on a number of accounts. He is also chairman of the Advertising & Design Club of Canada. Prior to Agency59, Brian worked in Asia and the U.S. with a couple of the multinational omnivores.
