Pitch perfect: ‘It is the worst possible way of actually reviewing your current agency’
“The way the industry approaches the pitch process, they think it’s a panacea to solve problems,” said Trinity P3 global CEO, Darren Woolley on yesterday’s Mumbrellacast. “It’s not. It has one function and one function only: select an agency.”
Woolley was joined on the Mumbrellacast Special by IAG’s director of content and customer engagement, Zara Curtis and Thinkerbell GM, Katie Dally, to debate whether the current processes are fit for purpose.
Global CEO and founder of Trinity P3, Darren Woolley
Agree that pitching is not the way to review performance for an incumbent agency, however there is some validity to re-testing the market on expiry of a contract particularly when all Government agencies are required to do this by law. There are Procurement professionals in Government who disagree with this approach for certain categories, however there is no nuance by category in the legislation unfortunately.
It is also not unheard of (in fact quite common I would argue) that an organisation’s marketing team or new CMO choose to go to pitch rather address performance issues or changes in strategy with their incumbent. Many organisations still do not have an internal Procurement function (particularly SME’s) so blame cannot lie squarely with Procurement.