Agency new business crunch now permanent, say execs

“I’ve gotten RFPs in the last couple of months [with] two weeks to the deadline,” said one media agency executive, speaking under Chatham House rules at Digiday’s recent Media Buying Summit in Phoenix, Arizona.

Meanwhile, research published on Thursday (Oct. 23) by Creativebrief highlighted the scourge of indecisive clients dragging out the pitch process from weeks into months. More than half (53%) of marketers surveyed said they thought the pitch process had become shorter, while 33% of agency execs agreed — and another 33% said it had lengthened. The discrepancy points to an uneven burden that’s largely felt by the agencies asked to pitch.

Both over-long and too-short pitch processes are turning the typical agency new business crunch into a more permanent state of affairs.

Requests for proposals (RFPs) are dispatched by clients to shortlisted agencies in the early stages of a review; they usually contain information about what an advertiser wants from its prospective agencies, while inviting bidding firms to outline their own capabilities. So, not a light read.

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“I can’t even read some of these RFPs fast enough to respond to them,” the exec added.

To be fair, it’s not unusual for agency execs to kvetch about the expense involved in pitching. The process can stretch from six weeks to (in rare cases) 18 months, and assigning staff to work on a pitch can require a significant investment from an agency. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) estimated in 2023 that running a pitch costs clients on average over $400,000, and agencies over $200,000 to participate.

Moreover the new business dilemma — whether a business should focus on the work it has now, or on snagging its next account — is endemic to service sectors.

“If we put in as much time and effort in our current clients that we do in the clients that we’re pitching, we’d be a lot better off,” said another exec speaking in Phoenix.

It seems overall dissatisfaction with the review process has plumbed new depths recently. Creativebrief’s survey found that 68% of brand marketers, and 84% of agency execs, believe the pitch process was not fit for purpose.

Marketers’ tariff worries and uncertainty about the the future of the economy have likely contributed to reviews being dragged out.

“Scrutiny internally within brands has led to a sort of nervousness… about getting the decision wrong. A need to mitigate all risk by asking for another round or yet more detail on the commercials,” said Carpenter.

In the U.K., many agencies and marketers backed the Pitch Positive Pledge, an industry-wide effort to promote better standards in new business reviews spearheaded in 2022 by the Institute for Practitioners in Marketing (IPA). Carpenter said that while he still supports the ideas underpinning the pledge, it’s lost momentum among marketers in the three years since its launch. 

“We seem to have slipped back into behaviors whereby the pitch process seems to be lasting longer and longer,” he said. Some agencies are looking to generative AI tools in the hope they can strip some of the hours out of the review process.

That might include the use of image-generating tools to spin up prototypes, saving agencies the expense of producing creative on spec, or to speed up the research process that informs an agency’s bid.

“They can cover a lot of ground a lot faster. Some have have gone as far as being able to use AI tools to help put together plans faster,” said Steve Boehler, founder of agency and marketing consultancy Mercer Island Group.

In theory, generative AI tools might be put to use on the more time-consuming portions of the pitch process, such as responding to a client’s request for proposal (RFP) or request for information (RFI).

“In certain cases, with tight deadlines, it could be a very good first crack at what we might be able to do,” said a third agency exec. They added that their agency had developed AI agents that suggested responses to new RFPs based on staffers’ answers to previous proposal requests.

Again, brand marketers seem keener on reducing the time taken to pitch; 68% told Creativebrief they’d embrace AI to save time taken reviewing agencies, while only 55% of agency execs felt comfortable incorporating AI or other technologies into the new business process.

Boehler cautioned against use of the tech early for tackling RFPs. Analyzing a request document or brief is as much about reading between the lines as it is about taking in information at face value, he noted.

“[It’s] one of the last places I would suggest they use AI,” said Boehler. “Because if they get it wrong, they just got it wrong from the start.”