Media Management

Media pitch preparation phase: detailed project plan and timing

The Merits Of Transparency

“Some advertisers, though, do not see full transparency on their behalf as being in their favour. The argument is that this way the agencies need to try their best in all aspects of the pitch and it’s up to the client to decide how the choice will be made”

In the previous article I discussed the initial stage of media pitch preparation: writing and alignment of the project charter, understanding the current state of media management as well as mapping of the available and needed resources. Below we will deep-dive into the preparation of the detailed process.

While the project charter outlines the main objectives, resources and milestones, a more precise process description is required, according to which the project will be managed. It should provide a detailed timeline, specific deliverables, people and resources responsible for the actions in the four stages of the project:

• Preparation
• Pitch conduct
• Evaluation
• Transition of account(s)

The preparation phase is more flexible, but once you have officially kicked off the project, it will be difficult to alter the timelines, hence getting it right first time is critical. One needs to consider two aspects:

• How long should the process last
• The best timing for it to take place and conclude

Duration: 

The duration of the process will be heavily impacted by the overall complexity of the pitch determined by:

• Number of tasks for the agencies, such as: pitch cases, tactical exercises, dry runs, media cost commitment rounds, scope and MSA negotiations. These should be tailored to the scale of the pitch. Apart from the impact on the timelines, if the efforts needed to win the pitch are disproportionally high vs. the potential business volume, the agencies will either decline the invitation or reflect the extra efforts in the fees and media costs.
• Number of participating agencies will impact the time needed to evaluate the tasks and negotiations. In my experience, having more than four agencies is hard to manage time-wise.
• Geographical scope: the more countries / regions are part of the pitch, the longer it may take to run and – even more importantly – assess the entire pitch
• Client’s internal structure: number of stakeholders (for example:  global vs. regional or local) participating in the decision-making will have an impact on the decision-making and coordination, heavily affecting the timelines. 
• Sequence of the milestones: some elements of the pitch can (and should) happen simultaneously and adding sequencing increases the duration of the pitch. At the agencies, the work is often clearly divided: planning team is working on strategic responses, scope and fees are handled by account management team, media cost commitments are handled by the trading team and the contracts are negotiated by commercial / legal teams and these workstreams have little overlap with one another.
• However, some clients choose to assess the strategic fit first and run the commercial / media cost exercises to the shortlisted agencies, or the other way around- only commercially viable proposals will be shortlisted for the qualitative evaluation.
• Also, the size of the client’s project team and division of responsibilities among its members will determine whether certain tasks can take place simultaneously, or they have to be ran sequentially. For example, regional pitch meetings can either happen at the same time in different regions, but will be assessed by local or regional teams only. If the global team needs to physically participate in all of them, they will need to be planned sequentially. 

Both the advertiser and the agencies participating in the pitch need sufficient time to deliver quality work, therefore all the above factors need to be taken into account when planning a realistic delivery time. Giving one day to provide feedback to a 30-page contract, when it took you two weeks to provide yours, is neither going to be fair nor will it give you the quality you hoped for.

At the same time, the risk of running a pitch that is too long- apart from the obvious high costs – is the likelihood of the agencies quitting in the middle of the process. This will especially be a likely case if the pitch is long due to poor management. The agencies treat this as a warning sign for the potential future workflow and relationship issues.

Therefore, the pitch duration, and therefore its elements, need to be carefully considered.

Best timing:

There is a number of factors that determine the best timing to run and conclude the pitch.

First, the pitch needs to finish in time to enable transition of the account between the winner and the current incumbent, should the incumbent fail to keep the business. Depending on the size and complexity of the account, the duration of transition may vary, but anything below 2 months-time is not recommended to avoid any transition issues. 

Unless you want to have two agencies providing you services on the same accounts in parallel (something that is possible, but has its risks and downsides, like the incumbent’s disengagement and potential issues with the split of responsibilities between the agencies), the end of the incumbent agreement will determine the start date of the new agency.

Calculating backwards from there the expected duration of the pitch (plus the safety buffer for the unexpected), will give you the estimated start date of the pitch, which means its official public announcement.

Incumbent contracts are often aligned with the end of the calendar year in order to properly reconcile the performance-related fee model and the KPI’s associated with it and a lot of advertisers aim to finish the transition by the end of December. This means that you should finish the pitch latest by the end of October.

However, keep in mind that the Q4 is frequently the busiest time of the year and there are the year-end holidays. You may want to factor this into your safety buffer, especially that your incumbent’s motivation and engagement will be at the low end of the scale.

As per the above example, you should take into account both the peak workload & off-time, because the world doesn’t stop during the pitch. All the things your team and the agencies have to do on their day-to-day responsibilities, still need to happen on top of the pitch work. If the workload clutter is too big, you will not be able to keep the planned schedule and the agencies may prioritize other things over your pitch and decline to participate.  

The same applies to the main off-time moments, when most people take their time off (typical vacation periods in a given market). Again, it’s a risk to both your team’s delivery of the milestones as well as agency’s participation. I have seen agencies declining the invitations straight away, because the timeline has been scheduled in the middle of the vacation period.

Another thing to consider is a Fiscal Year/Calendar Year misalignment. Different advertisers work with different timelines of their fiscal years, although the calendar year alignment seems to be more common. This often impacts the duration or end dates of the contracts and may cause misalignment with the standard calendar year alignment of the agreements with media owners and, respectively, the agencies. This does not mean that one can’t have a media agency contract starting in the middle of the year, but it has impact on the deliverables and the KPI’s of the agency.

For example, the agencies aren’t happy about the cost commitments being delivered in a short time period (6 months), so you either consider the first 12 months across both calendar years, keeping in mind two separate negotiation periods between the agency and media owners, or you extend it to 18 months and moving forward stick to the 12-month calendar year cadence.

The detailed process not only helps to steer the work between different work streams, but also helps the agency navigate through it. It is the advertiser’s choice on how many details of the process to share with the participating agencies, but the main goal is to ensure that:

• The participants receive the necessary information in a timely matter
• Every participant receives the same information as everyone else and that it happens at the same time
• The agencies can make an informed decision about their submissions and participation in the process

The latter point means that the agencies should be clear about what the selection criteria are. This point is most often raised by the agencies as an improvement area in the pitch management process and is rather understandable; we all would want to know the rules to fairly assess our chances for success.

Some advertisers, though, do not see full transparency on their behalf as being in their favour. The argument is that this way the agencies need to try their best in all aspects of the pitch and it’s up to the client to decide how the choice will be made.

Similarly, the agencies often want to know who else – or at least how many other agencies are competing for the business. Revealing this information helps the agency understand the level of competition and their chances of success, which may impact their willingness to continue with the process. 

To sum up, there are many aspects that need to be considered when planning the specific project schedule that will have a major impact on its success or failure. In the next article I will cover and discuss the main pitch documents that will be shared with the pitch participants throughout the process.