How agencies justify giving away creative as part of a prospect pitch

I’ve been involved in a number of RFPs (requests for proposal) and pitches in my professional career. Each time there’s a discussion about whether or not the investment in time and out-of-pocket expenses justifies the potential outcome—landing a new account.

There’s some good discussion about the agency pitch conundrum on The Firm Voice, a publication of the Council of Public Relations Firms (see articles by Jerry Johnson and Michael Lasky).

Rather than re-hash what they say, and what many add by way of blog comments, I thought I’d offer my own opinion.

I once paid an intellectual attorney $150 to visit with her for 15 minutes or so about an idea I had for a new television show. This was shortly after the launch of American Idol and my idea was to do a show that auditioned triple threats—people who can sing, dance and act all at the same time—for a new Broadway show. I even thought of mounting the show in Las Vegas at one of the casinos and either keeping it here or moving it to Broadway.

I was told that my idea wasn’t original enough and there was no way to protect it unless I invested the time and money into actually doing it.

Good advice or not, I was sure bummed when the Grease Broadway musical was cast following a similar format to what I had envisioned.

I still think my idea has merit, by the way.

After this experience, for a time, I wanted to charge people for talking with me about what I could do for their companies. My advice and counsel is just as important as an attorney’s, I reasoned. While I had the thought, there was no good business model for it. No one I knew of was doing it.

I think we’re in a business where people think they can do what we do. It always seems like a hard sell to get people to commit to hiring an agency, unless they truly understand the power of effective public relations.

People can stomach paying an attorney for their time in speaking with them about a legal issue. They don’t see paying a business communicator (advertising/marketing/public relations) in the same light.

I don’t think we can do anything to change the expectation of giving something for nothing in order to prove ourselves. But my hat is sure off to Wells Fargo for paying the two final agencies for their creative in the bank’s RFP (see Johnson’s story referenced above).