Only 1 in 10 surveyed marketers rates the alignment of services delivered by advertising agencies with the offer presented at the tender stage as above 90 percent. These are the results of the latest study conducted by the brief4U.com platform. [1]
Every third specialist surveyed believed that agencies fulfill only 50 to 75 percent of the assumptions from the offer. Do we want to get only half of what we were promised? Certainly not. Especially since marketers now also have to contend with significantly limited advertising budgets. According to The State of Marketing Budgets 2021, this year some brands have cut budgets by as much as 15 percent. For the first time in nearly a decade, the advertising spend index fell below 10 percent.[2] So what should marketers do to avoid overpromise in tender offers and spend their marketing budget effectively? And why should advertising agencies keep their promises?
Marketers have been facing limited advertising spend since 2020, as the latest Gartner report shows. On the other hand, advertising agencies are facing the challenge of a shrinking number of assignments. Why? Savings. According to The State of Marketing Budgets 2021, nearly 30 percent of tasks that were previously entrusted to external agencies are now performed "in-house" by internal teams. From this perspective, the pitching process takes on crucial importance for both sides. Preparing a comprehensive offer tailored to the brand's needs is one thing, and meticulously delivering on it is another. How does this look in practice?
The scale of the problem in numbers
According to the latest study by the tender platform for advertising services, brief4U.com, only slightly more than 11 percent of surveyed marketers admitted that what they receive from an advertising agency aligns with the offer's assumptions. The remaining respondents had far more reservations.
- Our study showed that 1 in 10 marketers was able to rate the alignment of the offer with the actual services delivered at more than 90 percent. The others ranged between 75 and 90 percent (nearly 45 percent of respondents) and 50 to 75 percent (over 32 percent of respondents). Such a low percentage of marketers who are fully satisfied with what they receive from advertising agencies is, on the one hand, worrying, and on the other, gives reason to take a closer look at the marketer-agency relationship and analyse the flashpoints of this "union". Sometimes it turns out that the aforementioned low level of alignment between the service and the offer is caused by overly optimistic pitching by agencies trying to win the tender process, which then, when confronted with reality, are unable to deliver a service consistent with the offer. Another reason may be that the entity does not specialise in the area in which it enters the tender – says Marcin Chyliński, founder of the brief4U.com platform.
In Poland, the average advertising agency employs around 15 people, has competencies within 5 marketing specialisations, and most often handles projects with a budget of around PLN 50,000 (£10,000). This picture emerges from a report prepared based on data gathered on the brief4U.com tender platform, based on over 400 fully profiled marketing communication agencies registered on the service by the end of April 2021. A large proportion of advertising agencies claim to have a wide range of specialisations, while in practice their actual competencies are often much narrower.
What can a marketer do to avoid overpromise?
How to avoid overpromise?
First and foremost, it is worth devoting enough attention already at the first, crucial pitching stage, i.e. during the process of selecting an advertising agency, as well as when checking reviews and ratings of a given company.
- Sometimes it happens that an advertising agency presents ambitious plans and assumptions in its offer to win a new contract, while in reality it does not have the appropriate competencies or resources to properly deliver the given service. Therefore, to avoid potential disappointment, the marketer should already at the stage of selecting the service provider pay attention to what the given entity specialises in. Among Polish advertising agencies, a certain pattern is visible – larger entities have a broader range of specialisations, smaller ones a narrower one, although of course this is not a rule. If a relatively small agency offers a very wide range of services, we have the right to assume that it may not have too much experience in the area that interests us. It is always worth investigating this better, though. On the brief4U.com platform, which currently has over 520 registered advertising agencies, we can very easily check the agency's size, its location, the budget ranges of projects it handles, as well as its specialisation and portfolio of clients and completed projects, if of course the company has attached such a presentation to its profile – says Marcin Chyliński.
Hence, access to a space where marketers can exchange ratings of services delivered within their community and, on that basis, make more accurate decisions regarding the choice of a business partner is also important. Just as is the case with booking.com, Airbnb, or Tripadvisor, which we so eagerly use when planning trips. According to brief4U.com data, ratings and reviews of service providers ranked 3rd among the guidelines marketers follow when choosing an advertising agency.
A good marketing brief will minimise the risk
The role of a good brief
Marketer expectations vs reality in agency offers
As many as 6 in 10 surveyed specialists working in marketing on the client side admitted that they had encountered a misunderstanding of the brief or of the brand itself by an advertising agency. This could consequently have had a significant impact on achieving poor results from the campaigns they ran, or even no results at all – as many as 47 percent of marketers who took part in the study had such experiences.
- The marketing brief is another important step in the pitching process. It is a fundamental tool in every marketer's work, which to a large extent determines the understanding of the brand and its needs, and consequently the success of the campaign. A marketing brief is nothing other than a clearly formulated message and a kind of signpost for the agency. Its basic goal is to present, in a simple and transparent yet exhaustive way, the expectations, goals, and guidelines for the given contractor. A good marketing brief is an investment, and the art of creating one is paradoxically one of the most valuable skills that helps avoid, among other things, financial and time losses on both sides. It can be helpful to use a platform that, through easy-to-use tools, templates, and experts, ensures that all formalities are properly completed – says Marcin Chyliński.
Marta Wojciechowska, Senior PR Manager at Danone, adds that the issue of agencies understanding the brief should not be viewed in black-and-white terms. Even the best-constructed document and a brilliantly conducted client-agency meeting constitute only part of the knowledge about a given business, and for that reason alone, given the limited pool of information, responding to a brief is always a difficult task. Of course, the better the knowledge of the brand and business, the better the response to the brief, and the more effort the agency puts into understanding it, the easier it will be to address the client's needs. I would not, however, look at the tender solely through the prism of the offer.
An important element of the tender process should be getting to know potential partners, not just evaluating the presented concept. It is crucial to have people on the other side whom you want to work with and whom you can rely on. It is good practice to collaborate with agencies also at the very early stage of creating a given concept (and sometimes even the brief itself) and to use, right from the start, the potential of a larger team, which will certainly pay off with higher quality of the concept and then its execution.
Agile approach – check whether the marketing agency is flexible
Flexibility in the Agile model
"When you start with what matters to the customer, you'll earn the right to their attention and you'll benefit doubly." These are the words of the head of marketing at the Canadian startup Visier, Jake Sorofman. The challenges that both marketing departments on the company side and advertising agencies face in the current reality are considerable and increasingly require a flexible approach to business and unexpected changes in decision-making. That is why it is so important to invite an agency to collaborate that will be a flexible and open partner.
- The only certain thing is change, especially in the current situation we find ourselves in, which is why the Agile approach in business is gaining so much importance. Agile management is above all openness and responding to changes instead of rigidly executing an adopted plan. Working with clients, especially over the past year and a half, it is clearly noticeable how much they need a flexible partner who will be ready for sudden changes in strategy, and moreover – will quickly find their footing in the current reality and will look for new solutions together with them. Of course, such situations often require redefining the contract, and consequently also the goals we set for ourselves, in order to ultimately avoid unfulfilled promises – comments Joanna Berlińska, head of Growth, Lightscape.
[1] Marketers' expectations when choosing an advertising agency, brief4U.com, 2021.
[2] emtemp.gcom.cloud/ngw/globalassets/en/marketing/documents…
Summary
According to the brief4U.com study, only slightly more than 11 percent of marketers rate the alignment of agency services with the tender offer at over 90 percent. Nearly one third of respondents indicate that agencies deliver only 50–75 percent of the assumptions. The problem is compounded by budget cuts – in 2021 some brands reduced spending by as much as 15 percent.
Experts advise marketers to carefully verify an agency's specialisation before the tender and to ensure a precise brief, the misunderstanding of which is reported by 6 in 10 specialists. The partner's flexibility is also key — in the Agile model it is easier to avoid unfulfilled promises.
