The RFP Responses

We gave a Friday deadline for the written proposals. The first one came in at 11:00 and then they trickled in all day. The proposals came in all shapes and sizes. I knew our email had a size limit for attachments but didn’t think it would be an issue for an RFP response. One agency asked me for a FTP site days before the deadline in anticipation of the restrictions. Another sent me a link to their site. A third called me to let me know they were having issues and we worked out an FTP site. The last agency emailed me at 8pm to let me know the file bounced back. I sent them an invitation to my Drop Box and learned that he didn’t have the file with him; it would have to wait until Monday. Big points off for lack of “hunger.”

At first glance a lot of the proposals were similar. I’ve been in PR a long time and there is something very much the same between agencies. I always thought so when I was pitching -- how do you stand out when everyone can do almost the same thing? How would I be able to judge 10 proposals? It was a little easier than I thought. I figured the best way to assess the agencies was with a scoring criteria. Here’s how it broke down:

• two power point presentations; the rest were Word docs - they ranged in size from 16 pages to 58 -


• one included a situation analysis


• two had overviews or letters of introduction


• a couple actually took the “what 3 things would you do first” question and gave us three creative ideas; others told us about how they transition new accounts (which was a separate question)


• a couple of the bigger agencies seemed to do a “find and replace” to their standard proposal


• one agency ignored the question about target media


• one didn’t have any real social media experience


• one answered our question about what it took for an agency relationship to be successful with a list of things we need to do


• I found a couple spelling errors, including our founder’s name


• agencies that have worked with us listed us as references (I found that funny)


• we didn’t give out a specific budget number on purpose -- we wanted to see what people came up with. Most agencies came in around the same price; one was double.

I found it kind of interesting that not one of the agencies included a SWOT. At B&O we considered it one of our differentiators and we always included it. It was part of the “we don’t guess” philosophy of the agency. So I really appreciated the RFP with the situation analysis. I had my list of yeses, nos and maybes. Next step was meeting with my boss and the social media manager to get their votes.