The Decision

Again, my first and second jobs got in my way of blogging -- I had to prepare for school vacation week. Although I didn’t get the final RFP post done before I left for vacation, we did make a decision.

After the final agency presented we had a quick hallway conversation rather than a big meeting. (Funny how we were all pretty much on the same page.) There was one agency we wanted to put in front of the VP of Marketing and two “maybes.” We realized that if you combined the two maybes you would get the agency we liked best. So we just brought that one back for the VP sanity check. But we did not tell them that they were “it” -- just in case something went wrong.

By far the worst part of the process was calling the agencies that we did not select. Since I’ve been in their shoes before I wanted to try to give them insight into our decision. I thought it would be better than sending a generic email that left them wondering. While it was the right thing to do, it wasn’t easy.

After defending our choice to the other agencies and the VP of Marketing, I felt good about the decision. We selected Shift because they:
- understood our challenges
- offered the most complete program
- gave us rationale for all the pitch ideas
- had a good conversation with us
- integrate PR & social media
(and I don’t know anyone there, which I think matters)

As I mentioned in the last post, it was necessary for us to go through the whole RFP process to come to our decision. We learned something important about each agency at each step -- the questions asked during the input call; the answers given in the written response; and the content and quality of the presentation.

It's funny, I never thought I would like Shift. After competing with them for years on the agency side (especially during the last two years at Blanc & Otus), Shift was at the bottom of my list. Not because of anything they did or didn’t do, or anything I had heard, just for “stealing” business from B&O. Now that I've gone through the process, I understand why.

The RFP Presentations

Before I write about the next phase in the process, I wanted to add a note. I’ve talked to a lot of people this week and it made me think about why I’m really writing this series. My intention was to give people a sense of what the RFP process is like on this side of the table. When I was on the agency side we didn't always know why people made their decisions. I thought this might help someone. It was never meant to be a commentary on individual agencies. For that reason, I removed the chart with my notes on specific agencies.

The presentations were interesting and I really felt for the people on the other side of the table. It wasn't that long ago that I was sitting in their seats. We gave people an hour to present to make sure they could be concise. It’s the time limit I was used to working within. Only one agency got through their whole presentation in the allotted time; one group wasn’t even close.

The agencies ranged from one extreme to the other in almost every aspect of the presentation:

• presentation skills


• types of people in the room


• energy level


• amount they told us about themselves


• understanding of our needs


• creativity of ideas


• scope of program


• integration with social media


• international capabilities (or even discussion of one)

However, there was also something very similar about all the presentations; almost everyone included:

• some kind of media tour with Jeremy Luchini, host of “Let’s Go Design”


• some type of design competition


• infographics


• thought leadership program


• over-arching theme


• SWOT/Situation analysis (it made an appearance in this round)

I made up score sheets so we could take notes during the presentatino to judge agencies on the same criteria. I don’t think anyone used them. I did take notes. We also had few questions for anyone. Maybe I should have had a list, but I did feel like we got a really good sense of everyone during that hour. We also didn’t need to have a big meeting to discuss all the presentations; we had a strong contender.

I saw that Todd Defren blogged about the need for the formal RFP process and whether there was a way to simplify it. I have to say that it was necessary for us to go through the whole process. We learned something different during each phase. The people who had strong written responses were not necessarily those that gave us the best presentation. We’re not choosing who we thought we would. I may respond when the whole process is finished.