Fair Tender

Frequent tendering does not create an opportunity to establish deeper relationships with the agency. In addition, it increases costs for both the client and agency, as well as uncertainty. If you frequently resort to tendering, your agency is probably not secure in its position and is constantly looking for new clients. Relationships suffer and you lose the benefits of long-term cooperation, especially the consistency of your brand communication. On the other hand, by approaching agencies directly, smaller clients have a better chance of landing a quality agency that might otherwise have refused to participate in a tender for a smaller project.

Time and cost savings that can be invested in building a confident brand consistently over the long term, instead of pursuing attractive short-term ideas.

You should know what type of agency you need. If you're unsure if an agency is the right fit for you, you can get to know them better before you send them a brief. Request a credentials presentation or invite them for a “chemistry meeting”. If you give your brief to 17 agencies, it will cost the market upwards of EUR 150,000 on average. And take your guess who will ultimately pay for it. In addition, the more agencies compete in a tender, the less energy they invest in it; naturally, if the agency feels it has a chance to succeed, it also has the best motivation to perform well.

You get a higher quality from the winner, rather than sifting through numerous ideas and solutions only to select one.

For instance, if agencies are unfamiliar with the results of your previous campaigns, they may offer you solutions that have already been proven not to work. The clearer your idea of what you want to achieve and how, and what you wish to avoid, the better strategic and creative outputs the agencies can provide. Find everything you should cover in this sample brief.

The agency will know exactly what you want, and you will be easily able to find out if you got it.

Meeting in person allows you to better explain your expectations and understand each other, which again improves the quality of the deliverables. Mutual collaboration also benefits from doing the debriefing and presentation of the strategic and creative deliverables in person. With each meeting, you get to know the agencies even better and learn which one is the best fit.

Valuable experience with how agencies work that can give you a better idea of future collaborations and ensure a higher quality of future outputs.

Budget has a significant influence on the creative proposals and on the campaign strategy itself. With a clearly defined budget, your tender will consist of tailored solutions you can easily compare and choose the best agency for your brand's needs. Not to mention that the cost of the tender sometimes exceeds the cost of the project itself – especially for small projects with lower budgets. If for some reason you cannot or do not want to openly communicate your budget, at least provide a target range (e.g. EUR 15 – 20,000 / or EUR 120 – 150,000).

A pragmatic and functional solution, as opposed to fanciful notions and impractical ideas that will ultimately need to be scrapped.

People in the creative industry are used to working under stress, but any amount of pressure will always have some impact on the quality of the output. The more time you give the agencies to prepare the tender, the better quality solutions they will deliver. Crafting an effective strategy for three years within a week is an unrealistic task, particularly when it involves developing your brand identity and making comprehensive use of analyses and deliverables from previous communications. The most effective approach is to schedule the client's decision-making process and to set a deadline for communicating the results in advance.

Better solutions. With enough time, agencies can thoroughly explore multiple new avenues instead of producing rushed deliverables chock-full of advertising clichés.

It happens that the person who directly decides on selecting the agency is absent from the presentation and receives all the information indirectly, which deprives them of the opportunity to ask questions and reach a truly informed decision. The tender can also run more smoothly if this key person is involved in the preparation of the brief.

You save time thanks to effective decision-making processes and simplified, first-hand information flow to competent people.

Although this is a tender and most of the deliverables aren't expected to see final implementation, the agencies still have real flesh-and-blood professionals working on it. Reimbursement of eligible costs, even a nominal amount, motivates these people. The solution you choose will be that much better. This will also motivate you to consider which and how many agencies you want to invite to the tender.

Greater trust and motivation of the creative teams working on your tender, to whom you will also communicate that you are serious.

In the case of project solutions, the agency also has to look for other contracts for its team. If the agency was not looking for other contracts, it would have to lay off its people. And if they reduced their workforce, there would be no one to work on your campaign either.

A wider portfolio of agencies you can approach. Additionally, lower fees since they aren't financially dependent just on you.

Agencies that devote their time and energy to working on your tender deserve to know why they didn't win. You can help them improve, while also contributing to greater transparency and professionalism of the creative industry in Slovakia. Professionals who understand the criteria that made their designs and ideas unsuccessful will be motivated to offer you even better solutions next time.

Mutual trust and good karma. Nobody chooses just one agency for life. Good relationships benefit the entire marketing and communications industry that we are all part of.