Six Ways to Make the RFP Process a Positive One

Potential ad agencies don’t want to be ghosted anymore than your Tinder date does.

It’s an ad agency story as old as time. An RFP comes in. You have a meeting, perhaps even a second meeting. The chemistry between the ad agency and the potential client is palpable. You give them all sorts of free advice on how to improve their marketing strategy.  Then they ask you to work up a detailed proposal for how the two of you would work together. The ad agency spends time and resources pulling relevant case studies and calculating a budget. You send it off for consideration and never hear from the company again.

Is it really too much to send an email back that says, “Thanks, but we’ve decided to go with another firm?” Why is ghosting commonplace and acceptable?  We’re better than that, aren’t we? If you think, “Heck yeah, we’re better than that, tell us, how to be part of the solution and foster a culture of respect and accountability in RFP interaction” this San Francisco ad agency will give you a few tips to consider. Feel free to leave additional tips in the comments section. We’d love to hear from the client-side folks as well. What bugs you about the RFP process?

Provide a Ballpark Budget: Companies are often cagey about how much money they have to spend. When you give the ad agencies a budget it’s not like giving them a blank check to spend your money. That’s not how it works. If you’re going to partner with an ad agency, you can’t come to them from a place of distrust. The ad agency needs the budget to figure out how much money to allocate to creative, media, and strategy. If the spend is too low, the ad agency might bow out simply because their overhead is too high to make your project profitable. Or they may see your budget being so wildly off from your goals that there’s no way to succeed. Either way, at least give a budget range. It’ll help you as much as it helps the perspective ad agencies.

Lead with Transparency: Set clear expectations from the outset. Communicate the company's intentions regarding the RFP process, including the possibility of not selecting any agency at all. Remember, you’re asking people to work for free. If there’s a chance that no one will get the business, that needs to be communicated. Transparency builds trust and allows agencies to make informed decisions about allocating resources.

Identify the Decision-Makers: When the people making the decision are involved early, they get a better idea of whom they’re hiring. If someone asks you to “go find some agencies” let the agencies know this is a preliminary phase and that you are not the decision maker. This is part of the transparency thing from above and it helps the ad agencies know what might be involved. And if the decision-makers will remain out of the process until the end, let the ad agencies know that, as well. Many, including Division of Labor, will not participate in an RFP without being able to communicate with those making the decisions.

Acknowledge Efforts: Take a moment to acknowledge receipt of the ad agencies' proposals. A simple thank-you email goes a long way in recognizing the ad agency's time and effort. It demonstrates empathy and appreciation for their hard work. One time, we had a supplement brand invite us to a pitch. We liked them a lot and put in a ton of effort, but they ultimately went with an ad agency that had worked in the supplement space previously. But they took the time to give us feedback, and sent us a gift basket to thank us for the hard work. Now, we were still quite bummed to have lost, but the cookies were darn good and it was the nicest rejection we’ve ever had.

Close the Loop: Once a decision has been reached, promptly inform all participating agencies of the outcome. Whether positive or negative, closure is essential for maintaining professionalism and fostering trust. And always, always, always over specific feedback as to why you chose the ad agency you chose. Was their work better? Did you bond with the team more? Was it a budget decision? (Please be honest.) And if someone did something or said something that was a deal breaker, let them know. The honesty is always appreciated and helps the ad agency do better the next time.

Explore Alternatives: Consider alternative approaches to the traditional RFP process, such as paid pitches or collaborative workshops. Give each agency a small budget and a small assignment and see who you like working with best. That always works better than a bunch of questions that are probably answered all about the same anyway.

 That’s it. It’s not a tall order. Just some simple steps to help clients and ad agencies get together more efficiently.

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/ghosts-outdoors-5435304/

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The Small Agency Blog is produced by Division of Labor; a top San Francisco ad agency and digital marketing firm that’s been named Small Agency of the Year twice by Ad Age. The award-winning creative shop services clients on a retainer or project basis. They also offer brand consulting services and hourly engagements for startups and smaller brands. Click here for a free consultation.

Advertising, Branding and The Art of an Effective Tagline

In a bold move that further illustrates Nike’s commitment to brand identity, the company chose Colin Kaepernick as the face for its award winning ad campaign which, incidentally, coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Nike “Just Do It” tagline.

Arguably, “Just Do It” is one of the most successful—not to mention memorable—taglines in the history of advertising. The award-winning ad campaign, which launched in 1988, was the catalyst for Nike’s meteoric rise to becoming one of the world’s top brands. Thirty years later the now legendary line endures, along with the company’s commitment to keeping their brand identity laser focused.

It goes without saying, that every client that engages an ad agency to orchestrate their brand launch (or re-brand launch) dreams of a similar success story. But know this: When searching for the best ad agency to sell your wares, it’s important to remember that advertising is part art, and part science. How consumers react is only partially predictable. Sound market research, strategic thinking and brilliant creative can help. But the thing everyone focuses on first, is the tagline.

If there isn’t an actual secret sauce to replicating Nike’s “Just Do It,” how do you increase the odds that your message will resonate? The tenets below serve as some basic building blocks of an effective tagline. Choose wisely and a few choice words will be ingrained in the consumer’s head today, tomorrow, and for decades to come.

Keep It Simple

A tagline is intended to encapsulate a brand’s personality. It’s definitely not the place to explain your product’s many benefits. When presented with taglines, clients will often say: “I like the line, but it doesn’t tell the complete story of who we are.”  That may be true. But that’s not what the tagline is supposed to do. The tagline is simply about evoking an emotional response. Gillette’s tagline “The Best a Man Can Get” doesn’t explain why. It doesn’t explain how a close shave can help you present a well groomed image and therefore appear more trustworthy to others. It’s all about how a guy feels.

Embrace What’s Unique.

A tagline can help set you apart from competitors. What do you offer that’s different? Avis’s “We Try Harder” tagline is a great example of this. The tagline came out of a discussion between DDB creatives and the Avis management team. Asked why anyone ever rents a car from Avis when Hertz was clearly the brand leader they said: "We Try Harder.”  This tagline, which prevailed for 50 years (the company went another direction in 2012) positioned Avis to not necessarily compete with Hertz, but embrace its second-place status. It’s a classic example of owning your negative to turn it into a positive.

If it Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

“A Diamond is Forever" has appeared in every single De Beers advertisement since 1948. The tagline drove diamond sales to a record high and made a diamond engagement ring as essential to a bride as her dress, veil, and a multi-tiered cake.  In 1999 Ad Age named “Diamonds are Forever” the tagline of the century. And, nearly two decades into the 21st century, there’s no indication that the campaign’s effectiveness is waning.  

If you can create a simple line that says something great, keep it. Change your campaign, executions, media, social content, videos, products, promotions, digital marketing, everything, but leave the line unless there’s a good reason to change it.

Cut Your Losses

If you’re working with a brand with established gravitas it’s not always advisable to re-invent the wheel. In 2014, Burger King scrapped its 40-year-old tagline “Have it Your Way” and replaced it with “Be Your Way.” The intent was to promote individuality. However, fans panned the new phrase because it simply made no sense. “Have It Your Way” lets the public know that they can customize their orders. “Be Your Way” just confuses the consumer. Although Burger King put a lot of time and money behind their new tagline, it never caught on. And, in the end, they quietly condensed the line to read “Your Way” which is ultimately a face saving move without any acknowledgment that the change to, “Be Your Way” was a colossal mistake.

Say One thing Well



Apple’s “Think Different,” which ran from 1997 to 2002, says nothing specific about Apple products. Yet, to this day, those two words are synonymous with the Apple Brand. It was a nod to the early adopters—at the time just 5% of consumers used apple products—who were thoughtful enough to embrace to totally different kind of computer, which operated in a totally different way than brand-leader IBM. More than two-thirds of Americans now own at least one apple product. And while Apple users now far outnumber other brands, the cache of being part of something innovative and unconventional lives on.

Trust the Agency

You know more about your company and its product than anyone else. But your ad agency knows more about how to endear consumers to your company and product than anyone else. When you say something like, “I ran the creative by my wife, brother, neighbor, dog catcher, (fill in additional name here) and they didn’t care for it” that’s neither helpful nor constructive. If you hired a lawyer you wouldn’t run his legal arguments by your wife, brother, neighbor, or dog catcher, nor would you seek a consensus opinion on whether your accountant filed the firm’s tax returns properly.

Early in my career, I was working for a guy who was, and still is, one of the most successful creative forces in the advertising industry. We were presenting new taglines to a large sporting goods company. Afterwards the client said: “I like this line, but do you have anything else.?” Without missing a beat, the creative replied, “This isn’t a fucking restaurant, This is your tagline.” Few ad execs could speak to a client so directly without losing the account. But, as I said, this guy is a legend. My point, however, is that the client backed off, ran the campaign and reaped the benefits.

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The Small Agency Blog is produced by Division of Labor; a top San Francisco ad agency and digital marketing firm that’s been named Small Agency of the Year twice by Ad Age. The award-winning creative shop services clients on a retainer or project basis. They also offers brand consulting services and hourly engagements for startups and smaller brands. Click here for a free consultation.