While I’m part of the new business team, I can’t always go after (or get) the clients that would give us the freedom to do innovative cool stuff; sometimes they don’t have the balls and sometimes its just not their target audience. I would love the budget and freedom to execute on some of these ideas…if you steal them just give me some credit (and some commission).
Experienced an RFP writing bender late last night but realized it was time to stop typing after this all too honest section of our Methodology appeared on screen.
Execute
During the “getting shit done” phase of our methodology we will take the research, timeline and plan and actually do work ,with your approval of course. We will run media schedules, track results, reconcile invoices and we will bill you for a lot admin time and earn the bulk of our commission during this phase. We also bill you for actual media placed with as fat of a markup as we think we can get away with. We will take trips to see you in Sacramento with big shiny reports to assure you that you made the right choice. We will personally go out and make sure people are using your product, even if we have to pay them to do so.
We will make any necessary changes and alterations to our plans and timelines no matter how much it pains us to do so because of your knee jerk reactions and budget cuts. We will learn to deal with your temper tantrums, ridiculous deadlines and fear of change. We’ll also perfect our impressions of you, hire an intern to do any of the difficult work on the account and rename Friday Happy Hour “To Let’s Get Shitfaced because of XXX Hour.”
On the short plane trip to the DMA I was catching up on some industry news via AdWeek. I read probably the most disheartening “the economy sucks” story since the crisis started to be big news.
The day before Wachovia was bought out by Wells Fargo, it awared it’s 150 million ad duties to Ogilvy & Mather. A new business pitch that cost the agency upwards of a quarter million dollars and was a significant win for the agency.
Unfortunately for Ogilvy, the buyout puts their win in limbo. Not only will the 2009 budget be siginificantly less than th 150 million ad spend, as Wells Fargo’s agency of record is Omnicom’s DDB, its unknown if Ogilvy will seen any of the account at all.
Similar advertising issues with the WaMu buyout by Chase could result in the loss of 135 million ad spend from TBWA\Chiat\Day if WaMu’s budget is moved elsewhere.
I cannot imagine the devestation of winning and then losing a 150 million dollar account within 24hours.
In the time I devote to New Business I’m often scouring for propsect leads in the public sector and am amazed at the types of projects that the government has to bid out.
My favorite from this week was an RFP (request for proposal) on Redacting Services. Redacting is basically going through and removing sensitive information before publication or sharing of that information. Its common practive in legal documents or company information to remove data before sent to the public.
Redacting can be accomplished with a sharpie and a copy machine. Sharpie out the pieces you don’t want viewed, then make a copy to ensure the words cannot be seen through the other side of the page or through the ink. I’m sure many of you are thinking, but the goverment must have a more sophisticated method for removing sensitvie data, after a couple months working on gov’t contracts I can assure you thats not the case.
I kind of want to bid on the redacting contract as an indepent contractor. Charge $500 an hour and the cost of my sharpies to complete the simple, mindless process.
Subscribe to my blog using RSS