A new era of client-agency collaboration: By Tony Hale, CEO of Advertising Council Australia
By Tony Hale (pictured below), CEO, Advertising Council Australia.
While pitching has long been core to how agencies win new business, the changing dynamics of the industry and a shift towards project-based assignments have rendered the traditional full-scale creative pitch unfit, and arguably unfair, in 2024.
Increased financial pressure on Australian advertising agencies is impacting their capacity to hire and retain top talent while continuing to offer healthy, flexible working conditions and also maintain profitable operating models.
Just as enlightened businesses commit to operating responsible and sustainable supply chains, there’s a need to reform agency selection practices to be safe, ethical, sustainable, and better suited to quantifying the value of expertise.
Advertising Council Australia exists to foster the long-term prosperity of the industry, and how the industry is positioned, procured and paid is key to executing this vision.
ACA’s board has discussed this issue at length. We engaged with our members to calculate the cost of pitching compared with the size of the potential win. We also asked questions like “What is the role of an industry body?”, “Are clients aware of the ethics and cost of pitching?”, “How can ACA ‘nudge’ behaviour?”
In September 2023, ACA published The Five Agency Partnership Principles (5APP) to encourage marketers, pitch consultants and agencies to:
REFLECT on the cost of pitching for both parties, both financially and psychologically RESET the default selection process
REDUCE the number and scale of pitches, particularly for low-value project work AGREE fair and equitable commercial terms
PROTECT the health and well-being of our people
We invite all agencies and marketers to download the resource and use it as appropriate in managing the agency selection process.
It will not ‘fix pitching’ but opens the door for further conversation and innovation.
ACA’s Five Agency Partnership Principles is available free of charge for members and non-members. Download it from ACA’s Resource Hub here.
