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Field marketing groups have to offer something outside their core services if they are to pitch successfully for new business, writes Michael Bird.
It's time for field marketing groups to get nasty. As budgets tighten, the expectations of new businesses rise and brands and retailers seek more for their money. In the pitch process, this means that clients want field marketing contenders to be more aggressive.
"Clients are making agencies compete more," says David Louis, managing director of field marketing group Blue Water. They no longer have a roster of field marketing agencies that they always use: they do it on a more ad hoc basis, he says. This has affected costing. They have put the rate card aside and are now competing on price.
Blue Water, for example, recently won a pitch for an audit of postmasters in an e-auction conducted by the Government-owned Royal Mail Group (an account previously held by Mosaic). The client asked nine agencies to compete, then allowed six into a second-stage 'gateway' where it made its choice. As the auction proceeded, costs and benefits were cut and traded. In an e-auction, players in a pitch can be anonymous, which puts the client in an advantageous position to deal.
Pitches not only have to prove the return on investment, they also have to provide a stringent analysis of it, says Alison Williams, chairwoman of the Field Marketing Council. "Clients are becoming more canny when recruiting agencies," she says, arguing that this is good for both the fitness of the industry and for improving standards.
Mike Hughes, managing director of CPM, has seen more price competition in the pitch and also an increase in contract business. James Moyies, managing director of FDS, calls the latter "strategic tactical" work: clients need...