Should The Beauty Parade Agency Pitch Be Pensioned Off?
‘Beauty Parades’ as a method of agency pitching in the modern media world are looking as anachronistic as Miss World does in the age of post-feminism, according to leading industry figures. The question of whether the process was “anachronistic and out of date” was put to the panel of Media Question Time on Monday night and managed to draw similar conclusions from both those who pitch and those who are pitched to.
The issue was particularly significant for two panel members, as David Mansfield’s company Capital Radio recently moved its media planning business without a pitch and Jim Hytner joined Channel 5 only to oust TMD Carat, Mother and Michaelides & Bednash in favour of Walker Media and Walsh Trott, again without any pitching process.
Jim Hytner defended his confident approach, pointing out that experience should get you to the point where you know where to find the cheapest prices or the smartest people. “I consider what brand I’m working on, what that brand needs and which team would be most appropriate to work on that brand,” he explained. Emily Bell, while adding the proviso that she was “Uniquely unqualified to comment, having never so much as pitched a tent” agreed, saying that having reached Jim’s position you “should know your business and market, so why hold a pitch?”
Hytner pointed out that this was the approach he had taken in both his previous work at BSkyB and in his current position as director of marketing and communications at Channel 5, promising, “When I go to the next company I’ll fire the incumbent agency and I’ll go and choose who I regard as the smartest people. Its not arrogant, because if I get it wrong I get fired, its as simple as that. I’m not in favour of beauty parades, I think there’s a smarter way of going about it.”
The Media Planning Group’s Marie Oldham, while agreeing that the current system was out of date, put in a plea for agencies to have “an opportunity to demonstrate genuine business understanding” and suggested that different ways could be developed, such as project work where clients and agencies worked together more like clients and consultants.
Consultant John Billett agreed, saying, “There are now so many issues which advertisers need to address that cannot be addressed in a beauty parade.” However, this did not mean he thought that the pitch process was redundant. “Jim is absolutely right but he is also absolutely atypical,” he reasoned. “He is informed, knows the media scene, knows what he’s after. Unfortunately this is not the case for many advertisers.” Billett also felt that market forces would secure the continued existence of beauty parades, as they still showed up huge differences between agencies and were used, for example, by companies wishing to convince shareholders that marketing money was being well spent.
The idea of dumping the tradition of the beauty parade may seem extreme, but as audience member Paul Phillips of AAR pointed out, there are now many different approaches to establishing client/agency relationships. “It is incumbent on the industry to encourage best practice in whatever approach is most suited to the client,” Making it clear that he included the Hytner method among these approaches he pointed out that better methods could benefit agencies: “No agency wants to spend time and money on a pitch is has no chance of winning.”