A recent post on Ad Age’s Small Agency Diary griped about how marketers are behaving badly in the RFP process. The author, Jennifer Modarelli of White Horse (a digital marketing agency), compared the dynamic between hungry agencies and prospective clients to bad dating practices. Last-minute invitations, late arrivals, inexplicable stand-ups or, worse, total blow-offs. While I’m not one to publicly complain about the very companies that enable our existence, I’ll concur that we’ve seen a lot of this behavior of late.
I think the worst offender was a company that makes a product I love. I wrote a passionate letter to the founder. He responded immediately, thanked me for my advocacy and agreed to engage in a conversation about how we might help them build their profile. He introduced me to their head of marketing over email who asked if we could set up a time to talk via phone. First, he wanted to see our initial ideas. We don’t typically like to generate ideas without some strategic insight from the client. But I know this product line intimately and we’ve marketed many products to this audience: moms. So my team got together and came up with a series of creative ideas. The prospect acknowledged receipt and promised to set up a meeting the following week. Long story short, I never heard from them again. I’ve watched them implement several of the ideas we proposed on their own. And I just discovered (several months later) they hired another firm. All’s fair in love and business, but a little common courtesy goes a long way. I’ll stop short of exposing their bad behavior in any public way. But, you can be sure I won’t use or actively endorse their products again. In the end, a botched business communication is bad PR.
Of course, prospective clients aren’t the only ones to blame. Anyone looking to hire a “vendor” should consider the time and energy prospective companies put into winning their business. It won’t always be a buyers’ market and you never know when you might need to cross back over that bridge.