How to organize an advertising tender

* The calculations use the average data for the World

How an advertising tender is held, what types of tenders are there, what are their goals and rules of conduct, what should include a brief with an assignment - we will talk about all this in this article.

Periodically, the business press flickers that a large company has summarized the results of the tender and handed over the development and implementation of the advertising campaign to one or another agency. One would like to ask what kind of beast is such a “tender” that bites off the advertising budgets of clients from one advertising agency and transfers it to another?

Yes, we know, of course, that you all have an idea of ​​what a tender is, but try to give the most detailed description of the tender organization process - to revive your memories and give practical guidance on how to conduct it.

Tender Objectives

Let's start with the goals of the tender. Recently, there have been a lot of enterprising companies (at least in Moscow) that use tenders with one goal - to collect more interesting ideas, and then organize their own advertising campaign. And although there is a law on copyright protection for such “tricks”, we all know how quick our legislation is. This dangerous trend has led to the fact that the best advertising agencies prefer not to take risks, and, in principle, refuse to participate in open tenders (when a brief task for advertising is sent out to everyone).

But back to the goals. As a rule, a conscientious customer, conducting a tender, has two goals: the first is to choose an agency that will prepare the most ingenious advertising campaign of all time, and the second will do it for a minimal amount. And on how seriously the client company will approach the tender, it depends a lot on how close it will be to this goal.

First of all, you need to decide which tender you will conduct: open or closed. We have already said about the shortcomings of the open tender, therefore it will be fair to dwell on its advantages. Its only and main advantage is that the wider the circle of participants, the more original and interesting solutions you can get - and who said that the most ingenious ideas are born only in the bowels of well-known agencies? In well-known agencies, all ideas are born for a price corresponding to the status, while a novice advertising agency can agree to minimize its profit, if only to get a large customer.

Selection of bidders

And yet, most advertisers and the lion's share of advertising agencies are inclined to a closed tender, when there are only a few specially invited participants. In this case, the customers are more serious about cooperation and the agencies are more laid out, realizing that this is a real chance to get a client.

A few words about how to choose participants. The algorithm of actions is simple: first of all, you need to look at the existing advertising campaigns, mark the ones you like and ask what agencies did them. In addition, it is recommended to ask which agencies received prizes for advertising campaigns of related product categories - however, this is more likely from Moscow practice (and opportunities).

After choosing several supposedly suitable agencies, arrange a meeting with everyone and ask them to make their own presentation: tell about their history, experience with large customers, qualifications of specialists, etc. This stage is very important because it will help to immediately weed out insufficiently professional candidates and focus on the really best.

Now that the tenderers have been determined, it is time to send everyone a brief with an advertisement task and tender conditions.

What should include a brief with the task

The result obtained depends on how professionally the brief is drawn up. According to the developments of the European Association of Advertising Agencies, the brief should contain the following information:

  1. Description of the advertiser and product (including current positioning and review of competitors).

  2. The goals of the advertising campaign (to change the image, bring a new product to the market, build up from competitors, increase recognition, increase sales, etc.).

  3. Detailed description of the target audience.

  4. Desired brand positioning.

  5. The list of main advertising messages (ideas and thoughts that you want to convey to the audience), in order of priority.

  6. Organizational matters: the schedule of the tender, the future advertising budget that the winner can count on, the timing of the campaign, territorial coverage, etc.

  7. Contact information: address, telephone numbers of the customer company, contact persons, deadlines for submission of proposals and time of the presentation.

  8. Legal and other necessary information.

Some rules of the tender

Now let us dwell on a number of strong points in more detail. First of all, after reading the list of information that should be contained in the brief, you may have a completely logical question: will there be information leakage to competitors? The answer is no: firstly, the city is small, the agency will not decide to risk its reputation, and secondly, there is such a thing as an agreement on non-disclosure of trade secrets. On the other hand, the customer also signs an agreement in which he undertakes not to disclose or use ideas and proposals provided by participating agencies as part of the tender.

In addition, a number of agencies may request additional information for better performance of work - and if this is justified, it is worthwhile to meet them. By the way, according to established customs, the cost of acquiring the results of marketing research on the market and other background information is borne by the customer company.

If we talk about the timing of the tender, then the minimum necessary period for the development of the project and preparation of the presentation is 4 weeks, although it is better to give the agencies a little more time: do not forget that they perform this work for free and in their free time after servicing existing customers that require no less attention.

And one more important point: the generally accepted rule of conducting a closed tender is to include in the brief list of all other participating companies. In addition, it is recommended to inform applicants about the criteria by which their work will be evaluated (and for this it is worth deciding on these criteria themselves).

In response to the briefing, advertising agencies must send confirmation of their participation. You may have to hold a few more setup meetings.

Summing up the tender

After the presentation by all participants, take a time out for a couple of weeks to make an informed decision. This break is also useful in that you can conduct preliminary negotiations to agree on the terms of the contract with a favorite company. If for some reason you cannot reach an agreement, you will always have the second-place company in stock.

Only after all legal details of future cooperation have been settled, it is worth officially announcing the results of the tender. Although the date of the announcement of the results, all participants should have been notified immediately after the presentations.

So, the choice is made, the winner is determined - it is time to thank all the participants in writing for their work (some large companies even pay small compensation to the losers) - who knows, maybe in a year, when you once again decide to change your partner, one of them make the perfect offer, and finally create the best advertising campaign of all time.

Tatyana Nikitina,

Founder of clogicsecure.com. Entrepreneur. Business trainer.

(c) www.clogicsecure.com - a portal to small business business plans and guides


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