I”m betting you still get email pitches. I have apatented method of getting rid of them. Selling at $100 a pop. A steal I reckon

I say do it. It actually sounds pretty ingenious. A smart person (with lots of time) reading this blog would double-time it to the drawing board and make an eBay-esque website that does just this for people in your position. At least, that’s what I would do.

Please keep us posted. Literally. I’m about to venture into this world myself (search, that is) and would welcome your perspective.
I only wonder about the personal connection you can make with candidates using this method. A strong connection to the agency – and my team, specifically – is critical. I have to know I can call upon and rely on them to perform. I just wonder if you miss that aspect of the relationship using this type of process.

I think that you’re confusing ‘transparent’ with ‘better’.

I understand your frustration with splitting your communications across multiple agencies, effectively ruining your ability to present a unified voice to your customers. The goal of getting a single agency/team to provide expertise across any of the channels you want to use is worth pursuing.

But I’d scale back on the means you use to get to that end. The transparency you’ve proposed in this case won’t necessarily help you make a better decision for a few reasons.
1. Pitching is a gamble. (I know you already said that.) The agency is putting themselves on the line before they’ve had a real chance to understand your business. They may nail it or be way off base. If they are only pitching to the conference room attendees the worst that happens is you say “No.” But if it’s plastered publicly… think about the backlash against the Agency.com Subway pitch.

2. We don’t know your audience. While I deeply appreciate that you would consider us (your blog readers) in the decision making process, I really don’t think we’re qualified. Now, I know you attract people here who are in your industry (and smart at that) but we’ll primarily be basing decisions on our opinions of the creative, ignoring any deeper business issues the agency might be able to solve for you.

3. Loss of competitive advantage. For the legitimate reasons that you can’t reveal some information (like budget) the agencies aren’t going to want to reveal what makes them distinct from their competition.
One thing I’ve learned about sales is that they will almost always answer Yes. If one agency transparently posts what they offer in expertise, any other agency competing will tell you that they can mirror those capabilities.
Taken to the extreme, the only difference would be price. And purchasing based on price is sketchy at best.

I’d recommend asking publicly for interest. Any agency that wants to be considered privately should be willing to be on a list that you post publicly. That satisfies some of your desire to make the agencies aware of their competition, and will hopefully weed out the tire kickers.

And, maybe you could require a case study after the pitch to include what they did well and a glimpse of their creative. Again, you open up some of what typically happens behind closed doors.

Some interesting ideas here, Sam. Many of us in these marketing industries love the challenge and enjoy working with companies willing to take a risk and try something untraditional. My colleague and I from OnPR will actually be at Jive tonight for the Online Community Management discussion Dawn is hosting- we’d be happy to bounce around some ideas before or after- or anytime- if you’d like. Either way, we will be interested to follow your search process and wish you and Jive many happy days of positive Ad-pr-tising ahead.

I think you’re right on here. There is no reason that this can’t be done publicy — nothing stops you from disclosing the budget, and nothing prevents an agency from showing its stuff.

There are a couple of keys here:

1) Don’t expect the agency to pitch strategic ideas for free. The free pitch contributes to more of the bad results than almost any other single factor. The ideas presented in a pitch *are* the unique contributions of that agency. I’ve been part of lot of (free) pitches where ideas presented somehow wound up executed with an alternate partner. Don’t expect the best agencies to pitch their best ideas in an open forum, any more than you’d send your best team of application engineers over to a potential client to show them how to set up a competitor’s collaborative work flow package for free.

2) Do focus on chemistry: good ideas can come from anywhere, and often arise from multiple agencies simultaneously. Instead of asking agencies to pitch you with ideas, ask them to pitch themselves. In public, you can select a dance partner.

A quick note regarding budget disclosure: saying you are willing to spend $X doesn’t mean you are going to spend $X. You might decide to spend more, and you might decide that given what you’ve seen you’ll ultimately spend less. What disclosure does do is gets you into the right subset of agencies. If you’ve got a million bucks, it says to agencies that require at least 10 people in service positions to manage the account that they might do better passing on this. You don’t waste their time, and they don’t waste yours. It also says to a hot one or two person shop that knows a bit about rich media “you’d better bring some partners to this…” The more you disclose, the more efficient the process will be.

In summary, instead of looking for the killer campaign through this blog, look for a killer relationship. Make sure the agency has depth in the media skills you need, and that they understand what you motivates your customers (and waht keeps them awake at night.) An agency that you get along with, and that fundamentally understands what you do and why, and where you customers go looking for what you do, is the key to getting what you need to build your business.

P&G tackled this franken agency problem years ago by forcing its ad-branding-design firms to work as a team. They created a process for it and apparently it is working very well. Each discipline is quite deep, and leverages industries with different business models and audiences, so finding one firm to do it all I’m sure was a challenge. Maybe not in some ideal future.

The key to success is that the mandate to the firms to work together came from the top. I once worked on the PR for a large software company where the PR team leadership begged to work closely with their ad agency, but was essentially told there was no need. That was in the 1990s and even then we were trying to create new models of communication.

Hybrid firms are emerging, as audiences are consolidating around conversations. Are there any good ones? Don’t know. Firms that accept your challenge will essentially be requesting that you assume a risk as well.

An alternative is to ask for one firm to be the lead, and to bring the others along. That way ostensibly you are not stuck with stringing beads together day in and day out.

The first step is to develop the brand identify or DNA. This is more than messaging and if done well is the foundation for all your communications for a long time — sales, marketing, advertising, PR. It guides your action so that your behavior is authentic and then you don’t have to pummel customers or media or use any kind of brute force to make it clear who you are. Very few companies do this well, IMHO.

The fact that you emphasize “Stop making ads.” is key, I think, to making a martial media mix really possible.

It’s an exciting project you’ve embarked on and we’ll all be watching!

@Pete: Because the 20% is what’s called IP. But I said ‘give’ not ’show.’ By giving they show a partnership mentality and not a money grubbing let’s rip you off DNA which pervades most ad/PR/rent-a-mouth/marketing BS agencies.

@Greg: the village metaphor is direct from Cluetrain. I like the ’stoning the damned’ bit personally.

PS – Sam and I have a date with some eggs to lobs at…. oh never mind.

Interesting, but do you think the unusual selection process will make much of a difference in the long run? If your goal is to make the agency jump thru hoops to win the business, go for it, but really, IMHO, ultimately the success of the client-agency relationship rests on the work that’s done by the client as well as the agency, after the agency has been chosen.

You can have a great advertising agency that does great work for you but unmanaged agencies do (beautiful but) ineffective and self-indulgent work.

How you chose them doesn’t ultimately matter. Plus, why would I expose my cool ideas to Jive publically and tip my hand to my competitor?

The opinions expressed here are Martha’s and only Martha’s Not the megla-corporation she gets paid by.

Great idea and yes open is key, both in the pitch process and in agency collaborations.
Now I don’t think you will find what you are looking for without using niche agencies, specialized in one area of expertise. That of course will lead to some headaches when making the selection but will show in the result.
As for being open with the pitch I must agree with @John Johansen, ask for interest publicly but make your decisions within the company, you know your brand and what you want out of the collaboration. Showing a case or two publicly with relevance to the pitch is a good idea, and can generate some good discussion.
As for getting these agencies to play together, it’s like a pack of wolfs, one strong leader with a set of rules and a clear direction/vision and the rest will follow. Two ways to deal with this, you take on the lead role or one of the agency do this (might be the best way to create the one agency approach, but with collaborative selection). Important is to have all figured out form your side then involve the agencies, P&G is a good ref. And if an agency can’t be open and collaborate, like in the real world, they are not worth having around.
Will follow this with great interest, and good luck!

Unfortunately, the only person, who can make the pick, is you.

Instead of asking here (though it might be a good place to find an agency that has already worked in collaboration), you can try asking on Sphinn (start a discussion).

Alternatively, you can ask for recommendations from your readers. Yes, it is something you have already mentioned, but that’s a viable way, IMHO.

Who I can recommend is ACS (http://acsseo.com/services/). Muhammad Saleem is the top man in the social media industry and I believe as a team, they should be able to cover what you want.