We’re all here for the same reason: to develop the best ideas we can. To grow brands, elevate experiences, and ultimately drive business. For our clients and for ourselves.
But here’s the truth: no matter how smart the thinking, if it doesn’t move the business forward, it’s just thinking. And in today’s environment, where value isn’t always the priority, that’s a dangerous place to be.
The fundamentals of marketing have evolved. Yet procurement processes haven’t kept pace. That’s not just outdated; it’s dragging the whole system down.
Pitching has become a performance sport. Long hours. Stretched teams. Creative resources pulled from live accounts. And for what? A decision often driven by procurement checklists built around cost, not capability. We all talk a big game about value, then hand the final call to the guy counting decimals in a spreadsheet.
And while headlines may celebrate ‘X wins Y account’, they rarely mention the five or six agencies who poured time, thinking and heart into work that never saw the light of day. For them, it wasn’t a PR moment, it was another late-night pitch that no one will ever see, paid for with anxiety and Advil.
Because behind every pitch is a team running on fumes. A strategist skipping bedtime stories. A designer reworking Keynote slides between coffee and collapse. A writer chasing meaning at 3am, rewriting lines no one will read.
These aren’t abstract costs; they’re very real ones. You don’t see them in the case study. You don’t hear them in the debrief. But they’re there. And they add up. To turnover. To fatigue. To brilliant people quietly exiting the industry because the maths no longer makes sense, not financially, not emotionally. The system isn’t just flawed. It’s failing the very people who make it work.
Add to that the formality of the ‘three-agency minimum’, where some participants know they’re not really in the running. Compliance boxes ticked. Minds already made up. Or the classics: renewals tied to tighter fees and bigger scopes, wrapped up in a phrase such as ‘giving something back to the business’. The only ROI in this endeavour is burnout. Because the worst outcome isn’t losing; it’s winning for the wrong reasons. Undercutting to land the account. Overpromising to make it past procurement. You win the business, then lose your margins, your energy, and sometimes, the very spark that made the work great in the first place. That’s not a win. It’s a warning.
Let’s be clear: Numbers matter. Budgets matter. Accountability matters. But if procurement becomes the only lens, we’ll continue commoditising an industry that was built on differentiation. And once everything feels the same, no one wins. Not the brands. Not the partners. Not the people doing the work. Because sameness doesn’t sell. Not in a boardroom. Not in a browser tab. Not to a generation that scrolls past anything that doesn’t earn its place.
When agencies are reduced to interchangeable vendors, brands become forgettable by design. What starts as cost-cutting ends as culture cutting. And audiences always notice.
So how do we fix this? We start by being fair. Not just fiscally, but structurally. If business metrics are
key – and they are – then so is the potential for long-term value creation. Pitching should reward vision, not just presentation polish. It should assess how an agency will help a brand evolve, not just deliver a campaign.
Clients should feel empowered to engage multiple strategic partners, because open windows bring in fresh air. But let’s also reduce waste. No more pitch cattle calls. Pre-qualify, then invite. Let the best fight it out. Three agencies, maximum.
Budgets should be shared upfront. Always. Agencies deserve the choice to walk away before investing weeks of unpaid labour. Finding out the budget after you’ve bled all over the pitch deck isn’t just disrespectful, it’s perverse.
And what if agencies were incentivised through performance-based models? What if contracts had built-in bonuses for impact, creativity, and growth, not just for being cheaper than the next guy? That would keep everyone sharp.
Of course, it’s easy to critique. Harder to act. And agencies aren’t blameless here. We helped create this system. We undercut each other. We said yes too often, for too little, while quietly teaching clients to expect the world for free. We complain to each other in private, but rarely speak up in public.
We should. Because if we don’t, we deserve the mess we’re in.
By Roy Aftimos, CEO, C2 Comms
