The tender process is alive, but not well.
We are all for positive use of AI. And to be clear we don’t use AI to complete our tenders. We use it to help with improving structure and readability like any sensible agency would. But do we think there aren’t agencies out there who use it more extensively like school boys writing an essay that’s late?
Is there a danger that agencies are being chosen based on who completes questions best?
. . . But it’s not just that.
In the ‘good old days’ we used to stand in front of a client and talk. Present our strategy. Answer questions off the hoof. Clients could see the whites of our eyes and meet the team. They would sense our passion and whether we really understood their business. They could take a view on how well we would work together.
In fact 'meet the team' was always the stand-out requirement of Every. Single. Pitch. The human desire to work with people we can gel with, where you can sense loyalty, trust and conscientiousness. Personally I always valued loyalty above . . . clever. It's not much good being clever if you're not accessible and never answer an email.
I remember the all-nighters, the theatrics, the rehearsals, the flip boards, the creative reveals, the nervous waits, and clocking your competitions in the corridor.
Somewhere along the way marketing departments lost autonomy to procurement teams and pitch decisions became fee-driven and process-oriented.
This is the new order. The shift from storytelling to measurable performance.
Let’s have both.
In a creative industry the most commercially advantageous is assessed alongside strategy and insight, alongside trustworthiness . . . and all too often judged solely by a written submission that tests the capability to write a document, polished by AI.
Every agency should be able to explain methodology, justify claims, evidence experience. If an agency has relied on AI-generated content it will quickly unravel at presentation stage.
The written tender is here to stay. But face-to-face also matters.
In fact, presentations matter so much more in an AI-assisted world, don’t they?
Presentations test real capability and help to answer the most important question, understood by both marketing and procurement professionals: Do I trust these people to deliver this contract for the next 3 years?
