Why the Hershey's Media Pitch Points to the Future of Agency Sourcing

Selecting the right media agency is critical if brands want to use media to drive business growth, and pitch consultants have traditionally sought to challenge agency capabilities in a way that ensures clients know exactly what they are getting.

The need to test whether or not teams who would potentially work on the account can perform is doubly important in programmatic. Our data shows that well-run programmatic media accounts can be up to 60% more efficient/effective at driving brand goals. That’s a huge potential business advantage when you consider the millions of dollars going through programmatic and it’s why it’s increasingly important to accurately assess the performance of these teams as part of the pitch.

The very near future of the media pitch is likely to incorporate some kind of live buying exercise where competing agencies are given a real media budget to see how they perform in real life.

Hershey’s pitch process

The Hershey media pitch in the U.S. included the first such process, designed to showcase the people with their hands-on keyboards.

The process involved a real campaign which included showcasing how each agency would respond to a brief: the setup, activation, optimization and finally its reporting, all in a fully transparent environment that enabled Hershey to see each of the competing agencies’ real capabilities. It also allowed the agencies to showcase the talent in their day-to-day buying teams by allowing them to be included and client-facing.

The goal was to enable Hershey to experience interactions with the agency that was closer to the actual working relationship it would expect to have with the winner of the pitch.

Clearly, this is more complex than organizing a chemistry meeting. The agency teams working on the Hershey’s pitch were given access to ad platforms and an ad budget as well as all the necessary legal safeguards. It also provided agencies with details of the core KPIs they would be judged on.

What we found was that while agencies had a similar approach to audiences and overall content strategy (sites)—pre-flight there were more similarities than differences—the real differences started to materialize post-launch.

What we saw was who did the best QA checks, who realized its approach wasn’t right and adapted quickly and who was trying to game the performance KPIs but disregarded ad quality standards. One of the Designated Market Areas had a power outage—so we also got a sense of how teams could adapt to obstacles.

With digital set to account for 60.9% of total worldwide ad spend in 2021 and programmatic accounting for 89.3% of digital spend in the U.S. according to Emarketer, more and more advertisers will need such visibility before they make their appointment.

The questions advertisers need to ask

Right now, advertisers need to ask themselves three key questions to find out if live buying should be part of their next pitch:

1. Are you growing your share of investment in digital media, especially programmatic? (Typically, it’s worth doing a live-buying test if you spend more than $10 million on programmatic spend but the trigger can be lower if programmatic is a priority channel).
2. Have you previously experienced a disconnect between pitch perceptions and the reality of what was provided?
3. Do you see programmatic media buying as critical to your media success?

If the answer to any of these questions is “yes” then you need to consider a live buying test. Such a real-life test provides greater visibility into agency capabilities and reveals the quality of its thinking. It enables an advertiser to start or continue a relationship trusting its new or retained partner with confidence that it can deliver what has been promised.

Trust is earned when actions match words. This is true in life, true in media and doubly true when it comes to programmatic.

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