Why procurement has no business handling pitches

Of course this is a post written under the influence of some major "pissed-off"ness because we lost a major pitch for which we worked really hard and naturally you cannot but be a sore loser. But more than that this is a realization of almost 8 months of in-crisis pitching - not just for us but for our ATL sister agency and also some half dozen other agencies we are friendly with, where we have seen the following repeat itself enough to become a pattern.
1. most in-crisis pitches are run by procurement teams [secretly meaning 'we're only interested in the money']
2. most in-crisis pitches have EXACTLY the same format: request for credentials, request for offer made of CVs and creative plus money. lots of useless paperwork, because participating agencies project the ideal team onto all RFOs and have a standard credential they send to everyone.]
3. no face-to-face unless you get picked to be among the few going to stage final
4. no debrief unless you really ask for it and then whatever gets discussed then gets emailed to everyone for fairness reasons
5. one hour for presentation
6. humongous brief with 70% of the qualification criteria going to.... financial :D. Basically testing to see if you're willing to do shitloads of work for no money.

But what gets to me most, aside from the heartlessness of this process is that final letter, where they tell you that you did not qualify. Thanks for playing but you suck, and we will not even take the time to tell you why. You may have prepared a 300 page presentation for us, which you printed in 4 copies because the RFO asked you to - yeah, we print layouts of online banners ... figure that!, but you do not deserve more than the standard letter of 'thanks but no thanks' because we were too busy to really understand why we picked someone else.

And while I understand the power-position in which everyone in procurement is these days, what with the crisis and everyone willing to do almost anything to get a budget, I think that somewhere in the brand management team someone should realize that this is not the way to handle what is, by all accounts, the relationship with your most important partner: the ad agency. Even when you DO NOT pick them, the point is not to treat them like they're nobody. Because sometimes the winning one happens to be crap, and maybe you want to drop them and move on to the runner-up. And if the runner up think you're basically heartless bastards, you're down to another RFO process. And this is not "not nice", but, in terms procurement can understand, it's NOT EFFICIENT.

LATER UPDATE: I did call the company asking for more info. I got an email asking for my phone number. So at least they were decent, and tried but I still do not know why we lost.
In general, however, I notice from the comments that, what with the crisis and all, the majority view - 2 out of 3 comments :P - is that the factor called 'serendipity' no longer plays a part in agency-client relationships. Weirdly enough, I used to think the same until I realized that the clients where we did find the same wavelength tend to be the ones for which we work most efficiently, most enthusiastically and where we get the best results. I think agencies like W+K and, locally, Headvertising have made this kind of "human" treatment of partners a landmark of their business style and it's worked (don't you just envy posts like these? :D)
BUT, having been bludgeoned over my stupid head by the true business people of this real world, with words like "standards, professionalism, process, transparency, streamlining, capitalism, money" I assume I am just a silly silly girl to think that writing to extra lines in the 10 reject letters is not a big deal and will take my silly silly ideas and put them to sleep for tonight :D

LATER LATER EDIT: Got a call from marketing person - not procurement, who was nice enough to explain why we lost but said they would never put in on record. Feels good to know we are good enough but not good enough at politics :D

LATER LATER LATER EDIT: funnily enough got an official email from the procurement person saying basically that "our creative approach" sucked salty balls of chocolate although we were cheap enough :D. So, there you have it: marketing says we are creative enough, procurement says we are cheap enough, yet we lost :D. it must be we're ugly or something

Social media strategy

Interesting fact: during a recent digital gathering in London, most heads of main UK brands said that they had "no digital strategy for social media yet". It seems that everyone is just going with the flow for the time being :D

Interesting fact no. 2: local brand manager for nice and exciting brand confessed that the only apps she truly sees the worth of are branded utility apps like USPS's gimmick which lets you calculate the type of box you need for your to-be-shipped item (virtual box)

Pretend brand love

Romanians are a lot about pretending they buy into things. we have lots of political parties but no political ideologies. we have lots of churches and people crossing themselves but not a lot of true believers. we have a lot of people who are 'fans of jogging' on Facebook but do not own sneakers.
Recently the pretend trend has hit a new low with people becoming interested in fasting. it's right before Easter and everyone who is in any way trendy needs to discuss how hard and intensely he or she is fasting. it's talked about on tv, in ad agencies and on the street. there are levels to fasting, and you are fast warlock if you refrain from sex and swearing which seem to be two things God really hates.
interestingly, someone smarter than me explained that fasting is about humble, humility and not really making a fuss about all that but hey... we are 'pretend nation'
the same works with brands here: we really love them until they screw up minimally, or until some friend comes up and says that the brand sucks. if you market a brand your commitment to its success is limited to its budget. you care about it as much as your money will let you. if something is good for your brand but it requires an extra phone call to your manager, well, heck, it's not worth it. you like the ritual, but not the commitment.
pretend brand love is a symptom of people who are afraid of having an opinion, are unable to defend it and unwilling to stand up for themselves. so it's easier to go with the flow and not commit. it's easier to cross yourself when you pass a church than to NOT cheat your colleague out of his bonus.
pretend. it works. it keeps people afloat and seemingly happy. :(

NYT business best sellers (paperback. it's a damned crisis, people)

Somehow I feel only people working in marketing are buying books in the States these days :D
[yeah, and BTW BN.com is still NOT letting me pay with my NON-Physically located in the US credit card so anyone holding the magical key to getting some of their ebooks, please do help. and, yes I have tried to come up with a valid US address but I gather they check the credit card address or something]

Palimpsestic advertising

This kind of title makes you almost invisible for search engines :D
Naturally writing 'poster hacks' would be a lot easier but then I would not be able to comment on this trend of "commenting" on already made artifacts. And since advertising seems to be one of the most accessible forms of expression, commenting on advertising is happening all over.
This one is my favorite - the original poster turns into that when the light turns on at night, but there's a whole list here

Earth Hour Yeiii

DARK
[as an aside, I understand some people are putting on a music show, a grand one, to celebrate the turning off of lights...makes COMPLETE sense to try to save energy by plugging in hundreds of watts of speakers and so on ...but hey, complete darkness for the rest :D]

Burberry goes 3D

Light grafitti - whoa!

from here

Be stupid

I like this campaign by diesel. In Romanian we would say "nu fi absurd, nu fi tampit, nu fi penibil" :)

Start over

There comes a time in every blog's life where you have to write a post about a new beginning. it generally happens once every two years when you've gone through all the stages of enthusiasm, commitment, lackluster routine, blah boredom and lack of objective and finally complete and utter disinterest to the writing.
Being a woman, I tend to be more prone to these cycles and since I am currently on a 5 day sabbatical I have had some time to think about this AGAIN.
Two years ago I became a manager and stopped being anything else. I never thought the process of managing a company could be so intense and so time consuming. I have all but lost myself in the attempt to make everyone happy and make the agency a success. Things are going well right now and I am more than ever aware that apart from being the person in charge there I am nothing else anymore.
So, as it befits a blog, I am again making a commitment to come back to writing about what used to be me: strategy, planning, communications, digital.
Romania is not a pretty picture right now: everyone who had anything remotely interesting to say is too busy staying alive and so we seldom hear about anything other than survival techniques. So I should stop reading Romanian blogs simply because survival is not living.
I have grown friendlier with my bed. Now it's time to reconnect with the blog.
Hi :D

I want a relationship

I have completely forsaken this blog.
Because I need to develop a serious relationship. A relationship which involves a lot of quality time spent together, lots of cuddling, lots of R&R. I want to be able to spend enough time in this relationship that I know every crease and every nook and every crinkle. I need to get to know and enjoy every minute spent. I cannot keep having this casual, good night, good morning and bye thingie where I come in, fall asleep immediately, wake up in the morning and jump out and rush to the shower.
I need a relationship with my bed.
I want to spend time with my mattress and get to feel its every corners. I want to turn the duvet every angle and sleep diagonally, straight, sideways and in every corner of my bed. use all three pillows to their outmost, stack them, spread them, hug them.
I want a relationship with my bed.
I am sick and tired of running into it and out of it. I want to linger and let my shoulders develop a shape into the mattress.
I plan a relationship with my bed.
...
so, I am keeping it casual with my blog.

Our Onion is chopped

Romania has ... used to have one weekly which behaved much like The Onion in the US: witty, independent, for people who were smarter than the average. Their slogan was "our readers are smarter than theirs". A while back some of the owners realized they were turning 40 and were still broke and decided to cash in and bring in an "angel investor" - one of Romania's most controversial business men. Today, two thirds of the editorial team of the weekly has quit amid accusations of editorial interference, fraud and other such disgusting things. The remaining team - some of the founding members, have issued their own press release accusing the deserters of fickleness and greed. Everybody is trying to figure out who fucked whom and the "brouhaha" is on about whose fault and whose interests (political) are at stake.
....

Nobody cares that one good contemporary brand, a decent editorial product and one of the few print products with a future has been trashed and will probably disappear due to people being greedy (for money or for power). All we care about is the scandal behind. Nobody stops to think about how dire, how disturbingly empty the media landscape is getting: journals are morphing into tabloids, newspapers are becoming political tools, magazines are localizing irrelevant second hand western European content. People break everything for the sake of some extra cash today. We all think short term. It's dog eat dog.
....
How I feel? Like saying "Good night and ... good luck" :D