By ADEJUWON OSUNNUYI
The Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria has been urged to come to the rescue of advertising agencies as they urged APCON to mandate multinationals and other brand owners to always pay pitch fees.
Giving pitch fees recognises that agencies spend resources to land an account or project and therefore should be compensated for it.
In most of the advanced markets, pitch fee has been adopted as a standard order that cannot be contested.
Over the years, associations of advertising agencies in Asia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, Indian and Japan have fought the issue of payment of pitch fee to logical conclusion.
Speaking recently, stakeholders, under the aegis of the Media Independent Practitioners Association of Nigeria, said pitch fee was a precarious situation in Integrated Marketing Communications industry at the moment, noting that most multinationals invite many agencies just to gather information from them.
According to the Business Unit Director, MediaReachOMD, Promise Oduh, MIPAN agencies cannot call to order multinationals that refused to pay pitch fees without the help of APCON.
He stressed that APCON needed to take a stand on pitch fees because that would help discourage multinationals from inviting too many agencies to a pitch.
“If they know that they are going to pay those agencies, then of course they will streamline to about two or three agencies in the course of calling for a pitch,” he said.
The MediaReachOMD boss, however, lamented that no agency had ever been paid pitch fee, stressing that it was very unprofessional because multinationals were taking agencies for granted by inviting too many agencies to pitches.
“I think the issue of pitch fee should be in the front burner and it needs to be addressed urgently,” he warned.
Also speaking, the Director, Buying & Control at MediaReachOMD Nigeria, Yinka Adebayo, noted that the problem of pitch fee was persistent in Nigeria because most agencies were living on survival mentality.
Adebayo pointed out that until agencies moved away from the conservational level to the level of adding value to their clients’ businesses, clients would not recognise them enough to pay them pitch fees.
He said, “Here you are, from January to December, you don’t have any new business as an agency and a client now calls to say ‘come and take’; you won’t even think about
pitch fees.
“So, I think we need to begin to instil a high sense of professionalism to what we do and how we do them. Even the clients will begin to appreciate it because for me, we need to move to a situation where we shift the conversation away from price to value; because clients need to begin to see
value.”
To the Executive Secretary, MIPAN, Eki Adzufeh, “Pitch fees is not different from any other rule. It is self-regulation. The truth of the matter is that there are some agencies that I know in MIPAN that if you don’t talk about pitch fee they will not come but there are some who are basically surviving.”
“Therefore, anything you flash at them goes. But such poor business decisions and choices are the bane of our industry.”
Also speaking on the justification for the fee, a former Chairman of APCON, Mr. Chris Doghuje, maintained that payment of pitch fee is not alien to the profession.
Doghuje had likened pitching exercise to a situation whereby a client walks into a lawyer or a medical doctor, for consultation, after which the lawyer or the medical doctor is paid, even without handling any legal brief in the case of lawyers or perform any operation or administer any drug in the case of medical doctors.
“Don’t we pay consultancy fee to see lawyers or medical doctors, I know it may not be the same, but money exchanges hands for the service rendered.
“Any brand owner that wants the best result must prepare to invite as many agencies as possible. At the end, you settle for one. But to make sure you don’t waste the time of those who came for nothing, pay them their pitch fee. That is the international standard that cannot be contested.
“Come to think of it, it takes the same time to do a pitch and campaign, in some cases you spend more time and money to do a pitch than the campaign.
“When it happens like that, do we expect the agency to bear the brunt alone? We shouldn’t forget also that things done for free are not appreciative,” he said.
