28. Genetic Dreams to Underground Regimes: Andrew Hessel Takes on Digital and Physical Biology

[00:00:00] Laura: you're looking for a new, media buying agency, and maybe you're looking for the whole deal. Maybe some creative too, and maybe PR p r, but we'll just speak from a media standpoint and then add a little bit about.

[00:00:14] Laura: Creative and it pretty much all applies, but really, I get, tired I guess, of looking at the RFPs that come out from a lot of government agencies, but just in general. That don't explain really what they're looking for. It's just like you should know, you're the experts.

[00:00:33] Laura: Figure it out. And there's a thousand different ways to buy media and, when you don't give us your target audience and expect us to put a whole buy together without even being able to ask you any questions, except for in a formal question asking. to me, it defeats the purpose of putting together a plan that's strategic because you don't have all the information in front of you.

[00:00:55] Lisa: Well, and like you saying, off air, a. A plan, as an example, is never going be what

[00:01:02] Lisa: gets back collaboration that happens.

[00:01:08] Laura: Right. We need to know what are your internal capabilities if we run this campaign, first of all, are you gonna be able to make all this creative? Are you going to be able to make videos? what resources do you have available to run this stuff on social? Who's running it on social?

[00:01:21] Lisa: Happy to run it on social for you from a paid perspective, but we need to know what That company's internal capabilities are, Do they even have a Facebook page yet?

[00:01:30] Lisa: We ran into that once or twice.

[00:01:32] Laura: Yep. Yeah. Like the national something might have it, but they wouldn't and we have no control over it.

[00:01:37] Laura: Mm-hmm. That was hard.

[00:01:39] Laura: Mm-hmm. Especially 'cause it was controversial. If I remember

[00:01:43] Laura: one of the government things,

[00:01:45] Lisa: they didn't have anyone to moderate. So we were running paid ads and just like trying to constantly delete comments because they just didn't have the

[00:01:52] Laura: That's right.

[00:01:53] Lisa: But they wanted social, they knew it was the right place to. But you can't really run paid social in a vacuum. You don't have to have an amazing organic social media presence, but

[00:02:04] Laura: Mm-hmm. We all know you're supposed to, Address concerns when you see them. if you're not answering those questions, you're missing the point, right?

[00:02:11] Lisa: mm-hmm.

[00:02:12] Lisa: That's thing that they didn't think about for their r f.

[00:02:15] Laura: no, no, they, basically say, when you work with us, your contract might look like this and you'll be in charge of. Reporting weekly and running awareness campaign two times a year, and then a call to action for this little side thing once a year. that's pretty much the information that you get

[00:02:34] Laura: Like, what's gonna happen once I get the contract? If I do, but then what do you want me to show you? And I prefer as an agency to do examples versus trying to write a plan. sometimes they, discuss, how would you approach this, which I'm fine with as long as I'm not having to write, make a buy, because I feel like that's.

[00:02:56] Laura: A lot of wasted time without the information you're lessening your chances of getting good people to do it. 'cause a lot of people won't even fill out those RFPs if, like, I've talked to a lot of

[00:03:06] Laura: agencies and they're like, yeah, we don't even do those anymore. It's just a huge waste of our, staff's time.

[00:03:10] Laura: some of the state ones, they kind of look cookie cutter, but at the end of the day you have to customize them. it's a lot of work. And if you're gonna put people through that work, have it be like, I think you're gonna get a lot more, Bang for your buck if you just ask for, experience and examples of things that are similar to the scope of work that you're gonna have them do once they get the contract, versus having them tell you what you should be doing with your money ahead of time with your manual budget.

[00:03:36] Lisa: Especially when we always find out two months into the planning process that one person there really likes this one TV station and we have to.

[00:03:45] Lisa: Right. Exactly. but is your audience there?

[00:03:49] Laura: Yeah. so and so reads this print. publication

[00:03:52] Laura: that we would never, ever buy.

[00:03:54] Lisa: A decent

[00:03:55] Lisa: chunk of the buy is for the client, not for their audience.

[00:04:00] Laura: Yeah, well there's usually some sort of vanity buy.

[00:04:02] Laura: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:03] Laura: Ego buy. I sometimes call it, I remember years ago I had clients, won't say any names of course, but car dealer that was targeting young women, spent the entire budget on a Mariners package. that was

[00:04:14] Laura: like hardcore sports I think it was a big old radio package, but it was like three quarters of the budget to talk to men.

[00:04:20] Laura: When the car, the literally the definition of the carb was like, young, be Bobby girl. You know? It was vo. It was Volkswagen. It was Volkswagen Bug.

[00:04:31] Laura: I was like, who are you selling that to? You might be selling it to boomers and you might be selling it, but mostly it's women it just wasn't a good spending money, but it's an ego because, you know, you can see your, company, when you listen to the Mariners and watch the Mariners,

[00:04:42] Lisa: Yep.

[00:04:42] Laura: think you need to go work for a big, bigger company that, like, uh, insurance company that you can put your poster on the side of the field or something.

[00:04:49] Laura: But anyway, from an R F P perspective,

[00:04:52] Lisa: That's why you shouldn't ask for specific channels 'cause they will always end up changing.

[00:04:56] Laura: yes, exactly. there's just not enough information you could possibly put in an R F P.

[00:05:01] Laura: even for the agency who gets selected. It was still a waste of time because you don't end up using any of it.

[00:05:06] Laura: Exactly. let us use the work that we've already done you know, you wanna work with somebody who has some experience in the, same type of call to action or awareness campaign. It doesn't have to be the same. Vertical, but it can be, you know,

[00:05:21] Lisa: The same goal conversion

[00:05:23] Laura: Yeah. Yes, exactly. get those examples and get case studies. You know, nowadays we can really see a lot of performance metrics. So definitely, look for those. How did we improve this? And then , how do they work? The approach is nice too. I get that, which is, Hey, we're gonna sit down first and we're gonna talk about your goals, and we're gonna look at any research that you have already, and we're going to see what you've been doing in the past and what your current, workload is internally there.

[00:05:51] Laura: Who are the stakeholders? What are the must haves that you, you know, need to be on this weird print publication? Like I said, okay, well we've gotta make sure we carve out 10% of the budget for that. 'cause it's really expensive and dumb, but it's okay.

[00:06:04] Lisa: we can place the buy wherever it needs to go, but please tell us that that's where it needs to go. Don't just like hint or ask, but why aren't there 10 times? Because the answer every time will be ' cause that's not where your audience is.

[00:06:15] Laura: Exactly. you know, and I'm all for if you wanna tell us, tell the agency. Hey, listen, I gotta buy this. My boss is, that's all he does is watch this or do this and, you know, so we gotta, buy this. So he gets off my back. I mean, it's, that wouldn't be the first time that's happened.

[00:06:32] Laura: And your media buyer is your partner, they're gonna do what you need to do. You know, they want to make you happy, but they also want to show results. So, as long as we can go on record and say, you know, we all know this was a mandate.

[00:06:44] Laura: that clears my conscience I would never normally buy this, but I get it. I do get it. And it's not ruining our buy as long as it's not ruining the buy. Sometimes it's just a pain in the ass. as long as, it's not the whole, buy.

[00:06:57] Lisa: Wouldn't it be wild if someone actually put those into the R F P though? How nice would that be? Hey, look, these are the three things we gotta do.

[00:07:05] Laura: No, I

[00:07:06] Lisa: How do you work around that? I

[00:07:07] Lisa: don't think I've ever seen an R F P that, honest,

[00:07:10] Laura: No, I totally agree. That would be,

[00:07:13] Laura: sometimes they do do that, they think it's actually effective. I'm like, why are the hell are they dictating the media mix and why are they saying we have to do this and do this and do this? I think there's a lot of companies that have been doing the same thing for a long time, and they assume they're just gonna keep doing it with the next, on the R F P.

[00:07:31] Laura: And don't be specific when you send the R F P out. You know what I mean? Unless you, unless you really know, Hey, we can do video, so suggest this, this, and this. You know, ideas, throw ideas out, have people throw ideas out, not a plan. what are some fresh ideas?

[00:07:45] Laura: that might be tactics that we may not have tried for this type of client. it's not a plan. It's just good ideas that we might implement if it works out. oh, and please provide a budget it could be an estimated budget, like, oh, I don't know what things cost.

[00:08:00] Laura: So what, you know, you have to tell me. give us an idea, we can give you a $7 million budget, but if you're gonna give us $500,000,

[00:08:07] Lisa: The

[00:08:07] Lisa: media mix looks different. Yeah,

[00:08:09] Laura: a lot different. So, and it's a lot of work, you know, when you're trying to throw darts at a dartboard. A lot, a lot of people will not submit if there's no budget.

[00:08:18] Laura: ' cause they assume that you're hiding your budget 'cause you don't have a lot of money.

[00:08:22] Laura: I would say budget, where the creative is going to come from, if that's in-house or if that's part of the R F

[00:08:28] Lisa: P, like if you expect the agency to manage that for

[00:08:32] Lisa: you. Totally possible. Definitely changes all of the approach and strategy sections of the R F P.

[00:08:38] Laura: Right,

[00:08:39] Laura: in closing,

[00:08:40] Lisa: I would say that's my wishlist.

[00:08:42] Lisa: Maybe timeframe, is it year round or is it just a specific season? yeah.

[00:08:48] Laura: Geo, like what's your geo? and if you want people to create audience personas or if you want people to, know like, this is what we are hoping to get out of this, or we need some research done prior to, or we have this research, we're not sure what to do,

[00:09:02] Laura: you know?

[00:09:03] Laura: Those

[00:09:03] Lisa: are the things that we need to make a good, Strategy,

[00:09:06] Lisa: not a plan strategy.

[00:09:07] Laura: A strategy,

[00:09:08] Laura: ideas, and, show the experience, the examples, the case studies and the references you'll get better data that way than you would if you ask for plans. You'll get less RFPs back they're not gonna be accurate 'cause they don't have all the information.