Mind Your RFPs and Qs: Redefining the Brand and Agency Partnership Process
The path to finding the right agency partner is paved with RFPs – but is that always where the journey should begin?
In experiential marketing, brands and agencies often race straight to the creative showcase. This is one place where the adage to “start at the beginning” is both very true and often overlooked. While RFPs excel at demonstrating creative capabilities, this industry-standard approach might only sometimes be the best first step in building lasting partnerships.
What if finding that perfect agency-brand fit isn’t in the creative pitch but in the questions we haven’t been asking yet? Before diving into ideation, what if we explored partnership potential, team chemistry, and cultural alignment? It’s a shift in perspective that still exists in three letters – and might change everything about how brands and agencies come together.
Q is for Qualifications
Those three letters matter more than you might think. RFQ can mean either “qualifications” OR “quotation.” While in the same vein as an RFP, this distinction can be the difference between asking agencies to spend dozens of hours on speculative work versus having meaningful conversations about partnership potential.
For agencies, this means demonstrating credentials beyond creative concepts. For clients, it unlocks a much deeper understanding of the real-world qualities an agency can bring before pouring through creative proposals–a time- and cost-intensive process in itself.
A huge and undervalued benefit of the agency vetting process is leveraging an RFQ for strategic screening. This cuts through the noise of large quantities of strong submissions, turning what can be an overwhelming influx of RFPs into a shortlist of the most qualified candidates. This empowers stakeholders to more prescriptively and efficiently select an agency worth their time, energy, and resources invested in the process.
The Cost of Hidden Budgets
RFQs can equate to a more qualitative measure, but they also simplify highlighting necessary figures. Being upfront about budgets can better inform and define initial requests while showing honest, clear communication from the start–a quality that we at FGPG value tremendously.
Think about the last time you made a major purchase, like a car. The sales rep likely started by asking about your budget. Why? Because it helps both driver and dealership focus on realistic options. Yet, in agency selection, companies are too often reluctant to share budget parameters, as if showing their cards might somehow disadvantage or dissuade negotiations. Quite the contrary, it saves time across the board for one and all, and time is money for all.
Budget transparency leads to an agency that can deliver what your business or brand needs within your parameters. Sometimes, we even tell clients who have over-budgeted for a project – and it happens more often than you might think!
Proposal Versus Partnership
When clients initiate the process with an RFP, they get a wonderful preview of an agency’s creative capabilities but not always insights into whether they are an overall fit. It’s sometimes akin to selecting furniture for a new home without first thoroughly measuring the space or even deciding whether to purchase the house.
- By starting with an RFQ, you can focus on what matters:
- Can this team truly deliver what you need?
- Do they have the right experience and capabilities?
- Are they stable enough to handle your project?
- Is there intrinsic synergy between teams?
When Seeing is Believing
Human interaction is invaluable, especially in experiential marketing, where the consumer is at the epicenter of each touchpoint for every activation or brand launch. When blending creative concepting with fabrication and build, that “human touch” is just as foundational as the experience for our clients and their customers. At FGPG, meeting in person is one of the top qualifiers on our partnership checklist.
Here’s just one example. Recently, a major company visited our agency headquarters and fabrication shop in Huntington Beach. Within minutes of touring our facility, they were on the phone with their art directors across various divisions, inviting them to see what we had to offer. Interacting with our team, experiencing our experiential processes, and discovering our creative work first-hand revealed qualities impossible to convey “on paper.”
Building a Better Process
If you’re looking for a long-term agency partnership (think 3-5 years), consider starting with an RFQ. Save those RFPs for projects where you already feel confident in exactly what you need–or when you have narrowed in on the qualifications and agency teams to move to that next step.
When it comes to the RFQ process, here’s what we’ve found works best:
- Have an open conversation about your needs and expectations
- Be transparent about budget parameters (really, it helps everyone!)
- Ask specific questions about how the team operates
- Look closely at relevant experience and capabilities
- Talk about what a long-term partnership could look like
Creative solutions will naturally follow, especially with an agency that checks key qualification criteria. Start by ensuring your business goals and experience align with those of your agency. When investing in a creative partnership, it’s important to be confident in who you’re working with. You’ll be spending hundreds of hours in collaboration, after all.
I’ve been on both sides of this process. Prioritizing qualifications isn’t just efficient and effective; it’s the foundation for building partnerships that last and deliver real-world value. And isn’t that what we’re all really looking for?