For advertisers, production house bidding can be a complex and fast moving process given the compressed timelines that they are usually conducted within.
This complexity gets magnified even further when you factor in the number of productions done every year, the number of different creative partners involved and the number of different internal teams steering the individual productions.
Beyond building a standardized step by step process, Clients can benefit greatly by implementing standardized bidding documents within that process. These documents help create greater consistency and transparency by underlining the roles, responsibilities and expectations for not only the Creative Agency but for the Client and Production Houses as well.
We believe that every Client should develop and standardize these 3 bidding documents for use across all key stakeholders;
Agency Bid Specs
Production House Guidelines
Agency Video Guidelines
Agency Bid Specs
Once the creative concept is approved, Agencies rush into the bid process in order to maximize production time. Unfortunately, this often leads to the development of a bid spec that is not fully flushed out.
This lack of detail creates a level of ambiguity that can force production houses to pad bids in order to cover unknowns and can push key decisions to the backend of the bid process putting unnecessary pressure on Client’s to make last minute decisions that have significant impact on the budget or creative.
Furthermore, if and when the bid specs are shared with the Client, each Agency will have its own template making it more difficult for the Client to scan the document for key information to understand what may be missing or what may need clarifying.
By standardizing the bid spec template and ensuring a Client review is part of the process, Clients become more comfortable and familiar with the document and begin to understand where key information lies. This nurtures discussion and alignment prior to bidding which in turn improves transparency and mitigates potential issues later on in the process.
Production House Guidelines
Given the sheer number of different production houses that bid on your projects over time, it is important that guidelines are established in order to create guard rails that convey your expectations, especially given that most of these discussions are routed through the Agency.
These guidelines help to set the ground rules for a number of areas including, but not limited to, firm vs cost plus items, accepted markups, the handling of above and below the line costs, payment terms, overages as well as with Pre Production, Shoot, and Post Shoot requirements.
By implementing guidelines across all participating production houses, Clients can improve the consistency in their bid submissions and achieve considerable cost efficiencies.
Agency Video Production Bid Guidelines
Agency guidelines become extremely important when you have multiple external agency partners and/or internal agency partners involved in developing creative for your larger scale video work.
Unlike production house guidelines, these guidelines establish expectations unique to the Agency and cover items such as. but not limited to, budget communication, single vs competitive bids, shoot location guidelines, post production processes, the timing and reconciliation of costs as well as agency travel policies.
With these in place, Clients can ensure all creative partners clearly understand what is expected of them, making the overall execution of these productions easier to manage.
Is this something of interest? Here is how we can help.
Haynes-Vozza is a marketing production consultant that specializes in large-scale video. We leverage a unique blend of production, procurement and marketing expertise to help our clients get the most of their production dollars.
We offer a range of process improvement and bid management services that include the development and implementation of standardized bidding tools. Our goal is simple; to help our Clients achieve significant time and cost efficiencies in their production house bidding process without ever impacting the integrity of their creative.
Learn more about our common sense approach.
Comments