An article in iMedia Connection describes how ad agencies are angry about how Zappos handled their RFP process. Apparently, they received over 100 (yes 100) proposals for the lucrative $7 million account, however didn’t give each the review time they deserved.

100 proposals. That’s a lot of reading for anyone and even if you did go through them all with diligence, there’s no way you could accurately remember each one to make an informed decision.

blast! PR was lucky enough to be part of the Zappos RFP process last fall for PR agencies, and although we didn’t get the account (came in a tight second though!), they still were very courteous and appeared to give all participants’ proposals the time they deserved. I think this may have been because of how they handled the RFP process, because I can’t imagine they personally invited 100+ PR agencies to submit a proposal.

We were honored that we did receive that personal invitation from one of the decision makers and had a lot of fun coming up with creative ideas for Zappos. The process was very pleasant and even though we didn’t get account, it was more than worth the effort the team put into it.

Maybe Zappos should have been a little more exclusive in who they opened up the process to for the advertising RFP so less time was wasted. Or maybe agencies should have been more selective in deciding to submit a proposal. But the bottom line is that proposals are part of doing business as an agency - whether you get the gig or not - and complaining isn’t going to do anything but leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.

Posted by: Bryan

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.