Who wants to pitch on Twitter. WE DO, WE DO!

FOR ALL YOUR INTERNET NEEDS, PICK US! By now, most people in advertising have heard The Current Network’s rfp/twitter/pitch concept. (CurrentTV.) There’s already a bunch of posts about why this is a good idea and why it isn’t, or why brands need to rethink things, or other comments. Different POV:

When’s the last time a small agency had a shot to go up against the best in the industry for a pitch?

A small agency almost never gets a shot at large brands because pitch consultants already have their shortlist in mind. They get mad money to go after traditional shops with millions in billings each year. This basically said fuck that.

Now, whether Current chooses a large shop or not we won’t know for a few weeks until after the next round. (A shortlist gets announced Wednesday and it could be anywhere from 5-10 shops.) But I like the approach. Open to anyone and says: Wow us. Show us why you stand out.

So a Plaid has as much of a shot as anyone. Including the larger shops who entered: Modernista!, BBH, TBWA\Chiat\Day and Crispin, plus a range of medium and small agencies. This is the way it should be. If ideas matter, then let everyone have a chance to submit something.

Whether this was Twitter, Facebook or Flickr isn’t the point either. It’s that a brand like them opened things up to anyone as long as you could just stand out. Our approach? Knowing many shops were going to talk about why they should be hired or show their past work, we wanted to focus more on Current first and share some of our thinking.

Figured why not share where and how we saw the brand, rather than make it all about the agency. Much. We submitted our entry on the last day and threw it out there without some of the “Pick me!” tweets you saw. I’m not going to comment on approaches because to each their own, but there’s certain things you feel right about doing, and it became clear what shops had dusted off unused Twitter accounts for this one.

(Pause, rewind, play; that's the point so you can spend time with it.) It’s thoughts about where it could go and other vibes we feel about CurrentTV. Have at it if you want because why not, I tear stuff apart here all the time.

Another thing about pitches... you could say Current got a bunch of agencies to jump over each other on Twitter. Okay. But so what. Newsflash: Don’t blame Twitter, because agencies were doing this long before the internet—that’s what they do. Think they don’t fight for any piece of new business? We all do. (Look at the stream the day after if you doubt it. New media channel like Twitter—same old “Pick me! Pick me!” behaviour. )

Otherwise why were big shops interested? Sure you notice when a Modernista! shows up, but at least you felt like you had a shot this time whereas you would never feel that way before.

I’m hoping more brands will do this.

#twitterrfp