There is a conversation that happens in the ad and media industry that nobody wants to have out loud. A marketing director or brand manager sends out a pitch brief — detailed, ambitious, full of strategic questions and requests for strategic, creative thinking. Agencies spend weeks pulling together their best people, their sharpest ideas, and their most carefully crafted responses. Then the pitch concludes, and the decision comes down to who quoted the lowest fee. I have been on the agency side long enough to know this story well. And honestly? It does not have to go this way.

Let us be direct. There is absolutely nothing wrong with running a cost-focused pitch. Procurement policies exist for good reason — companies need to regularly review their contracts, benchmark their spending, and make sure they’re getting fair value from their partners. That is just good business.

But there is something fundamentally wasteful about dressing up a cost review as a full-blown strategic exercise. When you send ten or more agencies a 20-page brief asking for market insights, audience frameworks, and integrated creative concepts, they will give you exactly that. They will spend the time. They will spend the money. They will spend the resources. And if the real deciding factor was always going to be the bottom line of the fee proposal, then a significant amount of collective effort — on both sides of the client- and the agency-side — just went straight out the window. Wasted.

I think I understand why it happens. There is a perception that admitting a pitch is a cost exercise somehow signals that one does not care about quality. Or that it makes you look like you’re just squeezing agencies for cheaper rates.

But here’s what I have observed over the years: The marketers and brand managers who are most respected in this industry are the ones who are upfront about what they need. Clarity is not a weakness. Telling an agency, “We are reviewing our current contract and benchmarking costs and we want to know if you can deliver quality work at a competitive price,” is one of the most honest and efficient things you can say. It tells the agency exactly what problem you are trying to solve.

When both parties are clear that a pitch is primarily a value-for-money exercise, the agency response changes — and improves because it focuses on the real problem. Instead of developing full strategic recommendations that may never be implemented, they focus on what actually matters to you: Demonstrating operational efficiency, quality controls, track record of delivering strong work without inflating costs. The pitch becomes a sharper, more relevant conversation. You see how agencies think about value. And they show you what they are made of in the area that actually counts for the client marketing team. Everyone leaves the room better informed, and the decision becomes much cleaner.

I guess what I am really thinking about here is a simple mindset shift. If the pitch is about finding the best strategic partner to redefine your brand direction, say so — and agencies will bring everything we have to that conversation. But if the pitch is about making sure your current agency is still offering you competitive rates, or if you need to satisfy a procurement requirement to show you have tested the market, say that instead.

Frame it plainly: “We want to see if you can deliver the quality we need at a price point that makes sense for us.” That in and of itself is a legitimate brief. That is a pitch that can be answered well. And it is a pitch where no one’s time gets wasted on work that was never going to influence the outcome.

The best client-agency relationships, in my opinion, are built on exactly this kind of directness and transparency across both parties.

Agencies are not fragile. They know that cost matters, that procurement processes are real, and that marketing budgets are under pressure everywhere. What they struggle with is not the cost conversation itself — it is being asked to have a different conversation entirely when the cost conversation was always the one that needed to happen.

So the next time you are putting together a pitch brief, ask yourself honestly: What is this pitch really deciding?

Then write the brief that answers that question.

Your agencies will respect you more for it.

And you might be surprised how much better the responses get.