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Firedog and British Design Innovation release controversial surveys

Research conducted within the design industry providing both the Client and Agency perspectives on pitching…

£38,000 is the average annual cost of free pitching to a design agency
Yet, 56% of design agencies employ
less than 5 people.
Firedog Design and research partners, British Design Innovation (BDI), are proud to announce the results of our “Agency Appointment & Pitch versus Productivity” research study, completed on the 5th November 2005.

 

 

Research conducted with over 200 UK based design agencies confirms that free pitching is still rife amongst clients and agencies and is costing the UK design sector £100,000’s in non-recoverable costs and an average of 12% loss of man hours per annum.
Whilst this comes as no big surprise – one figure to emerge from these research results and backed up by research into the client view on the same subject, is that over 25% of projects/tenders pitched for are not awarded after the pitch process.
The key reasons given by clients were change of marketing strategy, reduced budgets, change of mind and no chemistry established with agencies.
63% of agencies claim to have experienced
this decision.
Both research reports with detailed responses
and commentary can be found at www.britishdesigninnovation.org (click on the links within the home page box entitled “Pitch & Productivity”). It is highly unlikely that free pitching will cease. However, whimsical, unethical or lazy procurement procedures by both public and private sector commissioning bodies can be and must be resolved. Both reports highlighted room for improvement on both client and agency side.

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