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Let's debate the pros and cons of this twitteRFP notion.

April 27, 2009 at 5:59 PM, Posted in Think, Comments (4)

Author Andrew Delbridge

Pros:

- Has generated a lot more interest than otherwise likely.

- The medium is the message - so it will be instantly evident who gets it - who doesn’t.

- Open the process up to agencies beyond the “usual suspects.”

- If you can get creative with 140 characters, well, the rest is a cake walk.

- Putting a limit on how much any agency gets to sing its own praises is always a good idea.

- Jkretch now has a lot more followers - so will Current TV.

Cons:

- Is it really wise to build a pitch list for the future of a business on the basis of agencies tweet prowess?

- The twitteRFP might help give insight to an agency’s familiarity with social media, but won’t tell you much else.

- Is the twitteRFP guilty of the same “information overload” criticism leveled at Twitter itself?

- Is it just a stunt to get more agency people to think about Current TV?

What do you think?

4 Comments

On April 27, 2009 at 7:26 PM, tobrien wrote:

personally i like it- it mixes up the normal way of doing this and makes it interesting to see how we all react....given the short burn on this i think it will also show which agencies are nimble enough to respond in an interesting way. it brightened up my monday. it will also shake out those agencies that are not willing to go the extra mile. cheers.

offensive?

On April 27, 2009 at 7:34 PM, Gfellman wrote:

I'm somewhat cynical about this whole twitteRFP thingy. Smacks as much of promotional stunt as it does a revolutionary way to suss out an agencies social chops. It's right for an entity like CurrentTV. Not right for every brand. Don't think it's a harbinger of a new way to pitch business.

offensive?

On April 27, 2009 at 8:06 PM, Gfellman wrote:

You know, I think it might be a more interesting step later in the pitch process. Build your shortlist of agencies that you admire and purport to have the skills you need. Then drop the next phase instructions via twitter or something. Those agencies who really live and breathe the medium will get the instructions and move on, those who don't, won't. Ruthless but effective.

offensive?

On April 28, 2009 at 4:27 AM, InteractiveMark wrote:

I think this is totally fine for someone like CurrentTV. The sheer act of using the twitteRFP process should weed out the folks not aligned with the way they see their brand behaving. Its like a chemistry meeting held in 140 character snippets. You know they say you can tell if you like someone within the first 30 seconds of meeting them (I just totally made that up BTW) so maybe the tweet is the new compatibility litmus test? You guys seem to be building a pretty compelling ecosystem around the lowly tweet as far as I can tell. I'm guessing that is kind of the point. And why can't the pitch process itself be a brand building exercise? Could I possibly ask any more rhetorical questions?

offensive?