The Request for Proposal is one of the marketing world’s most elegant contradictions: a document designed to find the best creative partner, architected to eliminate anyone interesting. Every agency receives the same forty-page questionnaire. Every agency spends three weeks writing a tailored response. The client picks whoever was already on the shortlist before the brief went out — or whoever quoted €3,000 less than everyone else.
The RFP is procurement dressed in marketing clothing. It carries the language of creative selection — “tell us your approach,” “share examples of similar work,” “describe your creative process” — while applying the logic of office supply purchasing: standardize inputs, compare outputs, minimize cost. It is a contact sport between two parties pretending to want different things, both of whom know exactly how this ends.
The Theater of Due Diligence
Before we discuss the RFP itself, we should acknowledge what it actually is: a paper trail. Not a selection tool — a paper trail. The legal department wants documentation that the procurement process was competitive. The CFO wants evidence that three quotes were obtained. The CMO already knows which agency they want to hire; they just need 40 pages of questionnaire responses to justify the choice to Finance.
This is why RFPs are simultaneously exhaustive and irrelevant. They ask about everything — case studies, team composition, methodology, technology stack, DEI policies, cybersecurity protocols, crisis communication experience — and use approximately 15% of that information in the actual decision. The rest exists to fill the required fields in the procurement system.
If you’ve ever received an RFP with a mandatory section on your agency’s physical security procedures for a social media retainer, you’ve touched the procedural ceiling of modern marketing procurement. Someone in Legal added that field in 2018 after a data breach at a different vendor and nobody has ever removed it.
The Questions That Reveal Everything (About the Client)
An RFP tells you more about the client than any brief. Read it carefully and you will understand exactly who has power in this organization, what went wrong with the previous agency, and whether you will ever be able to do interesting work here.
“Describe your approach to stakeholder management.” Translation: we have difficult internal stakeholders and we’re outsourcing the problem to you.
“Provide three case studies of campaigns with measured ROI.” Translation: someone senior got burned by an unmeasurable brand campaign and now everything must have numbers attached, including things that are structurally impossible to measure.
“Describe how you handle revisions.” Translation: the last agency billed for revisions and it created a diplomatic incident.
“What is your experience working with regulated industries?” Translation: Legal and Compliance will be in every review meeting and have veto power over anything with personality.
The agency credentials deck and the RFP response are the two most carefully curated documents in the creative industry — and the two least likely to resemble the actual working relationship they supposedly predict.
Unpaid Strategy, Dressed as Evaluation
Here is the moment where the RFP crosses from annoying to genuinely extractive: the strategic thinking section.
“Based on the information provided, please share your initial thinking on how you would approach this challenge.” Translation: we want three weeks of strategic thinking from five agencies, at zero cost, to validate the direction we’ve already chosen — and we will absolutely use the ideas from the agencies we don’t hire.
This is not speculation. It is industry practice so normalized that most agencies do it without complaint. The logic: you need to demonstrate capability to win the work. The reality: you are funding the client’s strategy with your own time and expertise, in competition with four other agencies doing the same thing, with no guarantee of compensation for any of it.
The spec work trap was supposed to be about portfolio pieces for student competitions. In practice, it lives most comfortably inside the RFP process of a Fortune 500 company with a nine-figure marketing budget that can’t find €5,000 to compensate the five agencies it asked to think strategically for free.
The defense of this practice — “it’s standard,” “you knew what you were signing up for,” “it weeds out agencies who aren’t serious” — is a masterwork of circular reasoning. It’s standard because everyone does it. Everyone does it because it’s standard. The agencies who push back are “difficult.” The clients who pay for pitches are “enlightened.” Most clients are not enlightened.
The Pre-Selected Winner and the Agencies Who Don’t Know It Yet
Let’s be honest about something. In a significant percentage of competitive RFP processes, one agency is the incumbent or preferred option going in. The RFP is issued because procurement policy requires competitive bids above a certain contract value. The incumbent knows this. The other agencies do not.
This creates an asymmetry so profound it would be funny if it weren’t three weeks of your team’s time. The incumbent writes a response that mirrors the client’s existing language, processes, and preferences — because they’ve been inside the building. The challengers write responses that demonstrate capability — because they haven’t. The incumbent wins. The challengers learn they were “very close” and “we’d love to work with you on future opportunities.”
The future opportunity is another RFP.
Not every RFP is pre-decided. Some clients genuinely want fresh perspectives and use the process to find them. Those clients tend to write briefs that are actually interesting, ask questions that reveal curiosity rather than caution, and behave like humans during the pitch process. They’re recognizable. They’re also in the minority.
A Modest Proposal: How to Respond to RFPs Without Losing Your Soul
First, qualify harder than the client is qualifying you. Before you commit to forty pages of response, ask the questions the RFP doesn’t answer: How many agencies are you speaking to? Is there an incumbent? What does success look like in year one? Who makes the final decision? A client who won’t answer these questions is a client running a procurement exercise, not a creative search. You’re allowed to not participate.
Second, decide what you’re willing to give away. Strategic frameworks: fine. Specific campaign concepts executed to presentation quality: no. The line is blurry, but it exists, and you should know where yours is before you start writing.
Third, treat the RFP response as a demonstration of judgment, not compliance. The agencies that win interesting work from RFPs are the ones who answer the question differently from everyone else — not more completely, differently. The forty-page questionnaire is asking for the same thing from everyone. The answer that wins is the one that makes the client feel like someone finally understood the problem.
Finally, track your win rate. If you’re investing three weeks per RFP and winning less than 30% of them, you’re running a subsidy program for clients who don’t hire you. The Fuck The Brief ethos applies here too: know which rules are worth breaking, including the unwritten rule that says you have to respond to every RFP just because it arrived in your inbox.
The RFP is not going away. Procurement processes exist for reasons, some of them even defensible. But you don’t have to approach every forty-page questionnaire with the enthusiasm of someone who believes the best proposal wins. Sometimes the best proposal wins. Sometimes it’s the golf buddy. Know the difference before you start writing.