The big agency groups are turning to online pitching to boost the efficiency of their new business efforts.
The number of large agencies using blur’s online marketplace to win new marketing and PR clients has risen dramatically with over 2,000 joining in the past 12 months.
In recent months, firms such as JWT, Edelman, Iris Worldwide, Leo Burnett, Lewis PR, McCann and Havas have joined blur to pitch for marketing, PR, video and digital briefs.
In the last 12 months alone, the marketplace has received more than $150m of marketing projects including many big tickets briefs from global brands such as Tesco, GE, Amazon, Argos and Caterpillar which have contributed to a running total of $350m.
Jon Hogg, blur’s Chief Marketing Officer, said: “Our marketplace is now widely recognised as an important new business tool for agencies of all sizes. With more and more large companies putting out tenders through blur, we have attracted many top tier agencies.”
blur now boasts approaching 45,000 agencies across the globe, offering the full range of marketing, digital, video, design and PR services. Of these around 2,300 are considered to be “enterprise level” with more than 50 employees.
“One of the common misconceptions is that online intermediaries only deal with small budgets and small suppliers. Whilst this may have been true a few years ago, this is simply not the case anymore,“ added Hogg.
The largest brief to be pitched through blur’s Marketplace was a $17,000,000 sponsorship project for We Are Wales Pro Cycling.
The business, headed by entrepreneur Philip Letts, now has service providers in 145 countries and is taking in around 75 new briefs a week.
Jon Hogg said that clients and agencies were attracted by the ease and speed of on-line pitching and the fact that the entire process can be handled from their desk or through a mobile app.
“A tender process that may have taken weeks or even months can be reduced to a few days,” he added.