As many of you know, or not… I HATE RFPs HATE HATE HATE! I know that companies do them to be fair and get a glimpse of what a company is all about. But an RFP? It seems like here in DC, if you have a hot dog stand, by the way it’s National Chili Dog Day… Anyway, if you have a wiener stand and want some marketing, you generate a RFP. I suppose it’s the government tone here. For the record, we do not do government RFPs here.

SG's Interactive Director, Jason Pasch, downs a dog to celebrate National Chili Dog Day. Good work Jason.

So anyway I just got an RFP from a local thing. 80 pages…of crap…of stuff that has nothing to do with brilliant marketing. What makes it worse is that the first group to look at the RFP at that place won’t be marketing folks. It will be some subgroup of folks that have to weed through hundreds and hundreds of pages. And when it’s all said and done, when 3 weeks of non-billable work is done, we will never know why we were not chosen. Was it that I did not hire the right people? That my bond on storage of data was to small? That only 20% of my company was owned by a woman? And what in the hell does this have to do with great marketing anyway? Nothing.

In fact, if our company focused on RFPs and this sort of business, we would wind up being a very boring place that did boring work because all the people here would be boring people—who like doing RFPs.

So that’s my rule. And of course, what are rules made for? YES…BREAKING! And that’s exactly what we did when we got an RFP a while back from Melwood. You know, the car donation folks. While reviewing the RFP, we all groaned to be honest. Another RFP. And then it hit us. Melwood is an out of the box thinker… Why do we have to answer an RFP like a lawyer? That’s not who we are. So instead we took a bold leap and broke the rules. Are we rule followers? NO. No way. We are good listeners. And very, very nice… to a fault. But rules… Do you really hire a creative powerhouse to follow rules? If you do, you may want to stop reading, the next few thoughts will upset you. So back to Melwood. We thought…let’s answer the RFP in a creative way, let’s do it in a way that reflects us, not a law firm…… Introducing… drum roll please… “The CaRFP.” Yup. We answered the entire RFP on a donated car… Did it work? Yes, we made it to the second round. Then the third, and so on… Yesterday, we were informed that we won the business. Against many of the other firms here in DC.

Well, that messes up my feelings on RFPs. Or does it? The simple fact is that our relationship with Melwood right from the start is one out of the box. And it’s a perfect fit. They think like we do. Car donations, farms as donation tools. Brilliant! A CaRFP… Not bad. And the agency loved doing the pitch. And it all started with a RFP…

Snapshots of the CaRFP

Topics: Matt Rant, RFP's