The marketing community has been all abuzz about the review of agencies being conducted by Zappos. At first, Zappos was going to invite in a select number of agencies but when word got out they were looking, interest grew. Zappos is a cool brand with great leadership and an even greater culture. And in this economy, winning business is critical.
Zappos received over 100 initial entries and paired it down to 20 or so for the presentations. Full disclosure now. Barkley was one of the finalists. Our team presented on Thursday.
The creative leader at agency Ignited, caused a few waves this week when he criticized Zappos in this AdAge article. All of us in the agency arena have opinions from time to time about all review processes. Some are tightly controlled by third party consultants preventing agencies and prospects from communicating with each other except under their watchful eye. Other reviews appear from the beginning to simply be a brand trying to light a fire under its current agency and then magically the current agency is retained.
Zappos was neither of these. Zappos had a wide open and transparent review process. Anyone could participate and we all knew the rules going in. The people at Zappos have been helpful and honest.
I defer now to one of my Barkley partners who was on our team in the room Thursday to add the postscript.
