There’s nothing wrong with establishing a supply relationship with a trusted video producer. But sometimes there is a requirement for creative alternatives and price competitiveness that a bidding situation can provide.
From our experience, here are ten crucial "secrets" of writing a more effective request for proposal (RFP) document that are certain to increase the quality of a video producer’s response.
Give a budget range
Include an approximate
budget or range in your RFP. Price competition will not be lessened and it
will be easier to compare bids. And it eliminates a far too common misuse
of the process. You see, it is possible for a production company to give extraordinarily
great value for your program as both a $10,000 and a $50,000-level video.
But if a prospective client is secretly interested in a video with production
values worth about $30,000, many bids will be automatically ignored. In an
eye-blink, a video company’s time-consuming creative efforts have been trashed,
and the client has lost additional relevant proposal submissions.
Shortlist interested
bidders
A short list should be
exactly that — no more than three or four companies need be invited to propose.
This will keep the invited production companies highly motivated and minimizes
wasted time by everyone.
Plenty of details
Describe your video’s main
objective, sub-messages (in support of the main objective), audience, and
how and where it will be seen. If possible, state the age group and educational
background of the viewers. Will the video be viewed individually from a laptop
computer? Or experienced by a sizable audience as part of a larger presentation?
Indicate, perhaps, creative approaches (humour, for example) you strongly
wish or wish not to see. Giving details in your RFP will short-circuit a barrage
of repeated inquiries later on- or worse- erroneous speculation by the producer.
Use a point system
To help guide the bidder
and assist you to make an objective decision, consider breaking down your
proposal requirements into scored or weighted point or percentage components.
The categories could include Profile/Track record; Approach & Methodology;
Proposed Personnel, Demo Tape and Pricing.
Publish enquiry answers
Have bidders submit any
questions in writing. Provide answers to significant questions simultaneously
to all bidders via fax, e-mail or web posting. This will keep all the bidders
on an even playing field and save you from answering the same query over and
over.
Specify rights and
territories
Stipulate the media (broadcast,
in-house), distribution (sale, loan), geographic areas (Canada, the world)
and time-frame (years, perpetuity) that will be valid for your video. Producers
can often give better rates if they are purchasing talent or stock rights
for something less than "in all media, throughout the world, in perpetuity."
Indicate later versioning
Specify if it is your intention
to later re-purposed or language versioned the program. If so, request separate
unmixed music and effects audio tracks. State if you expect to post part of
your video on the internet, or as a digital business card. Their low-resolution
requirements may call for additional special shooting.
No storyboards
Don’t ask for a storyboard
in your proposal request. This is fine for a thirty-second ultra-planned television
commercial but makes no sense in a program with, perhaps, one or two hundred
still-to-be-determined shots. The script will provide clear descriptions of
the scenes. And even these will change as location, artistry and client dictate.
Plenty of response
time
Give lots of time- preferably
at least two weeks- for the video producer to respond to your RFP. The producers
you want are likely working. Don’t spend so much time contemplating and writing
your proposal request document that it significantly minimizes the time allotted
for a response.
Never, Never
(Please) never request
a proposal from a video company with the intention of sending it to the boss
simply to see if there just might be some interest. Wonderfully imaginative proposals
require a lot of effort and the above sin is likely to drive a good video
producer into some other line of work — like being a hitman.
Mailing address:
5383 Esperanza Drive
North Vancouver
British Columbia V7R 3W3 CANADA
Edit Suites:
Harbourview Park Tower
#100 - 588 Broughton Street, Vancouver
British Columbia, CANADA
Tel: 604.960-1050
Fax: 604.960-1051
E-mail: bravo@bravo-zulu.com
