Choosing a media agency is one of the most consequential decisions a marketing team will make. The right media partner will maximise value (efficiency and effectiveness), deepen connections with the customer and bring sharper thinking and flexibility as your priorities, goals and wider agency model inevitably evolve. On the other hand, making the wrong call – which is not just about choosing the “wrong” agency – represents wasted time, money and goodwill. 

The hard part in finding a media partner isn’t deciding to run a pitch process. It’s knowing what “right” actually looks like and building the relationship for the long term, and that’s where a specialist pitch consultancy earns its keep.

AAR has been running agency searches for 51 years, and Partner and Lead Consultant Hannah Astill spent over 13 years agency-side (most recently as Business Director at Goodstuff) before joining AAR to lead media agency selection and advisory work in 2022. 

Whether it’s an end-to-end global process or an initial chat about how media should integrate with creative or connect across your marketing ecosystem in service of customer centricity, Hannah helps brands shape clear briefs, run structured evaluations, and manage pitches with confidence.

Below, she sets out what actually separates a good agency selection process from a bad one.

1. Start with why you’re actually going to market

Every review has a root cause, and it’s rarely just “we want to save money.” Hannah Astill points to a consistent set of triggers: a new capability requirement (AI infrastructure, integration, influencer), dissatisfaction with the incumbent, a new CMO wanting to test the waters, a statutory obligation to retender, or a genuine cost pressure. 

Increasingly, though, the driver is structural. The brand itself has reorganised, and the shape of the partner it needs has changed as a result. For example, in some cases, an integrated media and creative pitch is required to address the AI-enabled, silo-busting realities of modern marketing, or a different agency model altogether.

The core need is worth naming before anything else. A process built to solve the wrong problem will produce a shortlist that solves the wrong problem, too. It’s also vital in creating a clear, well-defined brief that gives agencies something real to respond to, rather than a vague one that just pushes the guesswork downstream into the pitch itself, where it’s harder to fix.

It’s also worth being honest about whether a pitch is the right tool at all. Not every problem needs a new agency, and sometimes the real fix is a clearer brief, a reset conversation with the incumbent, or a better-defined operating model. A good pitch consultant should be willing to tell a client that, even if it means recommending against the process they called to set up.

2. Look beyond buying power

Trading efficiency and buying power get a lot of airtime in media pitches, and cost will always matter. But Hannah is clear that it should be one input, not the whole decision. AAR’s own evaluation approach – the AAR Index – deliberately treats media pricing as one of five weighted factors, alongside commercial value, contractual governance, effectiveness and creativity. Brands score what matters most to them, and every commercial response is assessed against that weighting rather than simply ranked from the cheapest to most expensive (delivering both efficiency and effectiveness).

It’s also worth noting that this is an area where media agencies are ahead. Because their output is more directly attributable (cost per acquisition, cost per thousand, ROAS, etc), they can move faster toward flexible and outcome-based pricing models than creative agencies typically can. Hannah’s view is that this shouldn’t tip brands into short-termism, though. Brand and performance work together, and a partner who can only prove the short-term metric isn’t the whole answer.

3. Evaluate the team you’ll actually work with

Agency brands don’t do the work, the people inside them do. This is Hannah’s checklist for the people in the room:

  • A genuinely dedicated team, not what one of her clients calls the “fingers and toes” model – 2% of this person, 5% of that one, adding up to headcount on paper but not real capacity in practice.
  • Senior stakeholder management – people who can sit in investment and business-case conversations alongside your team, not just delivery meetings.
  • Real adoption of AI and tools, not a capability bolted on for the pitch.
  • Chemistry and listening – the difference shows up in every touchpoint before the pitch itself, and brands should build in enough of those moments to see it.

Pitch consultants also help in protecting the team you hire, not just the team you meet. AAR increasingly builds staff turnover and continuity clauses into contracts – commonly a cap of 15–20% turnover on the core team, or a no-turnover period of 12–18 months – precisely to stop a strong pitch team being quietly reassigned once the ink is dry.

4. Understand how they’ll actually operate with you

A pitch deck can describe an operating model, but it can’t prove one works. Hannah recommends testing this directly by asking operational questions, requesting a written submission on ways of working, and paying close attention to how an agency approaches a transition plan. A good transition plan is, after all, a rehearsal for the first 100 days of the real relationship. 

Seeking references from current or former clients rounds this out, and remains one of the most reliable ways to validate what a pitch process can only partly reveal.

Hannah also had a note for the media agency leaders in the room. With a broader and deeper portfolio to sell than most agencies – channel, investment, planning, analytics, tech, research – the temptation is to try to cover everything. 

Hannah’s advice for a successful pitch from an agency perspective is to listen carefully and land the two or three things that matter most to that specific client, rather than demonstrating capability for its own sake. By pitch stage, capability is assumed. The real question a brand is answering is why this agency, not whether they can do the work.

5. Run a robust, well-governed process

A good selection process, in Hannah’s experience, has a few non-negotiables. These include clear rules of engagement from the outset (fee expectations, sign-off, key stakeholders, a defined timeline), fair treatment of every agency in the running, a process that doesn’t drag on unnecessarily, and feedback given to every agency at the end, whether they win or lose. Skip that last step, and you’ve removed the only tangible thing an unsuccessful agency gets out of the process.

The other recurring failure point sits inside the brand, not the agency roster. This rests in internal misalignment on what “good” actually looks like, and on the scope of work being tendered. Teams don’t need to agree on a favourite agency before they start, but they do need to agree on the criteria before they go to market, otherwise disorganisation and disappointment are baked in before the first meeting even goes ahead.

Structured scoring matters here too. Weighting criteria in advance and holding every agency to the same framework keeps the final decision anchored to what the brief actually needs, rather than becoming a popularity contest for whoever performed best on the day.

The bigger picture: search, selection, and what comes after

AAR’s process runs from discovery through search and selection, pitch, commercial negotiation, and – critically – embed: making sure the partnership actually works once it’s signed off. AAR’s 100-Day Health Check is a two-way diagnostic on the new relationship, benchmarked against a red-amber-green baseline built from running this process at scale. Getting the right agency on paper is only half the job; embedding them well is what makes the relationship last.

What “right” really means

For Hannah, the best media agency isn’t the biggest, the cheapest, or the one with the flashiest capability deck. It’s the strategic partner that best fits your brand, your ways of working and your culture – and that’s built to deliver growth, not just deliver a service. A structured, well-governed selection process, run with the right expertise in the room, is what gives a brand the best chance of finding that fit and of the relationship still working eighteen months later.

 

AAR has run agency search and selection processes for over five decades, working across media, creative and integrated pitches for brands and agencies alike. To talk through a media agency search and selection process, commercial audit or marketing operating model review, get in touch with the team.