TrinityP3 Relaunches Agency Register with CMO Access, AI Search

TrinityP3 has relaunched its agency register with access to marketers, and an AI function designed to speed up CMOs’ process of finding the perfect agency.

The database, rebuilt across the past year, was previously only available to TrinityP3 staffers, and includes information on an agency’s size, location, and capabilities. Its agency intel spans creative, brand, media, PR, social, digital, design, research, technology, shopper, experiential, and event.

Darren Woolley, founder and global CEO of TrinityP3, told LBB, “When you look at agency websites, they're very busy showing you, ‘Here's the ads we do’, but they don't tell you a lot about their approach or their commercial arrangements [or] their competency and skill sets.

“So then the idea came up -- why don't we make this [register] available to all of those marketers and procurement people that are looking for agencies?”

The register now uses AI to simplify the search process, using natural language instead of technical terms to help marketers find the ideal agency.

Darren said, “Instead of having to teach marketers how to navigate our database, we can use AI [for] natural language on this system.

“A marketer can log in and go, ‘I'm looking for a media agency in Adelaide that has experience with consumer packaged goods’, and [AI] will go through a database of literally thousands of agencies, and then rank them and put a summary of why the AI thinks that they're a good match to that prompt.

“Instead of having the language of the database agency … ‘52 to 64 people’ becomes ‘a medium size agency’” and a ‘digital agency’ is surfaced when searching for a business with search engine optimisation or search engine marketing experience.

The register is available to marketers via a monthly or annual subscription, allowing them to keep track of agencies industry-wide, beyond just those suitable to invite to tender.

“I think we're seeing a lot more project based pitches, and so this will be really useful. It'll also be useful for marketers to know what else is out there. Without necessarily going to pitch, they'll be able to do searches, even if they're not interested in pitching.

“Are there any new agencies or different agencies out there? I think it'll really just provide a platform where people can get a very good sense of what's available in the marketplace.”

TrinityP3 research suggests pitch consultants are only managing around one in five pitches. The rest are managed through marketers (60%) or procurement teams (20%).

Accordingly, the relaunched register aims to help those marketers running their own pitches because they did not see the need to invest in an external consultant, have an in-house team to manage pitches, or face budgetary pressures or an expectation to manage their own tender process.

“So I think there'll be marketers that subscribe to this purely to use it as a way of finding out who else is in the market,” Darren observed.

“You know, there's that famous story about the remote control on the TV and the way people just jump through stations when the ad breaks are on? Well, it's not because … they don't want to know what's on TV. They want to know what else is on TV.

“And I think it's the same with agencies. It's not whether I need a new agency, [its] ‘I just want to know what else is available.’

“And I think that's going to be a really important function of the TrinityP3 agency search.”

The extent of information available, and its accessibility, should make composing a pitch list quicker and easier, Darren added.

“Ultimately, I think what we all want to do is to make the pitch process less burdensome on both marketers and agencies and deliver better outcomes for everyone,” he said.

“We hear about clients taking six or eight or 10 agencies into a pitch. Why is that? Because four or five of them may have nothing that aligns to what they're looking for [and] the less accurate you're able to put that list together, the harder it is to find a really good short list.

“So by being able to match it, it's like you're going to have [a better] chance of getting to the outcome much faster.

“Because at the moment, it's amazing how much time and effort churns through trying to run a pitch process for both marketers and their agencies … one marketing team might be engaging with five or six agencies, so the agencies are going to end up doing six times more work than the marketer.

“Anything that streamlines that process and delivers better outcomes has to be good for the industry.”