Recently a large, West Coast-based publicly traded company contacted a handful of leading PR agencies with an RFP for PR. As it turns out, this company had no intentions of replacing its incumbent PR firm. Instead, the company was "fishing"--looking for fresh ideas to help fuel its stalling PR program. The ideas they received via the RFP were utilized with the incumbent PR firm.
Maybe its time that companies that are just “fishing” disclose that they are just trying to get an idea of the creative landscape offered by PR agencies. Such a disclosure would allow the responding PR firms to determine if they want to offer up ideas in order to be considered for a potential “short list’ later on in the company’s search, or if they want to respond at all. Do you think this practice diminishes and devalues the RFP? If a good part of a PR firm's IP is creativity and ideas, doesn’t harvesting ideas by way of RFP discourage PR firms from putting their "best foot forward" in their responses?
The other aspect of this is that long, written RFPs are becoming dinosaur-like. Blogs are now having an impact on the RFP process in general. And if you are a cynic about the RFP process for industries other than technology, blogs may be the answer.