It's Up to the CMO Community to Address Client/Agency Tensions

Recently many of Belgium's top agencies, both large and small, set up a virtual roadblock on their websites to collectively protest the injustice of new-business pitches. I'm waiting for our CMO compatriots to call in the cyber strike-busters. The protest was organized by the Belgian ad trade group called the Association of Communication Companies, or ACC, which has proposed a set of ground rules for clients and agencies to voluntarily follow in support of more civilized new-business pitches: limits on the number of bidders and resources spent; clearer, better defined decision criteria; commitments to communicate and reach conclusions quicker; protections for agency spec ideas. You get the drill. Typical European socialist stuff.