TransLink, the South Coast British Columbia Transit Authority, has invited full-service marketing agencies to pitch for its advertising creative, strategy and media-buying business. The closing date is Oct. 13.
TransLink is the government agency responsible for transit in Metro Vancouver (Coast Mountain buses, SkyTrain, SeaBus and West Coast Express) and is the third-largest system in Canada behind Toronto and Montreal. TransLink also looks after major roads across the region’s 1,800 square kilometers.
The contract is for two years with an option to renew for one more year and includes Travel Smart, a separate brand. John Beaudoin, director of customer engagement and marketing for TransLink, declined to give a marketing budget, but said the scope of work will be equal to or greater than the previous contract.
“It’s a fairly significant chunk of business for Vancouver and we do hope and even expect that there will be a fairly full response from agencies in Vancouver,” he said. “It’s a very exciting account to work on because it’s so diverse. We are not marketing to a very narrow slice; we are looking at very, very broad issues here.”
Grey Vancouver won the account in 2009 and intends to pitch for the business again, but not all agencies are as keen. David Walker, partner at Saint Bernadine Mission Communications, says while his agency would love to partner with TransLink, he finds the RFP requirements way too onerous.
Short-listed agencies are required to develop a written-only brand strategy for TransLink and then the final two or three agencies are required to develop speculative sample creative based on a Compass Card launch campaign which will include transit, print, online, storyboards for television, radio, a kiosk branding centre and signage and instructional video storyboards.
“To deliver the quality response to the RFP that we’d be proud of would put an undue burden on our current clients,” said Walker. “It seems to us that the only firms that could aggressively pursue this would be the ones with an incredible amount of underutilized capacity right now.”
Beaudoin said there is an honorarium attached for the spec creative. Final selection will be made Nov. 25.
