British Columbia's government is shopping for advertising agencies.
Government Communications and Public Engagement's (GCPE) June 6 tender call, published on B.C. Bid, seeks agencies on an "if and when required basis" for advertising, research and web design and development. Deadline for bids is July 4.
GCPE's standing offers with six shops expire July 31. The existing contracts are with:
Cossette Communications Inc;
DDB Canada (a division of Omnicom Canada Inc);
TBWA/Vancouver;
Traction Creative Communications;
Grey Vancouver; and
Rethink Communications.
Public accounts from 2011-12 showed that Traction billed taxpayers $4,797,521, Cossette $4,439,195, DDB $3,368,273 and Grey $41,993.
The new standing offers would run through July 31, 2015, and can be extended by the government for an additional two one-year terms.
The bid document said specifics about projects or assignments will be sent to one or more of the chosen standing-offer companies (referred to as "offerors") at GCPE's discretion and may not necessarily be based on the lowest price.
Services required include strategic planning, creative design, marketing, production and post-production services for multimedia campaigns focused on the province's policies and programs, focus groups, polling, secondary research and strategic counsel, creative design, web development and social media execution.
GCPE, which had a $26.155 million budget in 2011-12, focused on ad campaigns for social marketing (behavioural change); jurisdictional marketing (live, work, play and invest campaigns); public safety, community development, financial policy and health and education.
"The criteria for selecting an Offeror(s) will vary, depending upon the requirements of the applicable project or task and could involve requiring an Offeror to have a certain demonstrated experience and proficiency level in one or more service areas depending on the specific requirements of the project or assignment," said the document, which was issued three weeks after the BC Liberals won the provincial election.
A June 24 addendum posted to BC Bid responded to those seeking the number of queries and submissions. "At this time, we can not disclose if we have received any submissions and/or how many we have received to date," said the response.
"Respondents wishing to know, after the closing date, how many submissions were received, can request that information through a debriefing after the evaluation process has been completed."
International applicants are being accepted and respondents can submit to one or more of the service areas.
Media planning and placement are outside the scope of the request for proposals. The contract for this work is held by Vizeum Canada, which billed $14,100,820 last year.
In a November 2012 commentary, Jordan Bateman of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation said "Governments of all stripes and every level love to advertise, spending our tax dollars to remind taxpayers how wonderful they are."
He said the BC Liberal government ran the $15 million-plus pre-election BC Jobs Plan ad campaign despite residents "groaning under their tax burden."
