The New Agency Pitch Test: Can You Prove It Moved the Business?

In brief

Large advertisers are increasingly choosing agencies on one question: can the agency show that its work changed behaviour and sales? In a single week, Coca-Cola, Mastercard and Nongfu Spring each reset an agency brief, and the common thread is integrated storytelling tied to provable business impact. Philippine agencies that make PR agency pitch measurement part of the pitch, with an outcome-linked scorecard instead of clip counts, are better placed to win.

Ask most agency leaders what wins a pitch and you'll hear a familiar answer: the big idea, the chemistry in the room, a credentials deck full of famous logos. All of that still counts. But the world's biggest marketers described a harder test this month.

Coca-Cola's top marketer told a conference audience that his next agency needs a working model for tying creators, retail media and commerce back to sales. Mastercard ended a PR relationship of nearly 14 years to get a broader business story told. For a Philippine agency MD, the implication is practical. The pitch is increasingly won or lost on PR agency pitch measurement: whether you can prove, with numbers a procurement panel will accept, that your work moved the business. Let's look at what changed and what a pitch-ready answer looks like.

One week, three mandates, one pattern

Start with the biggest. Coca-Cola's US$4 billion global media, data and tech account is in review, with North America pitched separately. ADWEEK's interview with Manolo Arroyo, the company's chief marketing and customer commercial officer, reports that incumbent WPP is favoured for the global piece, though neither side has confirmed an outcome. Arroyo was specific about the brief: deep dives on creators and influencers, on retail media and commerce, and on "alternative models" for driving all of it into attribution in terms of sales and transactions. Rival Omnicom, the report notes, has invested in commerce capabilities that tie media spend to sales.

Then Mastercard. The payments company appointed We Communications as its global comms partner after a review of nearly six months, ending a relationship with Ketchum of nearly 14 years. The brief widened beyond "Priceless" to AI, agentic commerce and cybersecurity, and the agency says it was chosen for its tech expertise and its "ability to navigate complexity".

Then a launch in our own region. Nongfu Spring appointed Havas Malaysia for a social and KOL-led launch of its hero brand Chaπ, aimed at Malaysian Gen Z, with always-on social and community management running through 2026 and 2027. Malaysia follows Hong Kong (early 2025) and Singapore (late 2025).

In Media Meter's reading, each brief moved away from buying capacity (more creative, more content, more placements) and toward an integrated narrative that can be connected to business results. Measurement is no longer the report you send after the work. It has become a condition of getting hired.

Trend or anecdote? The best available data points the same way, with caveats. In the US, the ANA and 4A's Cost of the Pitch study found that half of brand marketers named the incumbent agency's performance as the key factor in putting an account up for review (fieldwork March 2023, based on 300+ interviews with US brand-marketer and agency executives). Procurement was more cautious: only 1 in 3 procurement respondents agreed, and 2 in 3 called performance just one of the contributing factors. A newer, smaller signal is sharper. In the Setup 2025 Marketing Relationship Survey, clients who ended an agency relationship cited "dissatisfaction with value" 61% of the time, up from 36% in 2024. Treat that one as directional: Setup is itself an agency, and the survey drew about 100 responses (57% clients, 43% agencies).

Neither study isolates measurement or ROI as the named trigger, and neither covers PR agencies or the Philippines specifically. What they show is that "did it perform?" sits at the centre of why accounts move. Proving performance is a measurement job.

"I do not believe in love anymore"

Arroyo's line describes the buyer your next pitch may face. "I do not believe in love anymore," he told the Brandweek audience. Coca-Cola's transformation, he said, began by changing metrics, pivoting from brand love to consumption.

Think about what that does to a standard PR proposal. A deck built around awareness, favourability and volume of coverage is answering a question this kind of client has stopped asking. The client wants to know whether the work changed what people did.

Earned media keeps its value under this kind of buyer, but the bar for showing that value rises. AMEC's Barcelona Principles 4.0, launched in June 2025 at its Vienna summit, say invalid measures such as AVEs should not be used and that communication should be evaluated by its outcome and impact (Principle 5), reporting outputs, outcomes and impact for the organisation and its stakeholders (Principle 6). AMEC has run its Say No to AVEs campaign since 2017. If an AVE figure is still anywhere in your credentials deck, a sceptical panel will read it as a sign you haven't kept up.

Impressions won't survive the pitch Q&A

The weakest number in most proposals is the one that looks biggest: impressions.

US politics supplied the illustration this month. The White House defended a claim that the GOP convention out-drew the NFL by pointing to 70 million TikTok impressions. As Poynter's fact-check of the ratings claim set out, the two NFL games that aired against the convention drew more than 43 million viewers combined, compared with about 7 million for the convention. Impressions, one analyst told PolitiFact, are "not comparable to Nielsen ratings in any meaningful sense". An impression only means the content appeared in someone's feed; it needs no click, like or viewing time. Nielsen, by contrast, counts someone as reached only after at least a minute of viewing, a University of Maryland professor noted.

Treat an impression like a flyer handed out at a busy MRT station. It counts hands, not readers, and a procurement lead knows the difference. Expect the Q&A to probe exactly that gap: how many people were actually reached, and what changed as a result? If the only answer comes from the platform's own dashboard, you are grading your own homework, and that is where independent media measurement becomes the agency's edge.

What a pitch-ready measurement scorecard contains

This five-part scorecard is Media Meter's framework, built to line up with AMEC's Integrated Evaluation Framework, which moves from inputs and activities through outputs and out-takes to outcomes and impact, and says evaluation should report outcomes at a minimum and impact where possible.

1. A baseline before the work. Where does the prospect stand today in coverage, conversation and tone? Without it, no later result can be credited to you.

2. Share of voice against named competitors. Your share of the story in the prospect's category, tracked across online, social, print and broadcast. It shows ground gained or lost, and it is what independent reporting and analytics exist to produce.

3. Sentiment read in the languages Filipinos use. Coverage and conversation in Filipino, Taglish and the regional languages need calibration, and automated sentiment accuracy in these registers is still directional. Say so in the pitch. A panel will trust a scorecard more when it states its limits.

4. Creator and KOL impact with an outcome link. Follower counts and views describe exposure. Tie creator work to a downstream signal the client already tracks, whether that's sell-through, sign-ups or a shift in branded conversation.

5. Outcome links to the business. Connect the communications results to one or two business metrics the client reports internally. Translating that link into P&L language is its own skill.

Together, they turn "trust us" into "here is how we'll show you".

How the brief reaches Manila, and how to be ready first

We found no current Philippine account move where measurement was cited as the reason, and no PH-specific survey on why clients review agencies. So the cascade below is Media Meter's inference. It rests on local signals that point the same way.

Philippine clients are already judging creator spend on conversion. BusinessMirror's report on creator commerce found Filipino beauty brands moving budget from celebrity endorsers to creator-led campaigns and live commerce. Dermorepubliq's Gabrielle Lim says the brand became the top brand on TikTok Shop "without any celebrity endorser", and Unilever PH's Alexa Coronel (Dove) says consumers no longer separate content from commerce. An agency pitching creator work to these clients needs an outcome link, and follower reach alone won't carry it.

Agency networks are formalising creator capability too. An Ogilvy-issued release on Ogilvy Manila's third Creator Camp covers brand equity, BIR compliance and agency accreditation, with CEO Elly Puyat calling creator culture "the core of modern influence". When big networks can field creator rosters, the pitch differentiator shifts to who can prove what those creators delivered.

Leadership changes open doors. Globe Telecom appointed KD Dizon as chief marketing officer to lead its integrated marketing organisation. Nothing suggests Globe is reviewing agencies, but a new CMO at a top advertiser is the kind of moment when rosters get a fresh look and incumbents get asked for results.

One more opening. BusinessMirror's coverage of Meralco's 20 Anvil trophies describes results in largely qualitative terms ("increased transparency and accessibility of information"). In our reading, quantified outcomes are still the exception in PH award showcases, which gives agencies that bring them a way to stand out.

Key takeaways

• Build your baseline and share-of-voice view of a target prospect before the RFP arrives (the free sector briefs in our report library show the format). By the time the brief lands, the scorecard should already exist.
• Strip AVE and raw impression totals out of credentials decks. Lead with reach, outcomes and impact, in line with the Barcelona Principles 4.0.
• For every creator or KOL case study, show one downstream business signal next to the views.
• State the limits of automated Filipino and Taglish sentiment openly. Stated limits read as rigour.
• Track leadership changes at target advertisers as review triggers, and have a measured point of view ready for the new CMO's first 90 days.

About Media Meter

Media Meter powers monitoring and measurement for Philippine agencies, white-labelled under your brand, so your team walks into the pitch with a locally calibrated scorecard instead of a morning spent on clippings.