Boutique agency to answer advertising briefs via WeChat pitch system

The boutique agency, Niqi (a combination of the names of co-founders Nick Landucci and Pan Qi), is offering to bridge the distance between marketing directors and its "digital geniuses". Using WeChat as a pitch medium, its team will respond from briefing to idea within 24 hours.

"You want a cutting-edge digital idea, you have to deal with a pitch, which is usually a bloody investment of time not only for the agencies but also for you," said Niqi in an open invitation to marketers.

Time should not be dedicated to pitch preparations, long briefings, requests-for-proposals (RFPs), presentations, filtering through hundreds of powerpoint slides, follow-up meetings and countless emails until marketers can get a first glimpse of how an agency approaches digital and how it understands the brand, Landucci told Campaign Asia-Pacific.

He believes that technology optimises the process of testing initial chemistry between client and agency, so what he calls the 'WePitch' experiment is about that. It is conducted until 28 February.

After marketers follow Niqi on WeChat, they can give a quick brief in either English or Chinese. Voice messages, pictures and videos can be used to support and explain the brief. A rudimentary creative idea will be provided within the next 24 hours. The level of detail will depend on the brief given.

No fee is required, unlike the US$999 needed for the same 24-hour turnaround offered by a networked team of creatives in New York called the World's Fastest Agency (WFA).

WFA's three-step pitch process involves the above one-time deposit via PayPal, the sending of a 140-character brief on Twitter, and then the birth of a 140-character idea.

Landucci, an ex-SapientNitro creative director, claimed he has not heard of the similar initiative before, but said Niqi's version opens doors to reticient luxury marketers. "We are just testing the chemistry, remember?" he noted. "Only if they like what they get, we move forward with fact-to-face conversations to explore further and to establish connections."