“It’s common for clients at such pitches to be furnished with an ‘evaluation matrix’ or ‘scorecard’, designed to ensure the process is transparent and objective. The intention is that each agency’s presentation is marked on criteria such as quality of strategy, creative work, cultural fit, knowledge of sector and cost-competitiveness. The idea is that these things are scored independently and then totalled to determine the winning agency but if you ask anybody who’s been involved in this procedure, they will often admit that **they simply decided which agency they wanted to win and back-filled all the numbers accordingly**. It may be that in situations like this what people do is substitute a completely different question to the ones they have been given, and answer that instead. **This practice of answering an easier proxy question is what leads to a lot of ‘irrational’ human behaviour. It may fall short of being perfectly rational and it may not even be conscious, but that’s not to say that it isn’t cleve**r.” --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[hindsight-bias]] , [[story-bias]] , [[marketing]] , [[procurement]] **Source** -- [[202407221554 - B - Alchemy]]