When Bryan Waddell, senior brand director of marketing at Feastables—the snack brand launched by YouTuber MrBeast—posted on LinkedIn that he was seeking creative agencies to work with, he didn’t expect the response he received.

His post, which read, “We are not running an RFP, instead my DMs and inbox are open for the next 45 days to hear from you,” garnered nearly 500 likes and more than 150 comments in one week. Waddell said he had received more than 200 messages from interested agencies in less than a week and is still receiving responses daily stemming from the October post.

While this may seem like an anomaly, at least two other marketing executives have recently taken a similar approach to finding new agencies on LinkedIn, aiming to save time and money by skipping the traditional pitch process. 

Last month, Chris Buckwell, senior brand manager at Heineken’s Beyond Beer team in the U.K., wrote on LinkedIn that he was looking to work with a couple of small agencies. Heineken’s Beyond Beer team is focused on growing Heineken’s portfolio by producing products other than beer.

The post has received more than 1,000 likes and over 900 comments. Buckwell said he received over 1,000 messages from agencies responding to the post.

Also in October, Chiara Giovanacci, global marketing lead for CVH Spirits’ single malts brands, posted a call to agencies on LinkedIn. In over a month, the post notched than 450 likes and received a similar number of comments.

These posts come at a time when marketers are increasingly handling more reviews on their own, rather than relying on agency search consultants for help. This shift may partly be driven by the high costs associated with reviews, which, according to a 2023 study by Advertiser Perceptions commissioned by the Association of National Advertisers and 4A’s, cost a combined $1 million for both marketers and agencies. 

The shift has led consultants to look for ways to diversify their revenue streams.

Why use LinkedIn?

Prior to joining Feastables in September, Waddell was a marketer at Nestlé for six years, most recently as a senior brand marketing manager for Hot Pockets. Prior to that, he was a partner and chief operating officer at Civitas Agency.

His experience with lengthy reviews, both as a marketer and on the agency side, was one of the reasons Waddell said he turned to LinkedIn to find new agencies.

“We know often those types of processes are hyper-elongated,” Waddell said of traditional review processes. “When I was at Nestlé I pushed to make [an agency review] go faster than how it typically would, and it still took four months. In today’s environment, you can’t spend four to six months going through the formal pageantry.”

Buckwell said he didn’t enlist a consultant for the Heineken review because he wanted to make the experience more “user-friendly” for agencies and provide more shops a “fair shot” rather than making a brief that was “too specific.” Due to the startup nature of Heineken’s Beyond Beer team team, Buckwell said he was looking for smaller agencies that had experience with smaller brands.

Does it work

From the thousand messages Buckwell received, he selected 15 agencies of interest, eventually narrowing the list down to six. These six were then invited to Heineken's office in the U.K. to meet the team.

From there, Buckwell said he chose several agencies to work on projects, though he did not identify the shops chosen as part of the process.

Waddell, meanwhile, is still combing through agency messages. He said the agencies that have stood out are those that researched his background and Feastables, reached out to mutual LinkedIn connections for advice and showed up authentically in their messages by asking follow-up questions rather than recycling a credentials deck.

Buckwell said some agencies used unique methods to stand out, including sending a mystery box to the Heineken office and sending a video that featured English actor Danny Dyer. One agency that was shortlisted, Department of Creativity, even made an out-of-home ad that ran directly outside Heineken's office expressing enthusiasm for its upcoming pitch meeting.

One unintended reaction to the posts was that it led to a conversation around spec work and how these posts could lead to agencies giving ideas away for free.

For example, Evelio Mattos, creative director of packaging at International Direct Packaging, made a post responding to Waddell challenging the concept altogether. “It’s 2024 and brands are still asking for free work. You’ve got 45 days to submit your best pitches for free to Feastables in hopes they pick yours,” Mattos wrote.

Both Waddell and Buckwell said they made it clear that spec work wasn’t a requirement for the pitch process and it wasn’t focused on obtaining free ideas.

“By no means was this about, ‘We’re going to generate 100 great ideas off this pitch and run with it,’” said Waddell. “That wasn't the case at all. It was really about making it clear that I’m going to spend the time before the end of the year to hear from people.”

“In the brief that we gave in the email, we said we will not be judging any creative work,” said Buckwell. “This is purely based on your own creds and your own story and how you see our challenge.”

LinkedIn Learnings

Both Waddell and Buckwell said they would use LinkedIn posts the next time they are seeking an agency, but will likely be more specific in their brief given the volume of responses they received.

“What I would do is really clarify the type of agencies I was looking for, like the size of agency, the sort of work [in which] they should have experience … and the type of agency specifically that I was looking for,” Buckwell said.

They also said they were encouraged by the number of independent and small agencies interested in the opportunities.

“[With] formal RFPs of the past there are certain thresholds [agencies] need to hit in terms of business size or hours [they] can dedicate,” to an account, Waddell said. For that reason, small shops would have never gotten a chance, he added. 

Only time will tell whether soliciting agencies by posts becomes a larger trend for marketers. It is worth noting that these opportunities are generally smaller and less traditional compared to large brand remits.

Lindsey Slaby, founder of marketing strategy consultant Sunday Dinner, said it is unlikely that this will become a tactic that larger marketers will implement. “Hiring an agency is complex and not a crowdsourced moment to me, unless they have briefs in these [posts],” Slaby said.