What the MarCom Summit DC Told Us About Your Next Agency Search

By Robert Udowitz, Principal, RFP Associates

The MarCom Summit in DC on October 14 packed marketing, PR, public affairs,
advertising, and media into one day filled with too many sessions to choose from. The program covered AI, GEO, social strategy, public policy advertising, and the growing role of trust.

That breadth was the point. For organizations hiring agencies, the continuous thread was that these disciplines no longer operate separately - nor have they for several years so your next agency search request for proposals (RFP) shouldn’t treat them that way either. Nor should it assume one big agency should cover everything. The better question is which firm, or combination of firms, has the specific expertise your goals demand.

Here is what some of the sessions suggest you ask.

The opening CMO panel included Sheila Blackwell of ManTech, Allison Moss of Just Ice Tea, Kim Bolt of the Washington Spirit, and Tanya Nazarian of Grafik. The discussion centered on a gap: marketers are expected to drive revenue, yet many CEOs still don't see marketing as a primary growth lever. That puts the burden on marketers to prove their value.

The panelists answered that gap with measurement. In whatever form, benchmarking, progression, and results help justify the means. For your RFP: name the business outcome first, open it up to ideas, and then let candidate firms analyze it and propose the tactics. Ask finalists how they would measure brand health against that outcome.

The Summit’s session on responsible AI covered governance, ethics, and the
expanding responsibilities of communicators. As AI spreads across the communications industry, your RFP should ask for each agency's AI policies: how it protects client data, when human review is required, and how AI will make the work more efficient.

The afternoon included “Behind the Message,” a public affairs roundtable on policy, reputation, media relations, and public trust. A companion session looked at the shift from broad messaging to data-driven targeting and measurable outcomes. Agencies are expected to prove the effect of their public affairs work, not just describe it.

If you work on public policy issues, your RFP should ask for audience-intelligence
capabilities: how a firm identifies the people who can actually move a decision, whether lawmakers, staff, regulators, coalition partners or voters, and what it knows about what moves them.

Ask for campaigns measured by outcomes such as awareness, attitude and action, not simply impressions. Then press on attribution. Policy change rarely has a single cause, so favor firms that set baselines up front, track leading indicators along the way and are candid about what their work can and can’t take credit for.

The Summit also examined the shifting landscape of public policy advertising. Speakers on the panel agreed that paid policy ads work best alongside earned media, owned content and stakeholder outreach, not in place of them. This matters in a midterm year, when paid, earned and owned channels compete for the same audiences.

Your agency search should determine who owns the integrated plan. Ask whether the public affairs, PR and media-buying teams, in one firm or several, will share audience data and a single measurement framework.

Creators and influencers were a recurring thread at the Summit, and their role in earned media keeps growing, so choosing an agency that knows this territory matters more than ever. Ask how an agency vets creators, handles disclosure, and builds relationships beyond the traditional press list, because sourcing and credibility are shifting.

The Summit’s session on creator journalists versus influencers detailed those shifts, along with sponsorship disclosure and the legal and ethical issues where journalism and influence overlap. The takeaway for buyers: hire an agency that protects your brand’s credibility every day. Case studies, chemistry, and a hunger to win your account should show you that.

Search is changing too. The Summit’s search and GEO panels and a B2B session
made the same points: strategies you can demonstrate are the ones that produce measurable results. For your RFP, require finalists to explain how they would measure visibility across traditional and AI search, and who on their team owns it. Ask them to show how they combine earned media, owned content and technical SEO and GEO.

Finally, PRNEWS recapped a social media panel from the Summit in which lean teams, in some cases just one or two people, described tracking success in different ways, from views to sentiment to responsiveness, with no shared standard. Clients and agencies often face the same situation: small teams, a mix of metrics, and no agreement on which ones count. Settle it before the work starts. Ask finalists which outcomes they will report against, and agree on them up front so both sides are judged by the same yardstick.

Now is a good time to hire an agency, primarily because I see it as a buyer's market: through the growth of agencies in the U.S. and beyond, and the changes in billing models based primarily on AI efficiency models. Many strong niche firms have emerged from talent that larger firms let go, but they are hard to find amid a sea of better-known names and colleagues' recommendations.

The key is to focus on what you need, then find the firm with that specific expertise. It may be a global firm, a regional one, a niche or specialized agency, or even a qualified network. Either way, it requires a tailored search, not a blanket one.