The Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage & Tourism expects to award the state’s richest advertising contract to longtime agency of record CJRW of Little Rock.
The three-year contract, with the possibility of one-year renewals, is expected to be worth more than $20 million annually to CJRW, which has held a piece of the parks and tourism contract for decades. The agency came up with “The Natural State” as Arkansas’ motto.
CJRW will get the contract for four categories of work, even though the agency scored below Miles Partnership of Florida in three of those: advertising, media planning and buying, and website development and hosting. CJRW had the top score for public relations, over Ghidotti and 4Media Group Inc.
Competitors have long complained that CJRW has the inside track on tourism marketing with the state, work it and its predecessor firms have done for 50 years. One longtime Arkansas ad executive griped that the contract isn’t being awarded to the rightful winner based on the Office of State Procurement’s scoring criteria
In an email to state procurement officials, the ad executive wrote, for the record, that he did not participate in the RFP process. But he asked, “how can the state, with all good conscience, intend to award a contract to a firm that scored second in three of the four categories?”
State Response
Parks, Heritage and Tourism Secretary Shea Lewis said that after careful consideration, a committee of three, including himself, “decided to renew the partnership with CJRW in all 4 contract categories.”
The panel also decided to begin a new partnership with MMGY, a global tourism marketing agency.
“I’m confident this partnership will enable the strengths of both agencies to enhance our advertising and marketing efforts across various platforms and channels, driving the state’s tourism industry to new heights of success nationally and internationally,” Lewis said in a statement.
According to the state’s score sheet, CJRW listed a cost of $6,310,750 for creative content development, advertising and marketing, and social media. It listed public relations
costs of $3,305,000 and website development and hosting costs of $1,645,300. Media planning and buying costs were $14.6 million, but agencies generally spend the bulk of that money on paid advertising and retain only a percentage of the spend.
More to come.
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