In this article
The agency chemistry meeting is the step in a media agency selection where you discover whether a shortlisted agency can actually work with your team, not just whether it can present well. Together with the case round that typically follows, these two stages reveal things no RFP response can show: working style, strategic instinct, and how an agency behaves when it has to think on its feet.
You have read the credentials. You have scored the RFP submissions. Now you face a shortlist of agencies that all look capable on paper. The chemistry meeting and the case round exist to break that tie in a way that is grounded in evidence, not gut feeling alone.
What actually happens in an agency chemistry meeting
A chemistry meeting is a structured but informal session, usually 60 to 90 minutes, between your core evaluation team and the senior agency team who would genuinely run your account. It is not a pitch. No decks are required and there is no formal scoring rubric in the room. The purpose is to create conditions where real professional character can surface.
What you are observing is whether the agency listens before it talks, how it handles ambiguity, and whether the people in the room are the people who will actually sit across from you in a year’s time. Many advertisers find that chemistry sessions reveal a mismatch between the agency’s pitch team and its day-to-day account team. As the person running the selection, avoiding that mismatch is one of your core responsibilities, and it is far cheaper to surface it now than after the contract is signed.
A useful chemistry session has a partly fixed, partly open agenda that the agency cannot fully prepare for in advance. Open with a short mutual introduction, move into a genuine discussion about your business challenge, and leave room for the agency to ask questions. The quality of their questions is often more revealing than the quality of their answers.
What the case round adds to the picture
The chemistry session and the case round are sometimes combined into one meeting and sometimes run as separate events, depending on the complexity of the brief and the size of the evaluation team. Either way, the case round asks shortlisted agencies to respond to a real or realistic business scenario. This is the moment that tests strategic thinking, media reasoning, and how an agency constructs an argument under time pressure.
A well-designed case brief can take different forms depending on what the client needs. Some clients issue a fairly open brief that leaves room for the agency to define its own approach. Others set a more structured format with specific questions to answer and constraints to work within. What matters is that the brief reflects an actual challenge in your business: a new product launch, a shift in audience, a budget reallocation question. Keep one thing in mind when designing it: two of your three shortlisted agencies may well be pitching for a competitor within months. The brief must be real enough to test genuine thinking, yet never expose truly confidential information. Getting that balance right is part of running the process well. Where the format is more open, agencies typically need one to two weeks to prepare. The presentation itself usually runs 45 to 60 minutes, including a structured Q&A.
RFP submissions are typically scored before the chemistry and case meeting takes place. That sequence matters: the scores from written submissions help you form a sharper shortlist and give you better questions to bring into the room. Pay particular attention to how agencies frame the problem before they propose a solution. An agency that jumps directly to channel allocation without questioning the brief’s assumptions is showing you something important about how it will manage your media in practice. Agencies that reframe the question, acknowledge trade-offs, and reason transparently about uncertainty demonstrate the kind of intellectual honesty that makes for a durable partnership.
How to run these stages without introducing bias
Both stages carry a risk that is easy to underestimate. The agencies you like the most are not always the agencies that will serve you best. Chemistry is real and matters, but likability is not a proxy for capability.
To keep the evaluation grounded, agree on a small set of observable criteria before either session takes place. For the chemistry meeting, these might include: Did they demonstrate knowledge of our sector without being prompted? Did they ask questions that showed they had read our brief carefully? Were the people in the room the people who would lead our account?
For the case round, a simple scoring framework covers three dimensions: quality of strategic thinking, credibility of the media approach, and clarity of the business case. You do not need a complex model. You need a shared language so that different evaluators can compare notes without talking past each other.
If your selection is running across multiple markets, the chemistry and case stages are also where local market expertise becomes visible. An agency that can speak credibly about advertising in Southeast Asia, for example, should be able to demonstrate that depth when the case brief touches on regional channel dynamics, not just reference it in a credential slide.
The media agency selection process, step by step places both stages within the broader sequence, from initial brief to signed contract. The active process typically runs ten to sixteen weeks, though we recommend planning for three to five months overall to allow adequate time for the commercial negotiations that follow.
Connecting the chemistry and case findings to your final decision
The chemistry meeting and the case round are not the end of the process. What they produce is a sharper shortlist and a richer evidence base for the commercial round that follows.
Agencies that perform well across both stages tend to share a few characteristics. They are consistent between their chemistry session behaviour and their case presentation. They are direct about what they do not know, which is the clearest signal that trust, but verify is the right posture to carry into the relationship. And they show that the strategic thinking in the room belongs to the actual team, not a rehearsed response from a business development specialist.
Before you move into final negotiations, debrief your evaluation panel on what each stage revealed. Where did the scores align? Where did individual evaluators see something different? Those gaps are worth exploring before you reduce the shortlist further. If you worked with a pitch consultant to design the selection, this is also the moment to draw on their experience of how these findings typically translate into long-term agency performance.
Your next step is to carry the strongest two, occasionally three, agencies forward into the financial and commercial round. Everything the chemistry meeting and case round revealed becomes the lens through which you read the numbers. A well-run selection is only the start of the relationship: a mileage scan can show whether your current or incoming agency’s spend is already working as hard as it should.
Frequently asked questions
What is a chemistry meeting in an agency selection? A chemistry meeting is a structured, informal session between an advertiser and a shortlisted agency, designed to assess working style, cultural fit, and whether the people who would run the account are a genuine match for the client team. It is not a formal pitch, and no polished presentation is required.
How long does an agency chemistry meeting typically last? Most chemistry meetings run between 60 and 90 minutes. The goal is to create enough space for a real conversation without it becoming an endurance session. The tone should be open and exploratory rather than interrogative.
What is an agency pitch, and how does it differ from a chemistry meeting?
An agency pitch is a formal presentation in which a shortlisted agency responds to a client brief, usually with a strategic proposal and media approach. A chemistry meeting comes earlier in the process and focuses on relationship and working-style fit rather than a formal strategic response. The case round bridges the two: it is a structured assignment that tests strategic thinking in a more relaxed setting than a full pitch.
Who should attend the chemistry meeting from the client side? The people who will manage the agency relationship day-to-day should attend, alongside a senior decision-maker. Avoid loading the room with observers who will not be involved in the work, it changes the dynamic and makes genuine conversation harder to achieve.
What should a good case brief look like? A good case brief is grounded in a real business challenge and specific enough to require genuine strategic thinking. Its format can vary: some clients leave the structure deliberately open to see how agencies frame the problem themselves, while others set a more rigid format with defined questions and constraints. Either way, the brief should not have an obvious right answer. If it does, you are testing presentation skill rather than strategic reasoning. Where the format is open, agencies typically need one to two weeks to prepare a response.
How do the chemistry and case findings feed into the final selection? The findings from both stages help you rank the remaining agencies on dimensions that scores alone cannot capture: consistency, intellectual honesty, and team quality. They inform which agencies move into the commercial negotiation round, and they provide a reference point when evaluating how the commercial proposals align with the strategic ambition each agency demonstrated. For a fuller picture of the transition that follows, see how leading advertisers manage the move to a new media agency.
