A short film in a tender or a bid: the answer that argues without you

You write the bid. Somebody you will never meet reads it, scores it, and moves to the next one. That is the whole problem, and a film is one of the few things you can put in front of that person which keeps working while you are somewhere else.

Why a film travels further than a written answer

The argument for a film in a tender is not that films are nice. It is arithmetic. An evaluator may read dozens of documents in a short window, and every one of them claims the same things in the same register. Your written answer has to survive being skimmed by somebody who is tired, and it has to survive being read by somebody who has already read something better. A film is watched, not skimmed, so it is one of the only parts of a submission that arrives whole.

It also travels into rooms you are not standing in. The clarifications, the shortlist review, the internal conversation between the buyer and a colleague who never opened the appendix. In all of those, what gets repeated is the short version. If the short version is a film, that is what gets repeated.

There is a third effect that matters more than either. A film can say plainly what a document has to imply. "Here is who does the work" is weak on page fourteen of a method statement. Spoken, with the process moving on screen, it is unambiguous. You cannot attend every meeting. You can send something that attends on your behalf.

What an evaluator is actually scoring

Almost every tender publishes evaluation criteria, and those criteria are usually a numbered list with weights. That list is the only reliable brief you will get. Write the film against it.

The practical method is to read the criteria as the running order of the film and answer each one in a segment you can point at. Speak the criterion language back. If the buyer asks for implementation method, say implementation method and then show it. If they ask for risk management, give risk its own thirty seconds rather than burying it in a sentence about quality assurance.

Two cautions. Do not read the scoring sheet back at people; the film should answer the criteria, not recite them. And do not claim anything the written bid does not also say. The film illustrates the submission, it does not extend it. If the film and the document disagree about a number, the evaluator now has a reason to ask a question you would rather not answer.

What you are really buying with the film is the part of the answer that paper cannot carry:

• Emphasis. A document gives every paragraph equal weight; a film decides what matters and says so.
• Sequence. You can show a process in the order it happens, which is how people understand a method.
• Tone. Calm, precise and confident reads very differently from a page of assurances.

Where a film may be submitted, and where it may not

This is the part where nobody can give you a general answer, including us. Submission rules differ between buyers, between procedures, and between the portals that carry them. Some portals accept a video file as a supporting document. Some set a maximum file size that a normal export will exceed. Some allow a link to a hosted file, some forbid any material that is not inside the submission, and some will not open an attachment of that type at all. Some procedures invite a presentation and will accept a recording; others are explicit that no additional material will be considered.

The rule that governs is the buyer's. The instructions to tenderers, the portal's own guidance and any clarification answers the buyer issues are the only authority on what you may send, in what format, by when. Read them before you commission anything, because they are also the only authority on whether the film counts towards evaluation at all, or sits outside the scored material as background.

Practical consequences worth accepting up front:

• Ask the question early if it is genuinely unclear. Clarification deadlines exist for exactly this, and a two line answer can save a wasted production.
• Design the film to be optional. It should add to a submission that already stands complete without it, so that a buyer who cannot open it loses nothing.
• Keep the film and its carrier separate in your own head. The film is the content; the file, the link and the transcript are just ways of getting it there, and the permitted way may not be the one you prefer.

Length and structure for an evaluation panel

Match the length to how the film will be watched, not to the maximum you are allowed. A panel watching a tender film is motivated but short of time, and unlike a trade fair loop they will stop if you waste the opening. As a working habit, a film that carries a bid argument holds a panel for three to five minutes. A visual sample used as supporting material can be far shorter, often sixty to ninety seconds.

Structure it so it can be navigated, because it will be watched in fragments as often as end to end:

1. Open with what is being offered and who is offering it. Twenty seconds is enough, and a long introduction costs you the attention you need later.
2. Give each evaluation criterion its own clearly marked section, with its own heading on screen. An evaluator taking notes needs somewhere to write.
3. Close by repeating the essentials: the bid name, the reference number, the one thing you want remembered. Panel members watch their fourth film of the morning, and the reference number is what lets them find you again afterwards.

Assume it will be watched on a laptop with the sound off at least once, and on a phone in a corridor. That is not a reason to avoid speech. It is a reason to make the on screen text carry the argument on its own.

The same film in the meeting after you win

A film built for a tender is not spent when the tender ends. It is already the clearest explanation of your method that exists inside your organisation, and the people who need it most have not seen it.

The opening segment is a mobilisation or kick off asset, because it answers the question a new team asks in week one: what did we actually promise. Shorten it to ninety seconds and it becomes the opening of the client meeting, and the honest move is to say so rather than replaying the whole submission at people who have already read it. The criteria sections double as onboarding for the delivery team, especially the parts about risk and reporting, which are usually the first things forgotten once the work starts.

One warning from experience of how bids are actually won. Keep the tender version and the client version as two exports of one master, so a figure cannot be updated in one and left stale in the other. A single master with a single set of numbers is worth more than two films that are each slightly right.

Accessibility, files and portals

An evaluator who cannot hear your film, or cannot open it, has not seen your bid. Treat both as scoring risks.

Caption the film. Burned in captions or a subtitle file both work, and captions help in a noisy office, in an open plan room, and for anyone reading in a second language, which in procurement is most people. Never let sound carry meaning alone: if a number is spoken, put it on screen as well. Our notes on captions and accessibility go through the practical side of this in more detail.

On format, be deliberately boring. H.264 video and AAC audio inside an MP4 container is the combination that plays almost everywhere without a plugin, which is exactly what you want when the person watching is not technical and has no time to install anything. Avoid unusual codecs and wrappers however good they look in the export dialogue, because a file that will not open in the buyer's portal is worth nothing at all.

Keep the file size sane. Portals often impose upload limits, and a heavy export can be rejected at the last moment, which is the worst possible time to discover it. Test the upload before the deadline rather than on it. Supply a transcript as a separate plain document where you are allowed to, and keep the film as one self contained file with the words drawn into the picture, so it does not depend on fonts installed on a machine you will never see. Sending a film quickly is worth nothing if it arrives as a folder of pieces.

When you have two days, not two weeks

The short answer is that you cut scope, not quality. Drop the voiceover and let on screen text and music carry it. Reduce the running order to the two or three criteria that carry the most weight, and let the written bid do the rest. One good segment proves a method better than four thin ones prove a breadth.

Start by checking the look. Nine's free page reads your website and plays Nine's own films in your colours, with no account and no card. It makes no film of your own and hands over no file, so it is nothing to put in a bid, but it answers the question a buyer will otherwise ask, which is whether the final film will look like you. A film of your own comes with a plan, is written from your words in your look, and is judged before you see it against a bar of nine out of ten; under that it goes back once, and if it still falls short you see its score with it. How it works is on the front page.

Then simplify ruthlessly. Exploit the fact that one film can be saved as a wide, a tall and a square version, so the version you show on a phone in a corridor is the same master as the one in the submission. Reuse one segment and one closing card across every cut. If the timeline is genuinely impossible, supply a storyboard and a still, and say clearly when the film will follow. A buyer would rather read an honest note than discover a missing attachment.

Finally, remember what the film is for. It is not there to be admired. It is there so that the strongest version of your argument is still being made in the room after you have left it. Prices are on the pricing page, and if you would like to see your colours in motion first, the free page shows them on Nine's own films.