Fryed Egg Productions has been selected as the final candidate for the media management partnership with the City of Plant City.
There were eight companies who placed bids for the contract. Fryed Egg was the only Plant City business
to toss its hat in the ring. City Manager Bill McDaniel said the location of the applying businesses had no impact on the final decision. Yvonne Fry, owner and president of Fryed Egg, said that local touch allows her to put her heart into the work in a way others may not have been able to.
“It’s a quicker integration as far as understanding some of the dynamics and I think much more so than that it’s about the heart of it,” Fry said. “I believe our leadership here, our elected leaders and so on, it’s about that commitment to the community… I’m a mom and the majority of the things I do are about how do I build a community that my kids would want to live in and be a part of? I think that adds something special and different.”
The bid was placed on June 28 on the city’s website, bidsync.com and demandstar.com and businesses had three weeks to submit their proposals.
The city’s request for proposals stated the company hired would be expected to tackle issues like branding and design, assist with social media, create original content for the city’s accounts, develop and produce videos and photos, write press releases and monthly newsletters and aid in website management.
The city has allotted $70,000 to the project. The cheapest bid was $60,000 annually but had major additional fees for website management, video and photo production. Fryed Egg had the second-lowest bid at $120,000 annually. The highest bid requested $616,220 a year. McDaniel said once the final negotiations are completed they will have made all the cuts in the contract necessary to get to an agreement.
The RFP committee reviewed the proposals, whittled it down to the top three and then the number one candidate.
“All of the services were relatively similar,” McDaniel said. “A lot simply came down to price. I have a particular vision of what I wanted to accomplish and I had a budget. Some of the proposals far exceeded that budget, others were in the neighborhood. During these final negotiations, we ended up taking website management out of the proposal to get the price down to our budget.”
Using an RFP to hire an outside business ends up saving the city quite a lot of funds since it doesn’t have to hire new staff, allocate office space, buy the necessary equipment or provide the city benefits.
McDaniel stated it was his mission upon being selected as City Manager to improve the city’s communication with its residents. The next fiscal year includes major projects like the new fire station, North Park Isle, street resurfacing and a major overhaul of several parks. Keeping residents informed and up to date on the city’s plans is one of his top priorities as city manager.
He said he watched Fryed Egg work with Vice Mayor Nate Kilton to get videos out to the public and while he in no way wants to mimic that he believes using videos is a great medium to convey meaningful updates to the public. He began crafting an RFP that would help the city accomplish all of his goals. He said he knew what he wanted, but was never afraid to borrow from “somebody else’s wheel if they’ve invented a good one.” The city has sample RFPs, he worked closely with procurement and began looking to other sources as well.
Fry has worked with the city before with the Midtown Project and Plant City Right Now and McDaniel said he did pull part of what he liked from one of her proposals to add to his own RFP.
“I had a proposal from her that I certainly took elements out of to write our own RFP, but we used other sources and I wrote some of it originally myself,” McDaniel said. “It’s a combination of things that we get. She is a communication firm in this city, so obviously she’s going to be out there doing what firms do and soliciting business and everything else. I have a very good relationship with Yvonne and I think I’m going to have a good working relationship with Yvonne. I’m looking forward to this.”
The proposal is for media management for the city, not for a gatekeeper, McDaniel said. If there is a last minute announcement from the state or PCPD he can simply send one email and have it blasted across all of the city’s platforms.
During Monday night’s commission meeting, city commissioners will vote to either approve or deny the contract. If approved, the contract lasts for one year with built-in renewals they can choose to execute if they wish. McDaniel said they will revisit the issue at the end of the year and see what the best step for the city is at that point in time.