Posts Tagged Pitching
not so perfect pitch
screengrab from the infamous agency.com Subway pitch video
I’m prepping a pitch at the moment. So I was interested to read Merry Baskin’s piece in March’s Admap about the pitch process.
Merry’s Ten Top Tips for Agencies includes ‘Rehearse. Three times- once for content and storyline, twice in front of an audience and thrice, the dress rehearsal.’ Three times? The reality of agency pitching as I’ve experienced it (in several agencies) is less about Merry’s multiple rehearsals or Jon ‘Perfect Pitch
Pitch-date-minus-21-days: Pitch brief arrives. Ignored by everyone for 3 days in order to firefight latest client crisis.
-17 days: Designated Account Director requests Dream Team for pitch. DayDream Team and half the creative resource actually required assigned.
-16: Team kick off meeting called. But takes a week to find gap in everyone’s diary.
-15: Read 148 page powerpoint briefing document and accompanying three research debriefs. Not clear which research methodology used or when it took place so of limited use, but will have to refer to in pitch or will loose points.
-13: No budget for fresh research, so recruit next door neighbour’s hairdresser and the receptionist’s dog for depth interviews.
-8: Pitch team kick off meeting actually happens. Result of meeting – everyone needs to do some work before we can have another meeting.
-6: Creative brief written. Due to multiple audiences and channel outputs required by pitch, brief is four pages long. Major editing required.
-5: Brief Creative. They ‘challenge’ the client’s brief. Remind them of the difference between wining a pitch and actually producing effective work.
-4: Start writing presentation/leave behind. Writer’s block.
-4: Creative First Thoughts. Some ideas total genius and some less so. The bad ones are going to take a lot of getting rid of.
-3: Creative Second Thoughts. They bring their CD in for Extra Fire Power. Agree compromise. Consider alternative career in United Nations, Hostage Negotiation etc.
-3: Show first draft of presentation to agency VIP. He has had a better idea, but not thought to mention it until now. Rewrite presentation, incorporating VIP’s ideas and post-rationalising change in creative direction.
-3: Check someone has booked a visualiser. The fast-and-good guy is booked on another job. We have the good-but-slower guy.
-2: Double check someone has booked trains/planes/hotels etc. Point out that perhaps we won’t be at our best having got up at 4.30am to catch the train.
-1: Should be rehearsing now, but visualiser is still wielding his felt tips, have run out of spray mount and agency VIP would like to make a ‘few tweaks’ to the powerpoint.
-1 (late): Sending out for pizza.
-1 (even later): Hunting for an A2 artwork bag. Might have more luck hunting for Loch Ness Monster.
Pitch Day! : Got boards, laptop with presentation, projector and pitch team all together and heading out the door. We can always rehearse on the train, right?
3 comments 13 March, 2010
Clients behaving badly
New Business is turning into a bit of a farce at the moment.
A client I pitched for in November (who announced within 24 hours that we were down to the final two agencies) let us know today that they’d finally made the decision to appoint the other lot. That’s three months it took them to chose between agencies A and B. How hard can it be?
Then there’s the never ending PQQs, ITTs and other tendering related, time vampire red tape, the client who took so long to decide on which agency to appoint that they went bust in the meantime and the clients who are seemingly incapable of returning calls or emails politely enquiring if a long overdue pitch decision is imminent.
Pitching is an incredibly expensive way of doing business and most clients don’t seem to realise that the agency ‘overflow’ resources which have to be redirected towards time consuming pitches are becoming increasingly scarce in businesses that are running a tight ship in order to stay afloat in this stormy economy.
Fortunately my place is winning new business as well as being messed about a lot (otherwise I’d be worrying about my job), but in the meantime, may I present the New Rules For Clients Upon Calling A Pitch:
- Underestimate the budget you have allocated as it will almost certainly have reduced by the time you get round to appointing an agency.
- If you think your company is about to go bust, now is not a good time to hold a pitch.
- Pitching is very, very expensive from the agency’s point of view. And it takes up a lot of your time and resources too. There may be agencies hungry for work and desperate to get on the pitch list, but limit creative pitches to as many agencies as you can count on one hand. And tell them how many they’re up against so they can make an informed decision on whether to proceed or not.
- Keep in touch. Honestly, we understand that your company’s circumstances might unexpectedly shift and you’ll need to re-evaluate. But only if you actually talk to us.
you can run, but you can’t hide, Mr Client
2 comments 17 February, 2009
Pitches Pending
I’ve got an in-tray full of Pending Pitch Outcomes. There’s everything in there, from £M+ integrated bonanzas to consultancy projects and startups.
But none of them have been signed off. In every instance we’re the agency of choice, or are down to the final two, but the client has delayed their actual decision to appoint – in some cases for several months now.
It’s a bit disheartening when you (and a large chunk of agency resource) throw yourself into a full blown pitch, confident that the client has promised to make their decision within a few days of your presentation, only to be kept waiting…and waiting…
I’m doing all the usual keeping-front-of-mind proactive measures but it seems that the dire economic conditions are making senior management extremely reluctant to sign off any new marketing spend or to commit themselves to anything that doesn’t have an immediate and totally measurable ROI (hello, online media chaps).
Pitching in itself isn’t exactly a cheap way of winning business. But the Tender Queens tell me they’re experiencing similar problems and it’s not just my agency, it seems to be pretty much across the board. So I guess we’ll all just have to keep keeping our fingers crossed.
Add comment 7 December, 2008
pitching should be a two-way process
At the Northern Planning Summit last Thursday night in Sheffield we ended up discussing what would you chose not to pitch for as an agency?, which encompassed wider issues like are they flogging booze/sub-prime finance/fags/politics (delete according to where you draw the line) and are they likely to turn into the client from hell?
Which made me think alot about Pitching on the drive home. I must easily spend half my time at work on New Business and it seems to me that agencies are increasingly dancing to the client’s tune and agreeing to pitch for accounts or even short-term projects where the odds are what bookmakers would euphemistically refer to as “a long shot”.
It would take a very brave agency MD to make a stand and refuse to pitch for anything, but perhaps if we were all a bit more bolshy and treated the pitch process as more of a two-way interview, we might end up only actually full-blown pitching for those accounts which we were sure that client and agency were a good match – and therefore more likely to produce a successful pitch outcome.
3 comments 19 August, 2007
a few updates and rants
Having got down to the last two from a gazillion agencies for The Pitch and getting through four full-on client pitch meetings at the other end of the country, we didn’t get it. Client decided to stay with the incumbent. WILL YOU PLEASE MAKE YOUR MINDS UP PEOPLE!
I watched The Departed last night (spoiler follows). Couldn’t they have thought of a few more imaginative ways of killing everyone off than just blowing their brains out? In fact, was it absolutely essential to the story to kill all but one of the characters off?
The Joseph/any dream will do consipracy theory continues. I realised last night that I’ve seen Daniel Boys from the program somewhere before – playing the lead role in Rent when I went to see it a few years ago. I’m not sure how playing the lead in a west end show qualifies him to enter a unknown-and-desperate-to-play-the-lead-in-a-west-end-show competition, but there you go…
I have to go and look around pet stores (detouring via the puppies and kittens) this afternoon, so its not all bad. Rants over, normal service resumes tomorrow.
4 comments 2 May, 2007
This is getting ridiculous
I’m nearing the end of a Big Pitch (the fact that most of my recent posts have comprised details of cross-country odysseys might have been a clue). The thing is, I’ve visited the same town in the South East of England three times in the last couple of months, but have I visited their famous cathedral? Have I heck. Its a really nice town, with fab independent shops and a really relaxed vibe, but all I’ve seen have been eating/drinking/sleeping establishments, the train station and the client’s offices. Must try harder.
PS I did use the quote. It was from Matrix. I like to think in its own small way it helped us get through to the next round :-)
4 comments 17 April, 2007
Perfect Pitch Live
Almost all of London’s Planning and New Business community (plus Northern Planner and I) packed themselves into the Holiday Inn last night to hear Jon Steel reveal the secrets of the Perfect Pitch
The book and Jon’s talk were slightly skewed towards WPP-style international agency networks and their clients (‘first fly your global pitch team to one location’ and ‘as you’ll have several months to work on the pitch’ being among the classics in the book) but Jon was warmly received and made some very sensible points:
1) Dump the Blackberry. Apparently your IQ drops ten points when you’re constantly being interrupted by calls and emails. Jon also pointed out that the subconscious mind is better at processing data than the conscious mind, so you need to stop work and go and do something else for a bit to let your brain get on with it.
2) Bin PowerPoint. Or at the very least just include a few key images and statements on very clean slides – put all the detail in the leave behind.
3) When in doubt, leave it out. An image tells a thousand charts. Just because you’ve done half a dozen focus groups and commissioned some Quant to boot, it doesn’t mean that you have to report it all in detail. Insights only.
Of course, in a perfect world we wouldn’t ever have to go through pitches – clients choosing agencies on the basis of their reputation, work for existing clients and chemistry with the account team. But maybe its only the frantic environment of a pitch that produces the kind of breakthrough thinking that clients are looking for?
By the way – Hello to anyone who was there and I didn’t say hi to – for example I’ve no idea what Beeker looks like. Perhaps we should have had badges with name, agency and blog on to make things easier.
5 comments 17 January, 2007
The art of the Perfect Pitch
I’ve finally got my hands on Jon Steel’s new book Perfect Pitch
(the new business guys had been hogging the agency copy). I’ve only had chance to get through the first couple of chapters so far, but I’m so fired up.
Jon also wrote the modern Planner’s bible Truth, Lies and Advertising, which I’ve gone back to so often I can quote huge chunks verbatim.
Jon will be talking through some of the key points from Perfect Pitch at an Account Planning Group event on Tuesday 16th January – is anyone else going?
****UPDATE****12th Jan****
I just checked the APG’s website and the venue for Jon’s talk has moved.
2 comments 8 January, 2007
