Over the last 20 years I’ve worked as a Planner/Strategist at five agencies and freelanced at over a dozen more and they’ve nearly all claimed to have their very own, unique to them, insight ‘process’. This is usually brought to life in a pitch with a powerpoint slide using circles and/or arrows from left to … Continue reading Independent agencies – sorry, but your strategic ‘process’ isn’t unique
Work/life balance is very important to me – I'm a part-timer for various reasons, but I also definitely do better strategic work when I’m more rested, less stressed and generally feeling in control of my life. Almost anyone who has worked in a decent sized agency will have experienced emails on Sundays, late nights at … Continue reading We have to get better at work/life balance – and pitches aren’t helping
I worked on a pitch last Spring that I was really pleased with. I like pitching, it's like Old School Planning but with the whole process set to fast-forward and this particular pitch prep went pretty much swimmingly with a talented team producing IMHO what was a very strong pitch. The research was robust, the … Continue reading do clients get the creative they deserve?
You may have already deduced from the lack of posts from me recently that I’ve just surfaced from spending a month immersed in a major pitch (*crosses fingers, waits for phone call*). unpublished creative work-in-progress for The Pitch by Empire Design taken from AMC's website Does your agency pitch, or do you make a point … Continue reading in praise of pitching
I’ve been working on an integrated pitch where I had to brief in the entire pitch team on my ‘thinking so far’ a couple of days prior to creative briefing. So last week I started writing the ‘show your workings’ stuff onto sheets of A4 and adding in good charts from research the client provided … Continue reading why didn’t I think of this before?
In the world of agency New Business, you used to know where you were by simply looking at the calendar. Pitch Season ran according to the academic year, with a particular spike in activity between September and the end of November. I’ve been working in and around agencies for twelve years now and one of … Continue reading Whatever happened to Pitch Season?
Even though I’m freelance I still take part in quite a few proper pitches. I mean the full-blown strategy + creative + logistics + budget presentations in front of senior clients where they decide based on a ninety minute presentation whether or not to spend a million pounds plus with the agency. Comparing these agency … Continue reading The Laws of the Pitch Room
AgencyLand has always struggled to know what to do when they’d really like to work with two businesses in the same category. Do they decide that they’re cars or house building specialists and work with lots of brands in that sector – or do they decide that would be a conflict and only work with … Continue reading is it a Conflict or a Specialism?
I’ve been witness to some truly terrible Crimes Against Powerpoint in the last couple of months, mostly when one of my agency clients send me old qual research reports as background to projects. I still can’t believe quite how appalling some of them are, from the over-use of dodgy clipart and cheesy stock photography (blurry … Continue reading Less words, more (and better) images
I was talking to a client recently about a one-off focus group they wanted me to moderate to support a pitch and possibly went slightly overboard emphasising how I wasn’t prepared to simply produce pitch fodder and therefore wouldn’t tolerate agency people sitting in observing the group, being ‘encouraged’ as to what the research recommendations … Continue reading When does Research cross the line and become Pitch Fodder?
