Pitching Creative Work & Ideas: When less is more

Nobody likes a pitch ask someone from an agency, and the answer you would get is that it costs money, they redirect your concentration from your existing clients and for every idea selected few are rejected.

If it’s the only way new work is presented to you then you have to take the punt.

So the important question is what constitutes a great pitch? There are essentially two parts to a great pitch: Preparation & Presentation.
Preparation.

Preparation depends on whether you have a signed off brief that gives you absolute clarity on what’s expected from you.

What’s going to be the take away from the creative for the target audience?

You should blank blank because blank.
You should verb noun because of single compelling reason.

So this brings us to next question.

Do clients know what they want? Chances are they don’t know which is pretty evident from the fact that most briefs are confusing.

Clients have multiple channels to cover, more stakeholders than they had a decade ago and many stakeholders to please which makes their task a difficult one.

So they need to know ‘what not to do’ which becomes more important than ever. Creative agencies have to guide clients on strategy as well which is essentially guiding them on what they shouldn’t do.

Presentation

Remember that they are buying you as much as the idea hence it is important that you focus on building the relationship and find common ground.

When it comes to pitching creative work in hope to land more gigs we all could use a little help. There are no short-cuts when it comes to making the perfect pitch but tips that you could use help you land your next client or creative project.

Selling is believing

If you don’t believe in what you are saying it’s unlikely that a client or someone listening to you will sign it off unless it’s coming from your heart. Take the time to understand what drives you. If you an articulate why you do what you do, then you can frame your work in a much broader context.

Tom Evans, Founder of BleepBleeps talks about the importance of believing in your ideas.

Foot in the door (FITD)
The foot-in-the-door technique is a compliance tactic that involves getting a person to agree to a large request by first having that person agree to a modest request. The method succeeds owing to a fundamental human reality that social scientists call ‘successive approximations.’ It works by first getting a small ‘yes’ and then getting an even bigger ‘yes.’”

Make ’em sick, make ’em well
First, you make the client sick by sharing the issues they’re having with their brands and their websites. Often, there’s too much going on: visual clutter and unclear calls to action are the most common issues sites more than three or four years old face. Then you cure them with your creative. While most agencies try this technique, the trick is not to hurt senior management’s ego during the exercise rather massage it. In short, make the client the hero.

Don’t give away all your bricks

Agencies often tend to cover every possible idea they could think of in the pitch which sort of becomes an overdose for the client. Focus on what’s the one thing that you want the client to remember after the pitch. Giving away all your ideas on the pitch is not a good idea.

Remember how the relationship started

The standard pitch may not work with a client that comes to you as a referral as opposed to those coming via your network, or vice versa. Depending on how you initially got the lead, you might need to adjust your pitch. Alternately whether you should or should not participate in pitch can also be determined basis certain criteria as mentioned by Gemma Germains, Co-Founder of WellMade.