Pitching is like a nauseating awesome first date.
The quintessential agency pitch is deeply flawed and quickly becoming outdated and obsolete.
[This story was originally written in 2014. Things have changed. People have moved on. Keep that in mind as you read this story today>
You go on this date with a friend of a friend you know very little about. He takes you to the Santa Monica Pier at night, buys you a foot-long corn dog and wins you a giant stuffed unicorn.
You guys have a blast. He is funny, witty, good looking, charming.
He checks all the boxes. This is it. He is the one.
You decide to elope to Reno…
Yeah, you see where this is going?
To Pitch Or Not To Pitch.
A while back I was asked to list key qualities and personality traits required to become a good, if not great, Creative Director. As I was consulting with a few fellow colleagues, one of the historically crucial skill became a vivid point of contention: A Creative Director must be able to pitch anything.
Now, we’re not talking about the basic “selling your idea” to your boss kind of pitch. Of course any graphic designer, copywriter and art director needs to be able to “sell” his/her idea to their direct report in order to get it vetted, and subsequently pushed through the production stage. The Creative Director in that respect MUST be able to sell the work of his team to the client. That is a given.
No, what quickly became a point of contention amongst our panel was the New Business Pitch as seen in many movies and shows that has become a culturally expected characteristic of the quintessential Creative Director.
Once upon a time, the showmanship of the star Creative Director was deeply linked to the number of accounts a Madison Avenue agency would land, and thus define its good fortune.
But things have changed since the 60s, 70s and even 90s. While the Request For Proposal process is still very much alive for a lot of competing agencies, a lot of shops are now very well equipped with fully capable Biz Dev teams which are perfectly suited to land new accounts without the once revered “Creative Pitch.”
Now of course all agencies differ greatly in manner of cultures, ethics and workflows... Some of my dear friends are still very much involved in the new business acquisition process, while others have not been involved in an RFP in years. But the more fundamental question here for Jr. Designers, Art Directors and Copywriters is:
“Do I need to master the art of the pitch to eventually become a great Creative Director?”
Many ad students have reached out to me over the years crippled with fear of public speaking, or simply not having that personable charisma most “As Seen On TV” Creative Directors seem to possess.
Well, I personally think that you definitely CAN be a great Creative Director, even if the very idea of presenting an ad campaign to a potential new client is sending you right back to bed. Why? Because I think that the very process of the “Agency Pitch” itself is very flawed and will quickly become a thing of the past, if not already completely obsolete.
The “New Business” Business.
For many decades, the new business pitch has been the only way any ad agency in the world would land new clients and accounts and therefore grow to worldwide prosperity or disappear into oblivion, sometimes overnight. We all know at least a dozen colleagues who have been victims of their agency losing an account by the way of review or sudden change of direction by client. That is the business we are in. There are days of celebrations, and there are days of layoffs. Welcome to the advertising business. We live and die with our clients coming and leaving.
Only problem is that the new business process, which ultimately leads to “The Pitch”, is deeply flawed. Today, many new-gen marketers are looking for something more than the old-fashion showmanship and exuberant dazzling boardroom presentations created in a silo. Again, this is a point of contention amongst many ad execs, so this is not by any means a right or wrong kind of discussion. But I can tell you that based on my personal experience, traditional ad pitches are on their way out. And quickly.
“New-generation marketers are looking for something more than the old-fashion showmanship and exuberant dazzling boardroom presentations.”
For example, over the past 5 years, my own agency has acquired over 60 new clients of various sizes and shapes, which greatly helped us being selected for the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing companies last year. We’ve been very fortunate. We have also worked very hard and very diligently. I can also tell you that out of those 60+ new clients, only 6 came through a more formal review process. Out of those 6 invitations, we only won 3. We’re not even sure why we didn’t win the other 3. But we effectively landed 57 clients WITHOUT any “Creative Pitch” and landed only 3 with. And nowadays we don’t even address formal RFP requests from consultancy agencies.
Why?
We simply do not believe in pitching a spec ad campaign to a potential client without any depth of understanding from both sides. Our brand managers have very limited access to the information they would really need to create a truly compelling creative brief for my creatives. From the client’s point-of-view, they have very limited access to our problem-solving and creative approach. They only see the end result created in a vaccum. They have no idea how we got to this final concept, and that is really all they should care about if interested in a long-term relationship with an agency. That time-honored process is disturbingly flawed. That process is a trite blind date with no tomorrow.
Your pitch may provide a singular “great idea” by only skirting the client’s real situation, but eventually that concept will unmistakably be tweaked to death, or simply discarded because the market conditions have changed, then what?
Well congratulations, you’ve effectively won a new account based on a thorough bureaucratic process, a terrific showmanship and a singular great concept that is probably not going to see the light of the day, and at great expense I may add, both for the client and the agencies involved in the review. But now you are in a deeply committed relationship with a client who knows just about nothing about you, except the fact that once you had a great idea and that you know how to put on a good show. An awesome first date.
The whole Pitch process is fine and dandy and makes for memorable anecdotes for many marketers who sat through a few, but let’s be honest with ourselves, the Pitch does very little to assess the right fit or right partnership, which is ultimately what a marketer ought to be looking for.
Is This Agency The Right Fit For Us?
What a brand needs to find out while looking for a partner is about fit, compatibility, chemistry. Not just the big idea that may or may not be used, but the actual people who created it and who will have to create another 5, 10 or 20 projects in the next 12 months. How they got to the big idea is far more important than the big idea itself. The culture is most likely going to be a potential issue, as well as the daily workflow and overall business values. When our current clients hired us, they actually interviewed us, and we definitely interviewed them as well. There is such a thing as a bad client from the agency standpoint as well.
The process we use in our agency is very similar to a slightly more sophisticated executive hiring process. The client is firstly made very familiar with our process, staff and culture by our wonderful Business Development team, think of it as the “résumé” and “phone interview” stages. Soon after, our team invites the potential client to come by the agency where they are welcome to “interview” all our senior executives individually or collectively, and ask as many open questions as they want. Nothing held back. Think of it as speed dating, but with the entire family.
The disruption on our end is very minimal which allows us to keep doing what we do best, which is taking care of our existing clients. And I’m quite certain our clients appreciate not being treated as second-class citizens while we’re in “Hunting Mode.”
As a Creative Director, this dynamic process also means that I do not have to scramble around and dismantle hard working creative teams in order to put some of my best assets on New Biz duties, which can have devastating effects on chemistry, deadlines, budgets, not to mention a severe strain on client relationships:
— “I’m sorry we can’t get that to you today, because we’re pitching Burberry tomorrow and that’s our biggest priority right now. You understand right?”
Yep, way to make a client feel really special.
No Make-Up.
The impossible deadlines? The truncated budgets?”
After the in-house interview process is over, the potential client is free to think it over and reflect on their team’s findings and feelings. We must be pretty good at that since this process has worked out pretty well for us for over 60 times now. And if they didn’t like what they saw or heard, no feelings hurt. We didn’t miss a beat.
This happened just this past week. A potential new client was brought in our agency to be introduced in person to all our senior level executives. We all sat down with the CEO and CMO and had very open conversations about their current and future needs, and over a few hours they were able to get a very precise idea of what our business values are, our agency culture, our internal chemistry and they were able to effortlessly picture the potential interactions of their own marketing teams with our people. A relationship. What a novel idea.
Our executives are all so comfortable with this fluid process that sometimes I am not even aware that a potential client is visiting us, and I am often being pulled into an impromptu “meet-and-greet”. But the great thing about it, is that I really don’t need to prepare for it. I am only going to be asked about things I know like the back of my hand. My background, the creative process, the thinking behind some of our best work, our daily workflow, our creative capabilities, bandwidth flexibility, worst-case scenarios…
Because let’s be honest with ourselves, the honeymoon phase will be very short. Quickly, things will go awry, budgets will be overspent and deadlines will be jeopardized. But at least now the new client can be comfortable with the idea that we can be a good fit and a strong complement for their needs knowing their own shortcomings.
The marketing world has drastically shifted in many respects over the past few years. Today, new marketers no longer care to be wined and dined. They want to know what you’re made of. What you’re REALLY made of on your worst day. Without make-up.
They want to know that you’ll be able to strengthen their marketing and in-house creative teams next week, next month and next year.
They want to know if you’ll be able to play nice with their other 36 social media, PR and digital vendors.
They are coming to you because they need a partner who can deliver where they can’t. They need somebody who can complete them so they can go to market with the confidence that they are as prepared as they can be. They need somebody who can understand and learn their business in order to bring a fresh new perspective to the table.
They want to make sure you are going to be in the foxhole with them when things start getting hectic and murky, and not pawning them off to a junior team so you can go chase a shiny new account. Today’s marketers don’t want lengthy and flashy presentations. Tomorrow’s marketers will want meaningful and substantial discussions.
“Today’s marketers don’t want lengthy and flashy presentations.
Tomorrow’s marketers will want meaningful and substantial discussions.”
I strongly believe this is the future of the agency new business process, and that is the reason why I no longer hire nor promote senior creatives for their innate boasting showmanship abilities. I’ll take a smart creative problem-solver over a flamboyant and daper presenter any day.
The Creative Directors of the future will be keen and insightful diplomats and counselors.
And the future is now.
