Catherine Emprin — Managing Director, BETC Paris
Catherine talks to TheNextGag about conducting new business pitches, why doing pro-bono work is essential for an agency and the secret to winning a new client.
Catherine Emprin is a Managing Director in charge of New Business at BETC Paris in France.
Catherine Emprin is a graduate of HEC, and Ecole du Louvre (Master in Fine Arts History). She started out in advertising at FCB, then Publicis, and joined the Havas group in 1996.
In 2000, she joined BETC Paris, and is now Managing Director of the agency, heading the new business team.
She is also in charge of the agency pro bono initiatives, which are a key part of BETC’s CSR policy. Thus she works with several NGOs on women’s causes, on human rights (HRW, Reporters without borders), and also with cultural institutions (Philharmony of Paris, French National Library, Musée des Arts Décoratifs).
She was on the team that developed the multi-awarded social media campaign Like my addiction for the NGO Addict Aide.
She is a member of the board of the French Alliance of Paris. She has published three novels at Kero Editions, and has written chronicles in Clés, a French society magazine.
Catherine Emprin was Jury President of the Creative Effectiveness at the Eurobest 2017.
THENEXTGAG: WHAT EXACTLY IS YOUR ROLE AT BETC ?
CATHERINE EMPRIN: I am a Managing Director here at BETC. There are three components to what I do.
The first aspect is the new business. I manage our development strategy for potential clients, and sometimes, for our current clients also. The new business activity often goes down to agency pitches. My role is to orchestrate the pitch within the agency, always with another MD or VP and with the help of my new business team. That’s my main activity.
The second aspect is to work with Mercedes Erra on most of her interventions, speaking engagements, essays, outreach programs …
And the third aspect of what I do is to lead our pro bono department. We have developed quite a strong pro bono division at the agency. It is now a big part of our sustainability report. That’s our way of giving back to the community. So, we have developed pro bono work for many charities, NGOs and art or cultural institutions. Of course, a lot of what we do is related to women and gender-equality issues. For example, we have been involved with the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society. Themes around women have always been a major focus for us. And then, you have the human rights theme. On that, we work with the Human Rights Watch NGO. And then, there is the culture. On this theme, we have been working with the National Museum of the History of Immigration, the Paris Philharmony. At the moment, we are working on an upcoming campaign for the Decorative Arts Museum as pro-bono.
TNG: DO YOU LEAD THESE PROJECTS DIRECTLY ?
CE: Yes, indeed. I manage these projects directly. These are the three main pillars of my job.
TNG: WHO TAKES THE DECISION TO HELP THIS OR THAT NGO OR THIS CULTURAL INSTITUTION ?
CE: We take the decision collectively. Often, it starts from a meeting that one of the leaders has with someone that asks him or her to get involved. It starts with a meeting. That’s obvious. A meeting between someone from the agency and a NGO manager.
We don’t actively seek at all this type of pro-bono work. It is the charities that come to us and ask us to work with them. But, we want to stay careful with who we partner with. And we cannot take all of them. When doing charity work you are using the resources of the agency. It is an act of generosity. For us, it is part of our sustainability missions.
Working on new business is the ultimate boredom killer.
TNG: YOU MENTIONED CONDUCTING NEW BUSINESS PITCHES. I CAN IMAGINE THAT AFTER A WHILE, YOU GET TO KNOW YOUR KEY MESSAGES BY HEART ?
CE: No, no. Not at all. We don’t give a rehearsed pitch. Never. Each time, we are in a new business pitch, I always feel like we are starting all over from scratch. We learn about a new industry, we learn about the challenges facing the businesses, we learn about the competition landscape. It’s the opposite of routine. Working on new business is the ultimate boredom killer. You have to research industries, challenges, major actors. And then, you start this process all over again for the next pitch. You are required to have a tailor-made speech in new business. For each pitch, you have to bring a fresh thinking to the table.
For example, we don’t even have a standard pitch deck when we are introducing the agency to a potential client. Not two decks are alike. Even though, we can have a basis that we keep, we have to adapt our presentation each time we introduce the agency. We are never in the same situation twice. Nothing is set.
TNG: WHAT DOES MAKE THE TRUE DIFFERENCE WHEN AN ADVERTISER HAS TO SELECT A PARTNER IN A NEW BUSINESS PITCH ?
CE: There is a whole part that comes down to the brand awareness of an agency and its reputation. This is made of the image that it has on the market and the way that it is rated by the clients and “professionals”: is it strong strategy-wise ? is it creatively good ? how are the production skills ? All these image elements come into account of course. That’s the first impression. This is what will get you into the pitch or even into the shortlist. It also depends on the process that the advertiser is relying on. But, it is true that the brand awareness and reputation of an agency are important just to be considered for a pitch. Obviously. These are the very first criteria.
But many things can happen after that. During the pitch period, a lot of elements are weighted. Some agencies that came in with a not-so-great brand image can grab the whole thing. Everything is on the table, because every agency is being rated based on how they are working, how they react to the brief … And the evaluation from the advertiser is made of multiple criteria.
We are constantly facing the dilemma in a pitch between being right and winning.
TNG: AMONG ALL THESE CRITERIA, DO TALENTS COUNT A LOT ?
CE: I would have to say that, for the most part, advertisers can’t really tell how much of the work of an agency depends on talents. Agencies have always struggled to get clients to understand that. They don’t really get it and don’t imagine how our talents are essential to all that we do. For us, it is obvious that you can’t get a great creative product without incredible talent.
And pitches are not always the time when we can bring our top talent to the table. Because there are so many things that are considered in addition to being creative or not. A pitch is like a seductive play. The agency is here to seduce the client. But, to win the pitch, the agency has to navigate between seduction — which is absolutely necessary — and relevancy. Which means to anticipate how you would behave and what you would do if the client was a client of the agency. Real, tangible ideas. I believe that we need to keep some authenticity in there. We need to stay trustworthy and not just tell the clients things that they want to hear. And sometimes, they would come to us with already a precise idea of what it is that they want. So, the winner of the pitch will be the agency that comes closer to this vision that they have. Even when what they wish is clearly not what they need for their business.
We are constantly facing the dilemma in a pitch between being right and winning. Because winning doesn’t always happen within reason. It often comes down to a mix between seduction, a crush you can have on an agency and things that are totally subjective.
You need to work a tightrope between being the one that is right versus the one that wins it.
Pitches cost a lot of money for agencies. But, the harm has been done. I am not sure we will be able to change this.
TNG: CAN WE IMAGINE A NEAR FUTURE WHERE CLIENTS WOULD STOP CONDUCTING NEW BUSINESS PITCHES BECAUSE IT IS TOO COST-INTENSIVE ?
CE: It is for the agencies that new business pitches are not profitable. We must not forget that. For a client, a pitch is wonderful, even if they are wasting time and energy in the process, where they could be focused on their business.
But ever since we, ad agencies, let clients make us work for free, we lost this battle. It has been almost forever that clients conduct new business pitches. We welcome them into our doors, we show them around and we give them ideas for free, which are the heart of what we do. Pitches cost a lot of money for agencies. But, the harm has been done. I am not sure we will be able to change this.
And at the same time, we suffer from more and more pitches being called for tiny subjects that would not have led to a competition before. At BETC, we try to resist this movement. We try to not say yes to all the pitches that clients want us to be part of.
TNG: TODAY BETC IS A GROUP WITH DIFFERENT AGENCIES (BETC POP, BETC DIGITAL, BETC CORPORATE, BETC DESIGN …), BUT IT IS ALSO A NETWORK WITH OFFICES IN LONDON, SAO PAULO AND LOS ANGELES. HOW DO YOU KEEP AN UNITY WHEN INTRODUCING THE COMPANY TO POTENTIAL CLIENTS ?
CE: Before anything, all the different entities are bound by a common culture. We all share a strong set of values. BETC, as a group, has a powerful culture. The culture is based on two aspects. First, the strategy part: we firmly believe in understanding consumer’s behavior. We release regular studies around this topic. And the second part is the creation. Our founders, Mercedes Erra and Rémi Babinet, have always been demanding on the quality of our creative work. We try hard on this. All these aspects are shared by everyone inside BETC.
When we opened locations in London and Sao Paulo, we kept this obsession of quality. Understanding the consumer and demanding a high creative level are two obsessions that are shared within BETC.
Catherine Emprin
Managing Director in charge of New Business
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