Greg Verdino in a recent blog post had this to say about pitches. “Anyone who has spent time at agencies knows that the new business pitch process, though a necessary evil, is absolute hell. You expend lots of resources, usually under impossibly tight time constraints, while jumping over hurdles to meet unreasonable demands seemingly designed to prove that you really do want the client’s business.”
Greg continues, “But in all fairness, I can’t imagine it’s much better for the client. All the time spent drawing up the request for proposal, cherry picking the small handful of agencies that you will invite, reading puffy round one written responses, sitting through two or three successive rounds of presentations, hating most of what you see but knowing that you need to choose an agency and get on with business.”
While I’m now on the Agency side of the pitch, I’ve spent most of my time on the client side “judging” pitches and here’s what I looked for. Firstly, Agencies needed to show that they took the time to know a bit about my business that went beyond the brief. With the Internet that job has been made easier with reams of data available on almost any topic. Of course good old fashioned talking to people is always an option and in fact I have found it a powerful way of unearthing insights.
What really wins it for me though is the big idea that’s faithful to a clear single-minded position. That piece of magic that someone in the agency blurts out in a brainstorm or whispers to a peer at lunch that turns into a campaign that ultimately leads to tons of sales and brand loyalists.
We can dress up a presentation any old how. If we’re not differentiated, relevant and engaging, then we should not get that ‘happy call’.
