Answers for Adam: Is pitching the right way to choose an agency?
With agencies spending tens of thousands of dollars on competitive pitch processes Adam Ferrier asks whether there is a better way for clients and agencies to partner.
I was once asked (as the incumbent) to pitch for a piece of business. The client said to me “I really hope you win”, and said they would do what they could to assure us a positive path through the pitch process. We spent a vast amount of time and money on that pitch, and (in hindsight) predictably lost.
As an aside I’ve since learned to understand that whenever a client or prospective client says “I really hope you win” it probably means you’ve lost.
Now I have no issue with pitching, in fact I really enjoy it. Pitching is a necessary and fair part of business. Most industries have some equivalent to a pitch process (and – news alert – not many industries pay people to pitch).
However, if you’ve ever read anything on behavioural economics or have been in advertising for more than a little while then you’ll know we tend to make decisions intuitively. We decide first, and then use the information available to rationalise that decision. This goes for choosing an agency as well. To this end some pitch processes seem rather drawn out and elaborate when in reality the decision is often made in the first 10 minutes of a chemistry meeting (as a pitch consultant once told me)?
My question is this – what do you think is the right process to choose an agency?
Adam Ferrier is CSO at independent agency CumminsRoss. He’s the author of ‘The Advertising Effect: How to change behaviour’. @adamferrier
Don’t think its the right process however, there doesn’t appear to be any alternative processes – any ideas Adam? I’m sure trinityp3 must have an opinion on the ideal process.
From a personal client prospective, more often than not, clients focus on the creative/strategy/idea that was produced at a pitch and not the thought process that was used to create it.
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people should be awarded work based on them being a better choice than the next person.
True, other industries pitch for work but how many of them actually do the work in order to win it?
you wouldn’t ask 5 law firms to draw you up a workplace contract then pick the best one to represent you
you wouldn’t get 5 firms to cater your work function then pick the one who made the tastiest sandwiches
etc etc
pitching is fine, but it should be about the work you’ve done and how well you’re able to show that you’ll be able to do it again
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I love pitching too. Major adrenaline rush. A better way? Singo’s words always ring in my ears – it’s about relationships, not the work (paraphrasing). Dunno what the solution is. This ties in a bit with Chris Savage’s knife fight analogy. Decline to pitch and someone else will step in.
The last thing I want is govt-type procurement process. Pitch doctors are the most visible sign of things going that way. Reduces the agency from a qualitative supplier to a quantitative one. I still think its about the work, but its hard to justify genuine costs when all the thinking has already been shown. Cart before the horse type of thing. Reminds me of the ‘past performance’ caveat for financial planning. Do you trade off your past work, or do you risk the information transfer? Sorry Adam, your question takes precedence although I think you might already have the answer as you nominated it as a reason you jumped ship to C&P.
Regulate this process and it will become infinitely worse. Clients will become as adept at post-rationalising their decision within the specified parameters as we already are in justifying our intuition.
In short, do what you have to do to if you want to win.
Pitch payments are a joke too, btw. Clients want full tote ideas, they can pay full tote rates.
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Yeah like most I see the problems with the pitching process but not the alternatives.
The major problem with the pitch is the unknown. It most definitely is about relationships but if you are coming in cold or only having a little bit of knowledge about the other party it is really easy to make a mistake. One client will be thrilled by ambitious statements – another will think “If it sounds too good to be true it is”. One client will like a flashy pitch, another will think your insult their intelligence by doing this etc.…..
It’s too easy to misunderstand your client or your agency – it’s too easy to wrongly stereotype each other…
But of course without pitching people will go to the organisations with the best name – like someone buying Wolf Blass over a superior lesser known wine – just because Wolf Blass is the only name they know and therefore “safe” – which would be bad because in any industry when only the big companies are left complacency starts to sink in and overall client numbers drop.
So yeah – pitching. Risky and flawed but not sure what’s better.
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Perhaps to your point Adam, one thing that could be added to the process (albeit I have no practical idea how just yet) is the option for the client or agency to remove the other from the process as soon as they realise that there’s no chemistry. Losing a pitch is no fun. Losing a pitch you were always destined to lose is much worse. If the client knows full well an agency isn’t going to win no matter what they do, surely it would be better to get the pain out of the way ASAP. Sure it’d be disappointing to be told after the initial meeting or first tissue session, ‘thanks but no thanks’, but equally so, wouldn’t that better better than continuing on under the false impression you actually stand a chance? Save everyone time and money too. Just a thought.
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Dull though the answer might seem, the most effective process is the one that persuades the client team to take in the whole picture at every stage, and base a decision (a real decision) on that picture.
Of course there are intuitive decisions made along the way in a pitch process – it involves humans after all.
The first goal of any consultant is to ensure that the client team looks at the content of a pitch as closely as the form, the qualitative as well as quantitative, and rational considerations in some sort of balance with emotional ones.
The second is to make sure agencies don’t waste huge amounts of time, money and effort competing on long lists with little or no hope of winning anything.
I agree with Circling Sharks, if we know it is based more on relationship there should be an interim stage, a chemistry session so to speak in which clients will politely decline any further response. It requires client to moderate themselves with what is an appropriate number of agencies to respond. There is absolutely no respect for the amount of time, effort and resource that goes into pitching, which is often evident in the lack of any constructive or honest feedback after the decision has been delivered.
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Singo’s words always ring in my ears – it’s about relationships, not the work (paraphrasing). agree
They already know who they are going to use and its generally to keep the incumbent honest.
The journey really begins when we have the job
We only pitch in to win accounts
Avoid the competitive pitch grind where ever possible
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Who watched the two series of The Pitch on AMC?
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The problem with pitches is when they are used as cost cutting exercises rather than as a chance to improve the quality of output from an agency.
I recall a pitch at one agency where the client was loss making, even with the most efficient staff the agency could find. The client then decided to repitch, with a lower fee and higher amount of work required.
Of course the agency declined to repitch, only to find several months later it had ended up at a significantly more expensive agency…
Good pitches are important, bad pitches are severely damaging to our industry.
Sadly with marketing managers having such short job time, they usually just happen as a way to stamp their presence on their company’s work.
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Just depressing to read the comments from So tired of pitching. Surely some kind of chemistry session is just an essential part of any pitching process? And as for the ‘lack of any constructive of honest feedback after the decision has been delivered’ – just astounding. Who the hell are the clients running processes like these, and why on earth are agencies agreeing to participate? No wonder you chose the commenting name you did. Hope we meet on a TP3 pitch soon, and see if we can help you reignite the spark.
No problems with a “pitch” but if a prospective client can’t get their “short-list” down to three, they haven’t done enough homework or don’t really know what they’re looking for, in which case it’s a raffle.
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I’m witnessing this process taking two different directions 1) entirely procurement focused that reduces the value impact of the thinking, 2) a little chemistry meeting followed by a fully integrated solution to a clients problem, whereby you give away the agency jewels. Neither process feels completely right or wrong.
As agencies we need to demonstrate competitive value, and showcase ideas that can deliver competitive advantage. The question is can showcasing our process and portfolio deliver that alone, I’m not so sure. So the best ideas, a fair price, and ultimately our people will continue to determine who gets the gig.
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One of the major problems agencies face when pitching is the attitude of their current clients. Many clients feel that they are paying for agency resources that are dedicated to pitching for new business.
Larger agencies can have a dedicated new business team but there is no avoiding the drain on the wider resources of the agency, especially those of the creative department.
The “chemistry test” would be valid and less draining on resources and people. However, it begs the question of whether an agency would be happy being dropped after the first meeting like some sort of dating show?
DB
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Nothing to add to the discussion except to say that I am really enjoying the article and the comments/discussion.
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