Will adland ditch the pitch? Part 3: Is anyone going to actually do it?
A month ago, Mat Baxter asked the industry to join him in ditching the pitch. In this series, Mumbrella's Brittney Rigby takes that challenge to a range of media agency bosses. Part 3 sees those bosses answer Baxter's overarching question: Will you actually ditch the pitch?
Group M’s Mark Lollback can’t see #ditchthepitch coming completely to fruition. “It’s unrealistic to do away with pitching altogether. It might make a good headline but it won’t solve the problem,” he says.
Mark Coad also doesn’t count himself as a “fully subscribed member of the ditch the pitch movement just yet”. But PHD’s CEO does think there’s something to Mat Baxter’s industry call to arms.
“It’s a heavy toll on our business, there’s no question about that, and often the amount of work that we’re asked to do is significant. It can often be out of kilter with the size of the prize,” Coad says.
“But, at the same time, clients are entitled, it’s incumbent upon them to find the best possible partner. For many of our clients, the media invoice is the single biggest invoice they sign off on a monthly basis. So, you know, they’ve got to get that right.”
So if PHD won’t ditch the pitch, will other agencies? The resounding answer: No.
Medicom’s Willie Pang says that, for him, the goal isn’t to ditch the pitch but to “#lovethepitch”, drawing upon an “exaggerated” but “fun” analogy.
“Say I’m a client and I’m looking for a watch. I walk into what appears to be a high-end watch retailer. I know my budget is $3,000. My wife (the CFO) would actually prefer I spend $2,800 and I know I could, maybe, persuade her to let me spend $3,200, but I’ve always lusted over the $10,000 customised Cartier in the corner,” Pang begins.
“Now, here comes the sales person. But there is a catch. If you’re buying the $3,000 watch, the sales person negotiates a little bit, takes your card and boxes it up. It’s done and dusted in 10 minutes flat. If you’re buying the $10,000 watch, the salesman brings his in-house horologist, makes you a coffee, discusses customisation options, logs every requirement in the purpose-built website, and so on. You get my drift. It takes an hour to just get the order, it takes a week to confirm delivery and you receive the watch in three months. It’s a great watch and it’s worth it.
“Now, imagine this. After spending the extra hour, the client says to the sales person, ‘Thank you, but I’ve actually only got $3,200 to spend – which is really $2,800’. The client then gets up, walks next door into another retailer, spends 10 minutes and walks out with a watch within their budget.”
Pang says the point of this analogy is to shift the focus away from ditching the pitch and towards “a format that has the client putting their budget (as a range) on the table” first, one of the solutions Baxter offered up as a priority step to cleaning up the pitching process.
“Sometimes, I’ve observed that the buyer is banking on the fact that there is always someone desperate enough to give it away. Don’t be that guy,” Pang says.
Recently appointed Publicis Media CEO Toby Barbour, meanwhile, agrees that it’s a process problem, and one that needs to be “disrupted, to be digitised and automated”.
“The existing RFP process is analogue, time consuming and costly. It should be digitised onto a platform where clients can still apply a weighted index to ensure the information provided is customised to their needs,” he explains.
Independents Nunn Media and Hatched Media aren’t as adamant that ditching the pitch won’t work, given neither pitch a lot (Hatched says it has been involved in “almost zero” pitches in the past few years), but both were hesitant to unequivocally support Baxter’s sentiment.
“Saying ‘ditch the pitch’ is a very broad-ranging statement that is hard to simply agree with,” says Nunn MD Chris Walton.
“But let’s ask ourselves why it has come to this. I would suggest we are here because multinational media agencies have singularly failed to differentiate themselves from one another. They have failed to invest in developing their own IP. Clients therefore cannot tell the difference between them and cannot understand the value they bring to their businesses.
“Don’t expect the clients to change because they feel a bit sorry for one of their suppliers. Let’s get real about this.”
And Hatched MD Jack Byrne claims it’s the “process rather than the pitch itself” which needs reform, since there’ll always be one agency willing to “drop their pants”.
“The current process itself is not only outdated, but designed almost wholly to put downward pressure on cost and rates,” he says.
“Notwithstanding the fact that pitches are great ways to extract creativity … the client still needs to get to know the personnel who will be working on their business, the ways of working and thinking they will obtain.”
For Coad, it’s about reinforcing the rules with clients, rather than quitting the game completely.
“I don’t think we’re going to stop pitching anytime soon. I don’t think the industry is going to change anytime soon,” he says.
“But there’s probably an equilibrium to be restored between what we need to put forward versus what the potential outcome is.”
It’s funny it is the larger agencies discussing this, and it’s requirement for reform. The smoke and mirror pitch teams are the one thing they are good at.
But by all means ditch it……
User ID not verified.
Wow, an analogy involving the buying process for a $10,000 watch. And they say we don’t live in a bubble.
User ID not verified.
If that’s the way they tell a story when they pitch then it’s little surprise their pitch success rate is where it is .
User ID not verified.
Why don’t you interview the smaller agencies/independents trying to get a look in… there was a recent “reputable organisation that is trying to make it easier for small business” pitch to multiple agencies. They were looking for an umbrella identity, without providing consumer understanding or positioning strategy yet deliverables were creative concepts which would be tested in consumer research to see which one won. I politely declined based on the quantity of high value work that was required, detailing what was involved in delivering viable concepts that had a chance of winning.
User ID not verified.
Contained a tad too much detail to appear as just anecdote. But it is worth it. Apparently.
User ID not verified.
Did we really think Aussie agency leaders would take a stand on this?
For those in the networks, they are simply puppets on strings being pulled by the real top brass in NYC / London / Singapore etc.
The outcomes of this debate (at moment anyway) smack of glad handling the ideas, agreeing to disagree, but ultimately continuing to work with the current status quo. What have any of the leaders interviewed actually said about the way in which they will directly change things? Not much is the answer, save for a number of generic platitudes.
I’m interested to revisit this debate at the end of 2019 to see how much has really changed. Cynically, I’d proffer not much.
Fair play to Mat Baxter for kick starting this debate though.
User ID not verified.
Clients: If your agency is forever in pitch mode, they must divert resources from existing clients thus providing less to existing clients for the same money. Their focus goes off your priorities onto a probable client. Odds are they will lose the pitch and soon be back in “Now where were we?” mode. In the end most existing clients lose out when their agency focuses on the latest carrot that is dangled in front of them.
User ID not verified.
When I try and look for actual work by some of the leaders and their agencies mentioned here it can seem pretty thin at times. Some agency websites doesn’t have any case studies at all!
When your only metal on display in the cabinet are culture, best place to work, 30 under 30, leader of the year etc etc of course the client is gong to want to see a very in-depth pitch response as they don’t have much to go on. Regardless of a pitch wouldn’t it be better if agencies talked more about their clients work than the latest (insert buzz word here).
User ID not verified.
As usual the comments section of a Mumbrella article is full of bitterness and sniping. Aren’t we all bored of this yet?
User ID not verified.
I highly doubt many of the people quoted in this article, if confronted with a $30m billings pitch, would say no. Some might, be the reality of a holding group company is you have revenue and growth targets or you lose your bonus.
User ID not verified.
Nice use of the word ‘horologist’ Willie…..so did you buy the Cartier 😉
User ID not verified.
Sadly the pitching process costs everyone. The agencies that currently engage the agency have inflated rates to cover the overhead costs of other pitches for other brands, the people are taxed by working long hours to cope on top of their billable hours and all the suppliers in the chain offering their IP and time for nothing in the hope they get noticed. This isn’t a sustainable model.
It is cheaper for some agencies to outsource pitch work than it is to use their own people too. In fact much of the pitch work is done in this cost effective way because it is the agency expense. The down side for clients is that the people who come up with the business growth ideas are not there to take the idea forward to market when they win.
I think it is definitely reasonable to expect a creative business to be able to demonstrate thinking and approach, communicate the value of their offer and what might be offered to that client for that project, but to go as far as producing campaign work I personally think that’s a line we need to draw as that has a commercial value that is being undermined. In my experience without the strategic understanding the creative tends to be off strategy anyway.
perhaps we should return to the good old days of lunching and bribing instead?
far cheaper and more fun
User ID not verified.