Should You Ditch the Pitch?
One of the ironies of new business is that the agency that typically wins is not necessarily the agency that can do the best work, but the one with the best presenters.
If clients were hiring a team to travel around for them and make presentations, the typical process they use to choose agencies would make all the sense in the world. But they’re not hiring presenters, they’re hiring strategists, writers, designers, and service teams.
So often the first time clients get a true sense of what they’ve hired is when the dust settles and the agency actually starts to work. It must often be a rude awakening: According to one survey1, 50 percent of agency-client relationships last less than two years. Perhaps tossing a coin would work better.
I’d guess more than 98 percent of the value clients seek from agencies has nothing whatsoever to do with presentation skills. Things such as the sensitivity and judgment to listen to customers and critics and, from their comments, derive brilliant insights … the bravery to put forward revolutionary, market-transforming ideas … the acumen to craft skillful communication strategies—not to mention production excellence, deadline diligence, thriftiness and financial transparency—these are the bedrock of great client-agency partnerships. Yet I’ve never heard a client say about an agency, “Yeah, their presentation was soft, but their strategy and insights were great so we gave them the business.”
Like it or not, client-driven pitch processes put agencies into show business. And our clients, sad to say, too often pick their agencies as if they were casting a Broadway show.
Maybe it’s true that a brilliant idea can’t be separated from its expression, any more than a book can be separated from its cover. Possibly—lacking other ways to evaluate our work—clients have come to depend on our passion and oratory art to convince them of the quality of our thinking.
But sometimes the quietest person in a room may have some of the most profound thoughts. It’s possible, even likely, that clients might find jewels among candidate agencies if they looked beyond performance values and stagecraft. And it’s worth making the effort to look.
That’s not all that’s wrong with the typical pitch process, of course. The typical pitch RFP tosses the agency a laundry list, including a full strategic and creative assignment, often global in scope, as well as the requirement to show capabilities, case studies (often with information that should be confidential, but gets shared nonetheless), key processes, you name it. Not to mention requests for things agencies never actually do, like develop sales forecasts, recommend field force allocations and develop the client’s global development best practices. All in a 90-minute show.
The agency gets a small pile of PowerPoint slides with marketing data, and maybe a few background tidbits about the product. Then it’s time to create a show. From the briefing session (more brain dump than anything else) to pitch day, it’s often less than three weeks. It’s a miracle—and testimony to the smarts of people who work in agencies—that relevant messages about the agency’s work emerge from these fire drills.
Just what exactly does the ability to put on this kind of show prove? That agencies are resourceful? That they get the “right” answer? That given little to work with and a carrot dangling at the end of the stick, they’ll work their people like rented mules? Not the things that will matter in a long-term relationship, that’s for sure.
Maybe we should “ditch the pitch” in favor of a different agency evaluation process. One, for example, that mirrors the process by which clients hire key members of their own team.
Imagine, instead, a series of interviews with key agency people, where the prospective agency was welcomed into the client’s office, made to feel comfortable and secure, and invited to have a true dialogue. Where several members of the client team conducted interviews with each of the key agency people, and conferred afterward to rank and rate them. Where the agency people could ask questions, too, in privacy, to see how good a fit there is and what the real issues are. There would still be a performance, of course—every interview is a show—but not the overblown, production-dominated extravaganzas that are increasingly the norm in big-stakes agency competitions. It would cost the agencies tens, maybe hundreds of thousands less, and would likely create a much better client-agency fit.
More time-consuming to busy clients? Maybe. Yet they’ll do it for a staff hire, often even for people they’ll work with far less than they’ll be working with the agency. And the payoff could be immense, in starting a strong relationship off on a solid foundation of understanding.
Imagine that the client couldn’t decide between two finalists—and decided to assign projects to both, paid for at market rates. It’s like couples living together before getting the marriage license: perhaps not the preference of authorities, but a darned good way to find out whether you all can get along before you get in too deep. And to ensure that work is rewarded fairly, so that mutual respect is fostered.
Of course, the reasons that this is unlikely to happen are powerful, and sometimes ugly. One factor: The show-pitch process gives the marketing team a free glimpse at up to five or six strategic analyses that, were they to buy them from consultants, would cost six or seven figures. (Then again, a paid consultant typically wouldn’t work with the flimsy data agencies are given to base their pitches on.)
Another: Shows are fun to go to. The same survey that showed rapid turnover in client-agency relationships revealed that 40 percent of clients said they “look forward” to having or “find it exciting” to have agencies pitch them.
Then there’s procurement, or “strategic sourcing” as many of these departments like to be known. Without all the show-pitch folderol, their work would be cut back to contract negotiations and supervising compliance with service level agreements. Ditto for external agency search consultants. These vested interests mean little is likely to change, at least in my lifetime.
And agencies with great presenters will resist change, too. Those who love the spotlight will be loath to leave it. Spec creative, too, which some consider the bane of new business, remains one of the few areas where agency copywriters and art directors can spend time conceptualizing, a bright alternative to the dreary task of drafting yet another sales aid.
So it looks like as an industry, we’re not ready to ditch the pitch. So you’ll find me backstage, working with the pitch team, getting the show ready, building the set and the props, and rehearsing the performers. That’s show business.
1 Survey: Clients don’t stick with ad agencies. Business Journal of Cincinnati. November 26, 2007. Available at: http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2007/11/26/daily7.html?ana=from_rss. Accessed July 29, 2008.
Rob Buccino, president of NeoCortex, coaches and consults with communications and service-sector firms to help them win competitive pitches. Rob has written, directed, presented in, and consulted on more than 200 recent new business pitches. He has spent nearly 30 years in advertising, winning and working with clients that include AstraZeneca, Becton Dickinson, DAKO, Ethicon Endosurgery, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Roche, Johnson & Johnson, LifeScan, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis, and Wyeth.
Originally a copywriter, Rob was a multi-award-winning chief creative officer at Lena Chow Advertising before becoming executive vice president/new business director for Grey Healthcare Group in New York, where he helped achieve double-digit year-on-year growth over a six-year period. He has a background in psychology and biology at Wesleyan University and studied in the MBA program at the University of Sydney (Australia). He is a member of the International Association of Facilitators and trained in teaching negotiation strategies and skills at the Harvard Program on Negotiation.
When not coaching pitches, Rob can often be found with The Village Light Opera Group, New York’s oldest community musical theater ensemble.
Rob can be reached at 212.579.9562 or by e-mail at neocortex@verizon.net.
http://neocortexconsult.com
Photo credit: Josh Zuckerman Photography