Digit 2005-04 - Clevernotions.com

Pitching for work is vital to landing the good jobs.
The process is loathed by some, but it can be as
creative as the account that’s up for grabs. Here’s
how to charm the people holding the purse strings.
S
ometime during the 1970s, the late Sir
Peter Parker, then head of British Rail,
went to the offices of the advertising
agency Allen, Brady & Marsh to hear a pitch
for his company’s advertising account. Some
45-minutes after his arrival, a very unimpressed
Parker was still sitting, fuming, in the agency’s
reception area surrounded by a disgusting
array of over-flowing ash trays and polystyrene
coffee cups. Having had enough, Parker stood
up to march out of the reception but was cut
off at the agency’s front door by its chief
executive Peter Marsh, who said: “This is
what it’s like for your customers every day
of the week.” He won the account.
Fast-forward to the present day and
the pitch process is still vital for creative
companies when it comes to winning new
business. But it’s not all drama. The use
of pitch theatre such as that employed by
Marsh and co above tends to be favoured
more by advertising than the new-media
industry. However, there are rules and
processes that creatives agree are
necessary ingredients for a successful pitch.
The type of pitches agencies get involved
in tends to vary by discipline. In new-media,
for example, agencies find themselves pitching
to existing clients as often as new ones
because most work is done on a project-byproject
basis. On the other hand, ad agencies
tend to work for clients on a retainer, and pitch
for new ones when they come up for grabs.
Either way, the pitch process is crunch time
for an agency, so getting it right is paramount.
Before the big day, there are things
BY DEBORAH BONELLO
agencies can do to make sure it is as prepared as possible to wow the client.
Tom Adams, co-founder of Mook, the creative digital design consultancy,
says his agency generally insists on meeting the client before a pitch.
“We won’t do any creative work without first meeting with the client,” he
says. “Just relying on a written brief can be misleading so we need to qualify it.”
Adams says the agency has its own way of understanding a brief. “We have
a questionnaire that we send over, and it almost writes the brief for them. It asks
them everything from how much traffic they expect on their site through to which
sites, even those not in their sector, they admire,” he says.
Mark Chalmers, a creative partner at Amsterdam-based advertising
agency Strawberry Frog, says: “Too many people assume the client’s brief is set
in stone. What they think they want and what they need are often different things.
It’s essential to talk over the issues and get to the heart of the matter. Start off
from the same agreed piece of paper.”
It is also worth considering whether a pitch is worth getting involved with
in the first place. Jon Bains, founder of the digital creative agency Lateral, has
little love for the pitch process. “I absolutely hate pitching,” he says. “It’s the
worst, most pointless exercise in the universe and you spend a ridiculous
amount of time working on them.”
He says it’s important to choose your battles. “The main deciding factor
is budget, to be blunt.”
Adams agrees. “We try not to do more than two a month. We probably
get 200-300 incoming requests for pitches a year.”
In the case of new-media work, often an agency has to actually do some of
the work in order to be able to present something to the client. This costs both
money and time. Generally, if the project is a Web site, experts say the best idea
is to put together a prototype of the site that is a few pages deep. It will give the
client a strong idea of what the site will look like and how it will work without
requiring the agency to pretty much build the whole thing on speculation.
Once you have decided to pitch in, do your homework. “Show that you’ve
put some effort in and you’re really trying to understand what the client does.
d 35