Business Today - Dec 2022 - Jan 2023 issue

Face of Business
love the brand and I love the passion points. I
was like “okay, it’s music and basketball, what’s
not to love?” But, it’s [just that] the people were
different, so that is why you pivot. Once we did,
success came forward.
What is your take on the “traditional” pitch system
and what can both agency and corporate
sides do better to facilitate the process?
This is a difficult question because I think
that the problem is not pitching, but how we go
about pitching and how we can achieve some
sort of informal understanding of how it should
work because every person, every company, and
every agency has their own take.
A pitch is a rallying cry from a company looking
to try outside of its ecosystem to find a better
solution to some of the recurrent problems
that they’re unable to solve, whether it’s a creative
or strategic failure to solve it or a financial
issue.
The ones [typically] struggling are agencies,
more than the companies as they are in a more
advantageous kind of situation; a company
opens a request for pitching and then a lot of
agencies jump on board. It’s the agencies that
struggle with how the process or the lack of a
process affects them.
Some principles that I believe should be
agreed upon is how is a pitch financially [compensated]?
Any company that is invited will
spend numerous hours on developing the
pitch, because that is how the industry functions,
win or lose.
There needs to be some sort of movement
[or protection for] agencies, such as a regulator,
and so if it is not applied, agencies do not
participate in the pitch and so cannot complain
and break the system.
Secondly, what is a pitch and how is it defined?
By the amount of work required, the
amount of effort that goes into the pitch? Is it
owned by the agency in the [event] that they
lose the pitch, or is it owned by the client that
gave the brief that inspired the work? All of
these, in my opinion, are reasons why [pitching]
is broken.
I haven’t been in Egypt for a long time, but I
assume that these are very common symptoms
in a lot of places. I would [say] that what needs
to happen is that agencies will create some sort
of regulator between them that is comprised of
all agencies, and is independent and very transparent.
I [believe] that we will still need pitches because
it gives a great opportunity for companies
and agencies to tap into problems and opportunities
that they can actually create an impact on.
We have that as a company; so, we
kept going for two years and it wasn’t
working, but we learned, and when we
learned, we understood and changed
the solution. What we don’t have [as
a company] is the idea of shying away,
[we] accept the misses to guide future
success.
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www.BusinessTodayEgypt.com January 2023
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