It’s another week at nerv HQ and we have yet another big pitch for a new client. The design team are heads down, fleshing out concepts ready for the big day. The Directors have their presentation almost ironed out and smooth as silk – ahead of a good days worth of practising to schedule in. And in a brief quiet time, I’m reminded of everything I’ve ever read about winning new business without the need for a pitch.
Pitches are a huge part of life in the creative industry. It’s a chance for the agency to show a potential client how they would respond to a brief. It's a chance to impress the potential client with some nice ‘shiny’ looking creative and a nice ‘shiny’ presentation. And then after one agency has shown their creative approach to the brief, along comes the next agency, interpreting the brief in an entirely different manner, with their own version of ‘shiny’ visuals and ‘shiny’ presentation.
At its absolute worst, the pitch process is little more than a glorified beauty parade. At its best, it’s an exploration of ideas and processes.
However, it's the way the industry works. We’d all love the opportunity to win new business without pitching (I’ve read many books dedicated to the subject) and yet, here we are preparing for another new pitch at nerv.
Our approach to working with clients at nerv is very objective. We follow a 5-step process that is heavily loaded at the start with a discovery phase – finding about the client, their organisation, products, services, customers and communication objectives. It involves a lot of communication between the client and ourselves. It involves harsh truths and blunt honesty. As the Australian’s would say, it's a “balls out” approach!
The pitch process doesn’t allow for this. Sometimes you get limited access to key staff within the potential client - rarely do you get much proper insight. You go into the pitch largely blind: The pitch process ends up being “Make us a logo; design us a website; create us a campaign and make it look good”.
Then, once we’ve presented all of this lovely ‘shiny’ work, we talk about the correct process for doing the work – we talk about the discovery, about getting to know them and effectively we tell them that what we are about to be judged entirely on, is irrelevant. The work we have created is purely for show. It will morph, change and be totally re-invented if we get to work together. It will be sculpted by research, adapted through insight and borne from a proper definition of the goals and brief.
Ideally, we open the floor up and have a conversation. Not every agency does this in a pitch. Too many agencies simply talk about themselves. As anyone who has been pitched to knows, this is not good. It’s tedious, in fact!
So…what about the creative?
Once upon a time, at nerv we would go into pitches without anything creative (the ‘shiny’) to show the potential client. We would talk entirely process and we would explain to them how this was the correct way to approach their work, as to do so without insight would be madness. Then the next agency would come in with some nice ‘shiny’ creative work and they would forget all about us! ‘Shiny’ wins.
So now we bring ‘shiny’ and we bring insight. It's a little like running a car showroom, and immediately walking any new customer that walks into the door to whatever car you assume suits them, showing them all the key features of it, before sitting down with them to talk about what they might actually want. Sometimes they might want the original car you showed them, sometimes they might not. But at least they've seen a car to compare with any other car showrooms they might visit.
That's difficult to judge really. From a client’s perspective, the most important consideration should be whether they could actually see themselves working with the agency presenting to them. Likewise for the agency. Now you’ve met one another, is there some kind of fit. Is a second date something you’d both want?
Perhaps clients could beta test agencies. Give them a paying piece of work as a test and see how it goes. Truly test what they can do. The pitch isn’t a true representative of anything. It doesn’t tell either side enough really.
There’s more discussed on the ways to fix the pitch process here: http://www.fastcocreate.com/1680035/10-ways-to-fix-the-agency-pitch-process
For now, we all have to accept that pitching is part of the process and unless we can find out own way out, it will remain that way.
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