‘IS PITCHING BROKEN?’ IS THE WRONG QUESTION

Pitching is currently flawed, and it doesn’t appear to be improving. The industry should focus on avoiding beauty parades and crude costcutting measures to find a more sustainable approach

In 2021, we carried out a major industry survey and found that, on average, an agency spends a total of 175 hours on each pitch. The typical agency did this 11 times a year, spending nearly 2,000 hours a year pitching and winning five pitches.

These hours are easily converted to hourly rates to attach a ‘cost’ in non-billed agency hours. The human cost to the business lies in the fact that most of these hours come from overtime worked by the pitch team – they continue to perform the day job for their clients and work evenings and weekends on the pitch. No wonder ISBA (the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers) identifies pitching as a major contributor to agency staff stress levels.

2. As consultants, we don’t always advocate pitching.

Despite being well known as pitch

Pitches often start with a perception of agency-client relationship failure. But frequently, when we take even a rudimentary review of the commercial arrangements, we will find issues affecting the performance that no amount of relationship management would solve. These issues include under-resourcing by the agency due to under payment by the

At TrinityP3, we work to avoid speculative creative pitches, beauty parades and RFPs when it comes to helping our clients choose new strategic agency partners. Our own approach is more like taking the agency for a test-drive, through interactive workshops rather than onedirectional presentations.

The results of this approach include greater clarity into both the client and agency alignment, better understanding of mutual capability and longer and more sustainable relationships (typically twice as long as the current industry tenure). Yet the process is less arduous on both parties in both time and cost. That’s a win for all involved.