Masterclass Notes: Seven sins of pitching marketers best avoid

by Johanna McDowell (@jomcdowell) While agencies spend an inordinate amount of time — and money — on pitches, the life of a marketer sometimes means that they rarely are involved in full on pitches where the whole marketing communications account might be under review. Project pitches happen often, and they are different from full-scale pitching.

However, there are many similarities, and badly handled pitching — whether project or full-scale — may erode the spirit of the industry, at a minimum. In the past 10 years, as a pitch consultancy we’ve handled and witnessed close upon 200 pitches of different types. Prior to that and working in the industry for many years also was an eye opener for observing good and bad practices.

Here, then, are the seven deadly sins (the don’ts) and the magnificent seven (the do’s) of pitching for marketers:

1. DON’T prepare a brief saying what type of agency you need.
   DO prepare a brief stating what type of business problem marketing communications must solve, and how it will be measured. This will guide you with your agency selection.
2. DON’T start out by asking the competing agencies what you, as a marketer, should be spending upon advertising, PR or digital or media. How can that be fair?
   DO provide a minimum and maximum budget that could be available.
3. DON’T leave out procurement. It needs to be involved up front and will be looking at agency sustainability while you look at strategy and creative.
   DO involve procurement at every stage and work with it as partners — this is great for marketing sustainability. And very reassuring for the agencies.
4. DON’T be afraid to eliminate those agencies on your long list that do not fit the brief. It is better for them to be eliminated early and for you to be able to manage and focus on the finalists.
   DO allow the widest possible selection in the initial stages — not the usual suspects or friends of friends (not healthy). You would be surprised at how many highly competent agencies are out there.
5. DON’T allow a final pitch to take place with more than three agencies. If you have done your homework correctly throughout the process, the wrong ones will have been eliminated.
   DO make sure that you spend time in each short-listed agency — see them on their own “turfs”. Make sure that this happens before the pitch, of course.
6. DON’T give the agencies a hypothetical pitch brief eg “If we appointed you, how would you position our brand?” Those kinds of briefs lead to waffle and nonsense.
   DO give the three finalist agencies a real brief ie if they win the pitch, they will implement that work that they presented in the pitch. Agencies need to recover their costs of pitching; in this way, they can do that.
7. DON’T allow your decision on choice of agency to be subjective — or “I like them”. It is important to have chemistry but it is as important to appoint your agency based upon hard data.
   DO put a robust evaluation process in place throughout the pitch process. This process must be data-driven and agreed upon upfront with your co executives and CEO. This ensures that you have alignment on the final pitch day.

There are many more bits and pieces we can add to this but these seven rules — if properly adhered to — will ensure that marketers appoint the best-fit agency and that the agencies involved benefit from a fully professional approach.

Johanna McDowell (@jomcdowell) is managing director of the Independent Agency Search and Selection Company (IAS), and she is one of the few experts driving this mediation and advisory service in SA and globally. Currently she is running the IAS Marketers Masterclass, a programme consisting of masterclasses held in Cape Town and in Johannesburg. Twice a year she attends AdForum Worldwide Summits.

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