February 19th, 2010 by Lloyd Gofton
At Liberate Media, just as at any other agency, we are regularly invited to pitch/meet/propose on a number of campaigns, and each year a percentage of those campaigns will be what we all unaffectionately refer to as ‘time wasters’, or perhaps if we were looking at it as a more sinister act, the thieves who invite you to pitch simply to hear your patter and steal your ideas. We’ve all been on the wrong end of this approach, no matter what business you are in, and sympathy certainly isn’t the purpose of this post.
So why bring it up? Well, as part of a business planning session we did at the beginning of the month I looked into 2009 new business successes/failures as a learning exercise, and I was pretty flabbergasted by the results and the amount of work we had put in with little or no return over the year. To be clear, by return I don’t mean purely winning the campaign or getting paid, I mean no result what so ever. Either the client mysteriously went quiet, said the budget had disappeared, the campaign was never awarded to anyone, or the real killer; we win and it never goes ahead.
Okay, last year was pretty terrible in terms of the economy, so the budget excuse maybe valid, but the opposite is also true, with little or no budget why would you call a pitch/meeting if you weren’t 100%. That makes me suspicious.
I haven’t quite come to the conclusion that 2009 was a back stabbing fest with companies turning agencies over for their ideas, but from our experience there was certainly more of these unexplained losses than usual.
‘You should have been more aware’ I hear you say, ‘the ones that are out to steal ideas are easy to spot’, and to some extent or other I agree. I used to pride myself in spotting the odd chancer who’s just looking for ideas, having been involved in PR pitching for coming up to 12 years I’ve seen quite a few examples, but either my radar is on the blink or last year was an exceptional year.
So, looking back at the outcomes of some of these pitches, many of which were with big brands, I see a whole host of outcomes, such as; ‘we’ve decided we’re not quite ready’, ‘one of our directors is on board but the other isn’t', ‘budget has gone/been pushed back’, ‘campaign has been put on hold or stopped’, the list goes on.
In fact doing a rough calculation of the campaigns in question, and looking at those that I know have gone ahead, only 10% that we were not successful in went to another agency, or went ahead in some guise. That means 90% are either still waiting or have fallen into the ‘unknown category’.
So what are we to do? I’m not considering the whole ‘charging for pitching/ideas’ argument that pops up every now and again, but would like to establish why the surge last year? Yes we can chalk a certain amount up to the economy, we have to take a fair hit for not spotting the time wasters, but that still leaves a good percentage with a motive as yet unknown. Am I being unkind in suggesting they did this deliberately, or is it something deeper?
Is there a part of this ‘unknown’ that felt, or were told, that social media/digital PR is something they needed to be involved in as part of their 2009 remit? And when they understood the situation, or when they realised the scale of the opportunity, discovered that they hadn’t budgeted or resourced sufficiently? Could it also be that some people needed to just investigate this area and bring in agencies to talk it through, well if discussion is the focus, fair enough, but please don’t hide behind the promise of a campaign if you want to talk. Education is part of what we all have to do, and most of us are happy to do it, but not to be duped into doing it.
So what has this review exercise taught me? Well, thinking practically, this tale should not just be one of woe, we’ve also had the great fortune to meet some brilliant new clients during 2009, many of which were won in an open and often quick process which has fostered a great relationship that has continued to this day. I hope that if the education barrier was an issue that we’ll see less of these problems in 2010 or at least more openness in discussing the problems.
Please let me know if you have any insight or experiences that you would like to share in this area, as i think there is more to be explained.
Tags: budget, pitching, PR, Social media
