Gina Larter is the newest Business Director to join TrinityP3 UK. But she also has experience in managing agencies, consulting with advertisers, and being a respected Executive Coach, Trainer, Mentor, and non-executive director, making her ideally placed to discuss the impact of pitching on agencies.
The agency pitch process has come under close-scrutiny and vocal industry criticism, particularly during the recent pandemic, when working remotely was placing additional pressure on agencies and their staff. This scrutiny and criticism led to the development and launch of the Pitch Positive Pledge in the UK in 2022, jointly sponsored by the advertiser body, ISBA and the agencies’ IPA. And Gina was involved, on behalf of TrinityP3, in its development.
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I think the very first question would be, why are you going to pitch? And to try and determine whether they should go ahead at all.
Transcription:
Darren:
Hi, I’m Darren Woolley, Founder and CEO of TrinityP3 Marketing Management Consultancy, and welcome to Managing Marketing, a weekly podcast where we discuss the issues and opportunities facing marketing, media, and advertising with industry thought leaders and practitioners.
Now, the agency pitch processes has come under close scrutiny and vocal industry criticism, particularly during the recent pandemic when working remotely had placed additional pressure on agencies and their staff.
This scrutiny and criticism led to the development and the launch of the Pitch Positive Pledge in the UK in 2022, jointly sponsored by the advertiser body, ISBA and the agency’s IPA.
Now, our guest today is ideally placed to discuss the impact of pitching on agencies with a career, working and managing agencies and consultancies, and being an experienced and respected executive coach, trainer, and mentor, not to mention a non-executive director, and now, the newest member of the team at TrinityP3 UK.
Please welcome to Managing Marketing, Gina Larter.
Welcome to TrenityP3, Gina.
Gina:
Thank you, Darren, I’m delighted to be here today.
Darren:
Well, look, it’s a bit of a trick because you haven’t just started. I’ve probably welcomed you, well, it’s just over a year ago, isn’t it?
Gina:
That’s right, yes.
Darren:
Where you made the leap from a career’s poacher turn gamekeeper, as they say, you’ve come to the dark side.
Gina:
So, what a journey it’s been.
Darren:
Well, look, it’s interesting because you do have quite an interesting journey in advertising and not just mainstream advertising. Like you were at Ogilvy Direct or OgilvyOne, but you’ve also worked for consultancies, you’ve run agencies, it’s been an interesting career.
What got you into this originally? Was it something that you wanted to work in marketing and advertising as a team, or did you sort of fall into it as so many people seem to have?
Gina:
I think to be honest at the end of my university career, I really didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do. But I very quickly realized doing some research into it, that it was definitely advertising that I wanted to go into because it combined my love of literature and psychology and art.
I felt that those three things really came together beautifully. So, I joined O&M Direct and absolutely loved it, I fell into the career that I really wanted to be in.
Darren:
That’s fantastic, and the fact that you fell into it, but in a way, it sort of found you, didn’t it?
Gina:
It did indeed, yes.
Darren:
Now, what about some of the consultancy roles you’ve had, because you haven’t just had an agency-only career, have you?
Gina:
That’s right. I’ve worked with a number of different clients. And a particular one that was very interesting was with Nectar, the loyalty company. I did some consultancy there actually when I was very heavily pregnant.
And that was fascinating because at that time, I was working with data analysts who were obviously very sophisticated in terms of what they could actually see in the data and with target audiences.
And I also did some work with Toyota when I was there. They actually wanted me to be part of a pitching process they were going through. So, I was part of the client panel, which again, brought me huge insights which I’ve been able to bring forward to the work that we’re doing now.
Darren:
Fantastic, what do you think is the big difference from that experience between the agency perspective of pitching and the client perspective? Obviously, one is looking to select the other, but do you think there’s real differences in this?
Gina:
I think (just from what I have observed) there are times when agencies get really excited about what they’re doing with the brief and want to go in and sell very heavily, and I think there can sometimes be a lack of listening to what the client is really saying.
Particularly, in the actual chemistry stages where maybe there’s not as much conversation going on, there are not as many questions being asked by the agency, where they could actually gain a lot more information from the client and therefore, put themselves ahead in the next stage. So, I think there’s possibly not enough dialogue, it’s more of a pitch, even in a chemistry meeting.
Darren:
Presentation, we see that a lot, and the trouble is they’ll often come across as if they are pretending they know everything, when in actual fact, I don’t think clients expect them at that stage to know everything. In fact, become quite cynical at that type of bravado in a way.
Gina:
Yes, absolutely, because how could an agency necessarily know their business as well as them? And I’ve worked with a few people who have actually said the question, this sort of elephant in the room question by saying, “Look, I really don’t know, and I probably sound really stupid.” And I think that gives them a lot of credence. I think the client really respects the fact that they are asking that question.
Darren:
Absolutely. What brought you to then the interest in becoming an executive coach and getting involved in training and mentoring as well?
Gina:
I think that was when I was, well throughout my career, I’d seen that the people management side of the agency wasn’t necessarily as good as it could be. And I saw how many people got disappointed when the reviews were cancelled or bumped.
And I felt that the performance of people and therefore, the output from the agency was so much better when people knew exactly what their objectives were, what they were aiming to do, it just meant that everybody had a map in terms of what they were actually working towards.
So, that’s when I got very involved and made sure my teams had very clear objectives that they were working with, and never cancelled or very rarely, tried not to cancel a particular meeting with them because I knew how important it was, how they would’ve built themselves up to it.
And because of that, I just got really involved on the people side. When I was Managing Director at Grey Direct, I was introduced to, I guess it was selling system. It was the DISC process whereby you could read people, or you had different people’s personality styles. And I used that within all the agencies that I was in, in order to break down a lot of barriers between people.
So, it became a common language and rather than one person saying, “That person really annoys me,” it was very much more about, “Oh, okay, they’re a driver and that’s why.” So, there was much more understanding, it broke down a lot of the barriers as I said, between different sorts of people.
So, I then really had two parallel careers going on at the same time. I’ve continued to develop the coaching side, the people side. I’ve done a Master’s in Coaching and Behavioural change but continued the advertising side as well as the marketing communication side.
So, I’ve pretty much had those two careers in parallel as I’ve gone along, just because I feel they reinforce and complement one another.
Darren:
And I think it’s fantastic, because all through my advertising career (which I’ll admit was last century or last millennium) people would say, “Look, it’s a people business, you’ve got to be good with people if you work in this industry.”
But I don’t think that those — what do they call it? I hate the term, but soft skills, those people skills, are things that just happen innately. I think some people have better people skills, soft skills than others, but often without any sort of framework or structure or philosophy — and having come from science, I think having some framework and understanding is really important because unless you can replicate the results, it’s a little bit wishy-washy, isn’t it?
So, I really congratulate you on really identifying that and then going and finding the training, the education to be able to do it in a very professional way.
Gina:
Thank you.
Darren:
Well, we’ve seen it come to the fore during the pandemic, and not just in advertising, but in all industries, there was so much disruption. Suddenly, people are working from home, there’s isolation, mental health issues, physical health issues, which really became front of mind for most employers at the early stages. Because you didn’t join us until towards the tail end of that, of the intense part of the pandemic.
But during that time, were you acutely aware of how you were training and the experience with those people skills was becoming increasingly, sought after during that time?
Gina:
I was setting up my business and certainly, in my mind, it was having an impact on some of the people that I was working with. Their mental health and the importance of actually coming online and having the social side of it as well as the work aspect was absolutely critical.
In order for them to know that there was a certain time that they were going to get together with all their colleagues, it was really essential that something like that was actually happening. The work side, is obviously very important. You need to keep them going, but equally, being able to have those discussions around their lives, what was happening, you could visually see what was happening as well.
And I think that’s been a massive change. Whether it was children going past or dogs, there was a lot that I think that opened up people’s lives to one another that normally wouldn’t have been there, and you wouldn’t have known about.
So, again, I think filling out and fleshing out somebody’s life around them was an important and positive part of it.
Darren:
I think there’s been a lot of that as challenging and as difficult as that may have been, particularly the early stages of the pandemic when there was so much unknown, there’s been some really positive things.
I think one of them is workplace culture and this fundamental shift of bringing to the forefront the importance of maintaining employees, mental and physical wellbeing has become such an important issue.
It was certainly acknowledged in the past, but I think now we see it as such an intrinsic part, almost every company, every agency that we deal with has this as an important part of the way they operate, don’t they?
Gina:
Yes, they do. I think it’s great as a topic, as a subject, as an area, and I know that a lot of people have put somebody in place to actually look after that whole area. But I think still there’s a long way to go.
I’m doing a qualification at the moment in mental health first aid in the workplace, and actually, it’s been amazing how some really basic stuff I was talking earlier about — job titles or reviews and things like that, just how important those things are with regard to mental health.
So, I think it’s brilliant that there’s been a lot more focus on it, but I think there’s still a long way to go.
Darren:
So, obviously, you joined us at TrinityP3, UK and when we heard the announcement that the IPA and ISBA were developing this Pitch Positive Pledge, what was your impression when you first heard about it?
Gina:
I was really impressed by the fact that is ISBA and the IPA had got together and had seen that this was such an important initiative, particularly for the agencies. That’s always been around, I think all the issues, but I think the fact that ISBA got behind it as well as an organization representing all the clients, that they’ve been able to work together to produce something like this, I think was fantastic. An initiative obviously coming out from Julian’s IPA presidency of the 10x mission of his …
Darren:
Julian Douglas, that is, isn’t it?
Gina:
Yes, that’s right, Julian Douglas.
Darren:
So, perhaps for those people that are not aware of it (and I’m not sure how they could be not aware), what’s the basic premise of the Pitch Positive Pledge?
Gina:
Well, the basic premise is there are three — is to make sure that pitching itself is positive, and that’s from a number of different areas. That’s to make sure that a client is positive that they actually want to pitch.
Ideally what, and quite a different change I think, is that the pledge is saying, “Are you positive that you need to pitch? Can you actually make it work with your existing agency?” And that’s, I think, quite a big shift in terms of where clients are coming from.
Making sure that it’s a positive pitch so that the agency is treated well, that they go through a number of different stages, that they provide the right information and then they actually give the feedback at the end to make sure that there is a conclusion that they’ve confirmed the budget and it’s done so within a certain period of time. So, there’s the three different stages.
Darren:
Because we’ve seen a lot of situations where, I think many people think that running a pitch from the marketer’s perspective is relatively easy. You just invite some agencies to come and present their credentials, you choose the ones, give them a brief, they go away and work on it.
Come back with their creative, choose the one that you like the best and negotiate a fee deal. When you break it down, it sounds quite easy, but in actual fact, there’s quite a lot of stress and tension that can particularly be involved if it’s not managed well, isn’t there?
Gina:
Yes, I think very much so, and actually, it was quite interesting, I was reading something around the whole Pitch Positive Pledge, which Mark Ritson had talked about in terms of just looking at the process or the briefing stage in as much as he was saying that there was a report and it was saying that 66% of clients, thought they did give a clear brief, whereas actually only 38% of agencies agree.
So, that’s critical, obviously as a starting point in terms of a pitch, and it’s something I think we as intermediaries see. And that’s one of the benefits of having an intermediary involved is actually to make sure that the brief is really strong, where it actually goes in because the whole process of the pitching, and then if that work is used afterwards, it’s critical that the actual brief is right from the start and that it’s clear.
Darren:
I remember we were running a number of pitches back in early March 2020 when suddenly, we had to quarantine, there was no face-to-face meetings anymore, and in one weekend, we had to completely pivot.
Two of the pitches went on indefinite hold, but the other two had specific deadlines, and in one weekend, we had to totally pivot the way that we were running the pitch process from face-to-face meetings to remote video conferencing.
And it was really interesting because a lot of what we were thinking about was how do we fulfill the needs of the marketers to get a very clear understanding without making it particularly onerous on the agencies having to coordinate teams remotely.
And one of the things we did was break some of the bigger meetings that might go for two or three hours into a succession of much smaller meetings of 30 to 45 minutes, but have more of them with each of the agencies as a way of dealing with that.
It’s interesting the impact that remote pitching has actually had.
Gina:
Yes, absolutely.
Darren:
Have you seen something similar?
Gina:
Yes, I think in terms of the process. If I think back to where we were before the pandemic when, strangely, in terms of technology, and I don’t know why we didn’t do it, but you weren’t using cameras at all, it was all audio.
And obviously, so much of, if you’re talking about training or anything else, how important it is to actually be able to see people. To be online that long and have the technology, I think that breaking it down into different stages, I think has really helped the whole pitching process by going from the selection, and then the chemistry session and then the actual workshops, as we do it.
Darren:
Now, the Pitch Positive Pledge asks people to actually sign up, doesn’t it? And to then comply with a set of principles or standards?
Gina:
That’s right, yes, and in fact, when it actually launched on the 11th of May, there were 70 companies who’d actually signed up, and now, they’re up to about 300, which is fantastic — that’s agencies and clients.
Darren:
That’s fantastic. Of course, TrinityP3 is one of those signatories.
Gina:
Of course, we were there in the formulation of it, Darren.
Darren:
But from your perspective, what’s the role of the advertisers in actually fulfilling this? What are the types of things that advertisers need to be thinking about if they’re going to fulfil the obligations of a Pitch Positive Pledge from their perspective?
Gina:
I think some of the biggest things that came up when we were discussing this with Julian Douglas and Andrew Lowdon right at the start, was that it needs to be taken up to quite a senior level. If a pitch is actually going to go ahead, it needs to be signed off by quite a senior person if they are going to actually pitch a piece of business and whether it is necessary.
Darren:
Absolutely. In fact, I know from my own experience that it’s the sort of thing that you really do need the buy-in from the CEO.
I think I shared with you once that we were running a pitch and standing outside the agency ready for the first presentation, and the CMO received a phone call and was actually forced to tell me afterwards that that was the CEO saying, “Stop the pitch process, I’ve just sold the business.”
And I said, “Did you know this was happening?” And they said, “No idea.” You’d have to question that if the business was on the market, I’m not sure why they were actually pitching for new agencies. It didn’t seem logical … so, yes, absolutely, getting that alignment.
I guess, it’s also for marketers to think about what it is that they’re asking of their agencies and whether it’s reasonable and needed as part of the selection process. Because we hear all sorts of horror stories about the demands of clients during a pitch process: short deadlines that force the agencies to work weekends, burning the candle, the midnight oil, just to meet some of these ridiculous deadlines. That would have to be part of it, wouldn’t it?
Gina:
Yes, very much so. I think it’s one of those things, we all know those stories whereby the client has, in theory, swanned off for the weekend and left the agency working, whether that’s over a bank holiday, weekends, Christmas or the summer holidays.
But I think actually having this Pitch Positive Pledge, that’s one of the things that they talk about that if there are issues, then the agency can actually go back to that and say, “This is the pledge, this is what we’ve all signed up for,” so they’ve got something to actually refer to.
And certainly, as intermediaries, it’s been very useful for us to be able to refer back to that. And most of the time, I think clients are very reasonable about extending those deadlines to make sure they’re getting quality work.
Darren:
I’m not sure that clients ever set out to torture their agencies or impact their mental health in a negative way, but sometimes, it’s just a lack of awareness. A simple request could have significant impact on agency staff.
Because one of the things I’ve always found is a lot of marketers think that the agency has people just sitting around waiting for the pitch to come in, and not realizing that all of those people actually have a full-time job looking after their existing clients.
And that pitching is something that you do often after hours. It’s why pizza and beer is the food associated with being at work and working on a pitch or working on a Sunday afternoon to get it done, isn’t it?
Gina:
Absolutely, yes, and I think we’ve all been there, and I think the pressure has come on even further now, given that communication is so much faster. I remember the early days, there was a little bit more time involved, but still, you were under the quash.
Darren:
Well, especially if they were faxing the brief through. Now, everyone gets the all-staff email, so everyone knows what has to be done right now.
Gina:
Exactly, yes.
Darren:
So, that’s from an advertiser’s point of view. One of the things is that procurement has become heavily involved in running and managing pitches or tenders as they’ll often refer to them.
And one of the things that we noticed is this idea that at the end of every contract, procurement will say that the marketers have to go to pitch, which has meant that in the past, an agency might have the client for six or more years, but now, every three years, because most of the contracts are three-year contracts, the client has to go to pitch, even if they’re absolutely happy with their incumbent agency.
And yet, all of the numbers show that it’s one of the worst ways of testing your incumbent agency because they have a very small chance of winning the business. Was that addressed at all as part of the Pitch Positive Pledge, this idea of just routinely pitching your agencies every couple of years? And do you think it should be?
Gina:
Absolutely. I think within the Pitch Positive Pledge, I think it’s that initial question of, “Do you really need to pitch?” But if you’re talking contractually, it’s worked both ways for me, where even from a governmental point of view, it’s been down there saying, “You have to pitch.”
And because of the way we’ve worked with them and where we’ve been at the time that we’ve been working with them, it hasn’t gone to pitch. So, even though contractually, I think it can be written in stone depending on where the agency actually is with a client, it can actually vary. As part of the Pitch Positive Pledge, I guess it’s that big question of, “Should you be pitching in the first place?”
Darren:
And I know governments will often have a policy that says that they have to tender after a certain period of time, but a lot of commercial enterprises, it’s nothing more than a good to do or good governance.
But the issue that worries me is the number of times marketers, when we’ve had this conversation about including the incumbent, “Oh, we have to include the incumbent because we are testing to see if they’re competitive.” And I say, this is the worst way of doing it, this is like testing your relationship.
Imagine in a marriage, if after every three years, one partner came home and said, “We’ve got a great marriage, but I just need to go out and date other people for a few months, and then come back and date you to see if I’m still committed.” Really? If you’re going out of this relationship, you’re pretty much looking for something new.
Because it’s very hard in that dynamic for the incumbent to be able to wildly offer the allure of the possibility of a new relationship in any way that is believable or meaningful. If your partner suddenly starts becoming incredibly accommodating, you go, “Well, why didn’t you do that for the last three years?”
Gina:
Yes, exactly, I think it’s really hard. I think unless it is sort of governance that’s dictating it, you have to question why a pitch is happening anyway, and I think it is very hard for an incumbent to come back and win.
Not to say it hasn’t happened, I’ve been in an agency where that did happen and in fact, the board said, “Oh, who’s the new agency?” And she said, “Well, actually it’s the agency we already have.” But I think it’s always difficult.
Darren:
The numbers say it’s one in four. You can win it, but you’ve got one in four chances. And when I’ve discussed this with marketers: “Oh no, the incumbent knows our business better than anyone.” Well, that’d be great, except it’s the least effective way of winning the business is because you know the business.
In fact, knowing the business often works against the incumbent because they know what the client can and cannot accommodate and is not going to offer them something that they know just won’t cut it.
Gina:
That’s right, they know what some of the limitations can be in terms of what they can get through. No, it can be very difficult, yeah.
Darren:
I think procurement should be looking at this Pitch Positive Pledge as an opportunity of rethinking the way they use pitching. Because they probably think of it as it’s just another business process, but in actual fact, if you’re pitching your agency every three years, that’s putting a huge drain not only on the agency, but all the other agencies that you’re inviting into that process.
Gina:
Absolutely, and even again, if they are thinking just of themselves, if they look at their own people, what that’s actually putting them through and financially, which obviously procurement are very keen to look at the numbers, how much that’s actually costing them before they start reaping the rewards, if that’s going to take six months to bed the new agency in and the time that it would take their own people to actually do that.
Darren:
Now, what about intermediaries or I said consultants, but I believe in London, the pitch consultants are all intermediaries, of which there’s probably one on every corner, isn’t there? There seems to be so many intermediaries in London Town.
Gina:
A few, yes.
Darren:
Well, what’s the role that they have, and I imagine almost all of them would’ve signed up to this?
Gina:
Oh yes, very much so, and the majority of them were involved in the formulation of the Pitch Positive Pledge working with ISBA and with the IPA at the very initial stages in terms of what they felt pooling their knowledge in terms of what did or didn’t work, where there were problems and where there were opportunities. So, I think … sorry, can you repeat the question again?
Darren:
What’s the role that the intermediaries have in supporting the Pitch Positive Pledge? What should they be considering when they’re actually advising their clients?
Gina:
I think the very first question would be, why are you going to pitch? And to try and determine whether they should go ahead at all with those questions, which is, is it a new brief or is it a new agency that you need, and your current agency doesn’t have those particular disciplines?
Is it that it’s through governance? Is it through a number of different things that they might need to deliver, if it was a new challenge as opposed to something that their existing agency could actually cover?
Darren:
One of the things that annoys me is how many pitches and particularly, consultant run pitches for creative default to speculative creative: “Here’s the brief, we are not really going to give you the access to the client that you would have if you were their agency but see what ideas you come up with.”
And on the media side, it’s like, “Here’s our proposed media spend, tell us how cheap you can buy media so that we can compare your rates to someone else.” These are very outdated and, in most cases, fairly useless unless you’re only in the market to buy a campaign or only think of media as a commodity to be bought by the kilo.
Is that being discussed in the development of the Pitch Positive Pledge? Are they looking for alternatives to making agencies do a whole lot of work for nothing?
Gina:
I think that was a sort of beauty parade that we’ve discussed in the past, and I think that that sort of initial upfront, do you actually need to pitch and why you need to pitch as part of the Pitch Positive Pledge ideally cancels that whole area out unless they particularly want to buy into a big idea, and that will therefore, be very clear and upfront that that’s what they want to do. And then that would be up to the agencies as to whether they want to do that.
Otherwise, I think it is very much more about building up a relationship and having (if you are going through the pitch process) a real brief that is actually going to be worth something when you actually get to the other side of it.
And again, if there is creative, which sometimes there is, it’s about some of the strategy as opposed to actually producing creative itself, and workshopping it.
Darren:
Because as you know, we’ve been running strategic workshops as part of the selection process and all of the clients say that the best part about it is, it is as close as you can get to test driving an agency.
And the agencies love the fact that it’s as close as they’ll ever get to finding out what it’s like working with that client without actually being appointed. It’s quite amazing how effective it is at revealing exactly what that experience would be like, because I think agencies are very good at presenting themselves.
But the thing about the workshop is it’s not a presentation, it is actually a roll their sleeves up, get in and work together on a big juicy problem, isn’t it?
Gina:
Absolutely, I think that’s been a massive change, very interestingly on that, just as a very concept, the clients that we’ve talked to have been excited about the fact that it’s a test drive and it’s a workshop as opposed to a presentation.
And then actually, going through the process, both the agency and the clients have fed back to us how positive that whole process is, from the agency point of view as well, to get to know what the client is actually going to be like and what the chemistry is between them.
And there’s a different experience rather than just having to do a pitch, not rather than just having to do a presentation actually but to really get involved in the client’s business and the client for themselves to be able to walk away and really be comfortable with the fact that they know which agency is going to be their best partner going forward.
Darren:
It’s always fascinating for me when we introduce that technique into a new market, how the agencies struggle because they’re so used to years and years of presenting that suddenly, what you’re asking is to drop the mask and drop the performance and just be real.
For some agencies, it’s really difficult because they’re so trapped in the showman, the theatre, dazzle the client and win them over. And in actual fact, this takes a lot of that away from them.
Gina:
It does. It was amazing actually, but on a recent project that we had that you could see some of the agencies who were a bit more old school (shall we say), and they were doing a three to four-hour presentation.
Whereas people who were a little bit more fleet of foot had done a decent amount of presentations before or work beforehand, but then it was very much a discussion, a dialogue, and they’d really warmed to this new way of actually doing something which was a lot more interactive and had a lot more flow to it.
Darren:
It’s great that you’ve been taking a real leadership position on this Pitch Positive Pledge from the perspective of TrinityP3. I really want to acknowledge and thank you for getting involved and really help shaping it, and also, bringing those insights back to the company. I think it’s been fantastic, Gina.
Gina:
No, not at all, thank you very much, Darren. I’ve really enjoyed that.
Darren:
Well, look, time’s just got away from us, it’s been great having this conversation. I guess, there’s information on the Pitch Positive Pledge, obviously, on the ISBA and the IPA website, isn’t there, if people want to read more.
Gina:
Yes, there is indeed, and in fact, they’ve got a really good structure in terms of the three different stages. It’s well worthwhile clients and agencies going to have a look at that.
Darren:
Fantastic. Well, Gina, thank you. Welcome again to TrinityP3 UK, it’s great having you as part of the team.
Gina:
Thank you, Darren.
Darren:
Look, I have one question before you go, and that is what was your experience like or your worst experience in being on the agency side during a pitch?