For years, the advertising industry has been having the same conversation: “the pitch process is broken.” – bloated processes, speculative work, and the emotional toll. Everyone agrees that something must change.
But what if the industry has been asking the wrong questions?
The fact is, pitching isn’t going away. As it does for every service industry, the pitch still plays a vital role in agency selection and in establishing healthy and productive client-agency relationships. The problem cannot be “What should we do instead of pitching?” It has to be “What is the most appropriate way to pitch?”
That’s where BetterPitch comes in.
BetterPitch isn’t about tearing down the system. But it is about reconstituting the process – making it faster, fairer, more focused, more flexible, and not forgetting about building in some fun. Because if the end goal is to find the right long-term partner, then the process should reflect that: one that values cultural fit over theatre, real collaboration over performance, and clear direction over chaos.
We’re launching with a simple premise: pitching isn’t broken, it just needs to be done better.
And that’s exactly what we’ve built.
The default pitch process used by the industry was established three decades ago and more, when advertising was much simpler – all about producing creative ideas, and not much else. The industry has evolved almost out of recognition since then, with ever-increasing layers of complexity, but the basic pitch process is almost unchanged.
We asked ourselves a better question. Instead of instantly defaulting to a bloated and obsolete process, what if we start with a simple but important question “Should you even be pitching?’ So we set up our proprietary BetterPitch Check to help clients make that all important decision.
And if the answer is yes, we don’t just roll out the usual playbook. We build a pitch process that actually reflects what a great agency relationship looks like in the real world. We look deeply into what key attributes a client thinks they want; we move beyond lengthy, unnecessary presentations and introduce more appropriate presentation tools and tightly defined workshops that are more like auditions than showreels. And all along being respectful of everyone’s time, energy and ambition.
This isn’t just a better pitch. It’s a better way to build the right partnership – one that’s fit for today’s challenges, not stuck in yesterday’s rituals.
Pitching isn’t broken. But it is vital that is done better – more appropriately, with the focus always on the end-result of high-performing, appropriately funded and long-lasting relationships. That’s what we’re here to do.
This is something all advertisers need to be considering, urgently. So if you’d like to find out more about BetterPitch, contact us.
