The 12 quickest ways to get thrown off a pitch list

I once saw the creative director fake a heart attack, drop to the floor, rebound like nothing had happened (because it hadn’t) and continue with the pitch. All to win a ten buck bet with the agency MD. Perhaps unfair as we were the incumbent, but account retained.

So I guess this list can keep going but can we add another one… remind them Google is not important to their organic success and you should just spend money on AdWords and Facebook is just really a fad that young people use…..

Surely the key message to bring home is to make sure you fail to address what was the key part of why they invited you to pitch, such as they love your skills around “insert core skill”…..

I was recently on the receiving end of a rather amusing rebuttal to one of my objections “well, the smart businesses…blah blah blah” I think she must have kept talking but I was far to busy thinking…hmmm…insult me…that’s always going to change my mind.

Lad culture goes a long way. Drop the f-bomb in the first five minutes to set your credentials. Works a wonder with Asian clients. Or – and this one happened with two female marketers in the room – flash up a picture of a girl in skimpy bikini to highlight how you integrate three disciplines. and then point to the three, erm, bits, one by one, just in case they didn’t get it.

Painfully hilarious and on-the-money.

I will add one… Inadvertantly call the MD of the company incompetent on Twitter, the night before your big day. (Yes, really!)

Great writing Nathan, but Jeeze , we’re creative business-people not farkin’ actors. It would be good if we could all get over the tap-dancing/performance aspect of pitching and just concentrate on what’s actually being offered to help a brand sell stuff – as filtered through various personalities in the room. Best pitching advice I’ve ever been given :

Be yourself. Know your shit.

PS: You look way too happy in the photo for someone in this business:)

Reading that was kinda like watching Ricky Gervais in “The office”, funny – and then so painfully true that it became uncomfortable.

This never ceases to amaze me, just how many Australian businessmen seem to think its alright to drop the f-bomb about every 12 seconds during a business meeting. Even if it doesn’t offend it starts to reveal a limited vocabulary somewhere after use number one and use number 300.

I’m assuming that all or most of these atrocities have occurred during pitch presentations organised by P3 (otherwise they’re apocryphal, which means there’s every chance they didn’t happen).

Which begs the question: if the consultants are being paid by clients to bring them a selection of (you’d assume) quality responses… what exactly was the pitch consultancy doing to earn their money?

If I’d paid a consultancy to run my pitch, I’d expect them to be across the agencies and the responses. To have some kind of quality control in place, so I wasn’t exposed to this kind of thing.

The art of ‘pubing’ is a great one. Strategically place one pubic hair under a coffee cup etc. More fun to guide things for a pedantic suit to see it before the potential client does and then watch them frantically check every cup. Or have a pitch word of the day – the winner is who gets to use it first. My MD use to always win cause he’d do the intro. Words/terms like ‘haemorrhoid’ or ‘bald spadger’ are some memorable ones used.

or present some work that your agency did not do, take credit for it, and then pretend that you did it…. when sadly the client worked on it, has the awards and did it with another agency brand… total winner!

Another sure fire winner is to use a presentation that you’ve used for another client and forget to take their name out. Nothing like a bad cut and paste job to ensure you don’t get the business. I was on the receiving end, from a big Agency too who should have known better…

Somewhat amusing, but smug in the extreme. Yes, perhaps agency types aren’t great at powerpoint and they swear too much. Maybe they crack poor jokes, or get nervous.
But surely the measure of them is the work that they conceive? Smart marketers can get over the fact that not everyone is star presenter, and focus on whether that agency’s ideas will bring benefit. Some of the best thinkers I’ve ever worked with would easily qualify as autistic… I suppose it depends on what you think is important?

For a while I worked client-side and had a boss who would just get up and walk out of presentations that did anything less than thrill him. Hilarious stuff for us, sucked for the agency (who most of the time did want the business).

Surely forward thinkers will just man up and tell the client they are pulling out of the pitch. No use in burning bridges unless absolutely necessary, and who wants that person thinking you’re a complete twat? You don’t know how big a budget he will look after in his next role.

How about:
Arrive late (and that’s getting to the building) let alone set up and ready to go)
Dare to be the same. Make your proposal whatever everyone else is doing (remember those wrist bands, flashmobs and now everything has to be a game or have an app).
Don’t make an effort to understand the business, but say something banal about how you love their ads or you eat/drink/use their product or share their vision/mission.

Oh, how hysterical. Loved this Nathan.

So, how about a few more I’ve seen?….

– Bring in a token woman in so you seem like you understand women, and ask her to get the tea and coffee ready in front of the client (room full of women)
– Say ‘Bring the Girlie In’ when you’re ready for her presentation of the $1M budget spend
– Have a slab of beer on the table for the 11am presentation (already drunk 2/3 of it)
– Read the creative out word for word off the script without any description or passion for it
– Talk at the client reciting a well rehearsed script, as if they are not there and watch them sit like they are watching TV (blank faces, zoned out)
– Don’t ask any questions or engage the client in the discussion
– Don’t let them see the real you for fear that they wont want to work with you
– Present your massive team of in-house resources so you look impressive to the multi-national enterprise client (who are really just external providers and your company is only a one man show)
– ‘Death by Powerpoint’ – fill the screen with as much facts and figures as you possibly can because you’re thinking this is the only chance EVER that they’ll get to see how awesome you are
– Don’t connect with the client before the presentation to see what they really want

Too funny…. (So real though!).

I imagine clients and consultants actually base business decisions on the content of the proposal rather than contextual factors like who is most competent at connecting a laptop to a projector.

But it’s good to see that people in this industry know how to have a laugh at their own expense… Nathan’s photo certainly indicates he sees the funny side.

@ Anne Miles – like your list except the last item. As a client I don’t want you to connect with me prior to the prezo to find out what i really want.

What I really want is in the brief I gave the agencies or the tender document depending on how big the client is and how much procurement is involved.

I can’t connect with one of the agencies pitching prior to them actually pitching without being unfair to the others and I don’t want 5 separate meetings with each agency after the initial questions session that we allow for the agencies after them digesting the brief.

I can tell you likeability and seeming good to work with is a big factor especially when we have 2 or 3 (usually 2) agencies come up with great ideas and seem like great agencies.

And my number 1 turnoff and guaranteed to make the pitch a complete waste of your time is to ignore the brief and instead tell me what I really want, when as I said, what I really want is in the brief/tender document.

It amazes me when an agency pitches something completely different to what we asked for – they just get crossed off the list.

By all means, give us extra ideas, but answer the brief first.

Great points by everyone but I’d say the Blue ribbon goes to Meg. Autistic creatives…love it.

Outstanding list! Painful memories…

A few years back I came up with my own list on how to KILL your pitch, http://sandersconsulting.com/n.....sentations

Funny how so many seem to overlap!

Keep up the good work!

B

You forgot to ad in Eleven that you have a “Digital Brand Strategist” that wants to impress the client with how “social media has changed marketing and its all about digital these days”!!

Then let then waffle on to a perplexed client about how DIGITAL BRANDS are revolutioning communications whilst completely missing the point that at the end of the day most clients products are consumed physically in the real world!! Thats always a good one.

Or the one where the “Digital Brand Strategist” looks like a rabittt in a headlight when the client asks if they get the difference between a business,marketing and a communications objective. The ensuing deathly silence and attempts to persuade the client that if they only had an iPhone application,A Twitter account and a Facebook “like” strategy then everything would be fine should see you shown the door within about ……ooooohhhh at least 5min by the time the client had composed themselves from laughing.

When pitching international business worth millions, spend $35 on a copy of “Kiss, Bow or Shake” and believe that is all the cultural sensitivity your team needs. Particularly impactful when dealing with business cultures in Japan, Korea, Germany, Switzerland and Finland.

Why not provide an anonymous way for clients to submit their worst pitch moments. Ad agencies might learn from them (or maybe not, but everyone would have a good giggle).

I’ve seen actors brought in in a VC pitch to act out different customer roles to demonstrate a product’s benefits and had a PR company pick my brains about Facebook during the pitch once it became clear they were novices and their ‘Facebook expert’ was a grad six weeks out of uni who’d never used it for corporate purposes (that was one of the major ad agencies two years ago).

Worst of all is when the top person brought into the pitch ignores all of the organisation’s staff in the pitch except for the person they think is the top exec (with the most impressive title, male and gray haired), attempting the smooze them into a decision. Unfortunately the agency exec was wrong and picked almost the most junior person in the room.

The real organisational senior exec (a smaller female with a less impressive sounding title) was amused rather than slighted – but the agency didn’t get the business.