The future of Creative Pitches

By Andy on 26 Jun 08

Not for the fist time, by a long way, do I find myself frustrated by the 'creative pitch'.


Creative Pitches, for those who are not in the know, are far from credentials only presentations. Of course the nature of tenders vary from client to client, so to detail the 'typical' is done somewhat in broad strokes. That said:

1) Invitation to Tender
2) Credentials Document and a Creative Pitch, often presented in person by several members of the team.
3) Contract awarded.
4) Done... to sound all Ramsay for a second.

For a long time I've thought of this process as being akin to asking several builders to build one room each before you award the contract to build the house. Not going to happen is it.

The work involved in creative pitching places unacceptably high demands on the industry as a whole. A huge amount of work has to be done upfront by each agency invited. This investment  is of course unpaid, so the loss when calculated across all invited agencies can far, far outweigh the contract value.  Now multiply this by all the various creative industries over a financial year. I'm no mathematician, but the numbers are going to get quite big.

And yet the practice continues, why? Is it the creative industries fault for bowing down to client requests, maybe its the clients fault for not comprehending the damage being done?

Of course the process doesn't just harm the agency. The client is equally at risk as decisions are often made solely on subjective opinions ("I don't like blue!"). Creative work done at this stage will largely be done in isolation from the client and without the appropriate foundation work being put in, so pretty irrelevant then. It may even tempt otherwise saintly clients to use ideas from non-wining pitches in final work.

Either way I can't be alone in thinking that this is unacceptable and a better more appropriate solution must exist.

On that note its encouraging to notice that some larger agencies are refusing to take part in unpaid creative pitches. The process outlined above remains roughly the same, only for each agency invited is remunerated for the effort. A better, if not perfect solution.

So what is the perfect solution, does one exist or shall I continue to be frustrated by this archaic approach?

 

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