The Pitch

While on my unplanned and unannounced vacation (sorry!), I happened across a tv show I really found interesting. It's called 'The Pitch' and the premise is two different ad agencies in the final selection process for a client. I'd heard about it before, but thought it was more geared towards public relations. It's not.

So I managed to watch two episodes, and I found some strong similarities in the way ad agencies work. And then some other things, like the way the roles of communication impact teamwork. You could see which agencies felt the freedom to truly create, and which ones had locked down who could communicate and when. I noticed a funny thing, too. The ones that locked down who could communicate and when struggled more with their creative.

That may seem odd, but to me it didn't. If you have no real feel for what the potential client wants, and even if you do, but you have no freedom to explore an idea through to the end before having it shot down, I don't think you get the best creative. It just seems like a really bad idea to me. 

In the one episode, there was a young woman, moderately new to the agency, who came up with a great idea. It was the idea chosen to present, too, which was great. Then there was a long discussion about whether she should participate in the pitch to the client. What? One of the essential elements of persuasive communication, which is what an agency pitch to a potential client is, basically, is that the person who truly believes in the idea and owns the idea, is there to act as the idea's champion. Only that person can be so persuasive and so passionate because they know how they got from point A to point B, and the logic it took to get there. Someone who is just presenting the idea may well feel just as passionately about the idea, but if they didn't come up with it themselves, they may not understand some of the logic leaps.

The other episode I saw was fairly interesting from a communication stand point. The first agency brain stormed through the client's needs and came up with an idea they loved. It was great, but unfortunately already done for the same type of client. Instead of shutting down the creative, they went back to the drawing board as a team and came up with another idea. I was pretty impressed with the way they worked. It was clear they were accustomed to working with each other and had honed their interpersonal communication to optimize their results while reducing time on ideas they didn't want to pursue.

In that episode the other agency had a creative team come up with the idea and present it to the creative director and the rest of the decision making team. It seems like a difficult way to achieve the end result, but there were opportunities to explain the thought process. I'm sure large agencies don't have the time to work creative together, but going back to my earlier point, the most persuasive person to pitch the client is the person who owns it. Birthed the idea, if you will.  

You just have to let the creativity and communication shine through sometimes, and that makes persuasive communication the key to any great presentation or a winning pitch.