The day before the pitch
John Kovacevich
Founder & Creative Director at Agency SOS | A faster, better way to smart strategy & effective creative campaigns
I’m working on a new business pitch right now and feeling grateful. It’s such a crazy, uncertain time for the economy, the fact that our agency is busy and has these opportunities is humbling.
For those of you who don’t work in the ad biz, the whole idea of “a pitch†might be a bit of a foreign concept. But it's probably my favorite part of working in advertising.
We get a few days or weeks to put together a plan—a strategy on how to help a brand do what it said it wants to do and creative ways to bring that strategy to life.
OK, so that sounds sort of boring, but it really isn’t.
Strategy is about human nature and figuring out how people make decisions and what would make them consider a particular product.
And creative development is about coming up with ways to bring that strategy to life. Yes, some of that is “ads†that you would see somewhere, but a lot of it these days are ideas about how to break through and get attention.
The process is fun and creative and you go down lots of dead ends and you get excited about an idea and then you find out somebody did it four years ago and you get excited about a tagline and you find out that a competitor just launched a campaign with that same tagline and you start over and dig deeper and try to come up with something fresh.
And you get to work with super creative, inspiring people who can make beautiful things and write compelling words and craft short films and music and songs and elevate the nugget of an idea into something much better than you could have imagined.
The account team, the strategy team, the creative team, the project managers, the producers, all have their roles. And we all work to put together “the showâ€â€”the giant pitch deck and the presentation itself.
And at the end of all...you win or lose. You either get the gig or your don’t. It’s like sports and theatre all rolled into one.
No, we’re not saving the world. And in light of all that's happening in 2020, I certainly don’t want to overstate the importance of what we do.
But today, the day before the pitch, I’m grateful. For the work that I get to do, the people I get to work with, and the stuff I get to make.
Executive-Level PR Consultant: Partner, Strategic Communications + Public Relations at Brand Team Partners, LLC; Advisory Board Member, Roosterly
4 å¹´Love this - so uplifting and inspiring to see your excitement and enthusiasm during these crazy times! Fingers crossed for you!
Helping change the game for agencies through automation with Basis Technologies
4 年How does this preparation differ from in-person pitching? So much about pitching has been that “chemistry in the room†feel. That said, I think we can all agree there have been a lot of losses when we felt we had nailed it vs when we thought we had muffed the punt and pulled a rabbit out of the hat.