The greatest pitcher ever born has died

Five reasons why Tim Bell wooed clients like no other

It’s rare that the death of an advertising and PR executive attracts much attention outside the trade media. The death of Lord Bell was different. The blanket news coverage in the UK was followed by a pages and screenfuls of comment from The Guardian to The Economist to the Daily Mail.

There was a lot of material to work with: Bell’s role in the rise of Britain’s greatest ever ad agency, Saatchi and Saatchi; his close connection with former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher; his sometime notorious PR projects thereafter – and a personal life where heavy drinking, cocaine use and a fine for indecent behaviour all figured.

But I want to focus on something those obituary writers didn’t. In the 1990s, Campaign magazine asked ad industry leaders to name the greatest pitcher– the agency exec who beat all others when it came to presenting to and winning a new client.

It was a good idea, but an unexciting contest. Tim Bell romped home, miles ahead of the rest. Even his enemies conceded no-one else had his powers of persuasiveness – and winning. Nor charm: 'dogs would cross over the road to be patted by him,' said one envious rival.

As a writer on Campaign and then in Fleet Street, I knew Bell fairly well at the most tumultuous time in his life, when he left Saatchis and advertising for the Lowe group and public relations, then set up his own Bell Pottinger agency.

I also worked with him once, at his invitation, on a project for the BBC. That was enemy territory for him (during the row over covering Sinn Fein, I was in a room with Bell when the BBC news was on. ‘Terrorist! Communist!’ he shouted at a particularly innocuous presenter).

But I also saw then, and in the meeting and lunches we had, how he won and deserved that accolade as the greatest pitch person. I reckon there are five reasons why.

1)   The voice

Matey as a cab driver’s, sonorous as a bishop’s – Tim’s voice was the perfect combination of man-of-the-people charm and, when he needed it, gravitas. The sound that comes out of your mouth is a greatly underrated part of winning pitches. You wanted to hear Tim Bell’s: that was half the battle.

Voices aren’t everything. Two of the nicest, most well modulated I’ve heard in recent years belong to David Cameron and Theresa May. You need more to carry a sceptical audience. Such as….

2)   Connections

Throughout his career, but especially in the years of and closest to the Thatcher era, Bell was incredibly well connected. He always knew the decision-maker and the people above and around him or her. That’s hard to compete with if you’re next up, pitching to a room of strangers.

But there is always a danger for the supremely well connected. Times change; people move on. I worked with one businessman who would openly disparage the ‘little people’ he had to deal with when his senior buddies were busy elsewhere. Well, little people become big people – and they’ll remember you, even if you don’t remember them.

3)   Win the battle before it starts

Consummate pitchers like Bell didn’t take chances with the ‘High Noon’ hazard of an actual pitch. Nine times out of ten, they’d have secured the deal and won over the key people well before. If rival agencies thought they were playing on a level field, they soon learned otherwise.

The more rigorous, procurement-led tenders of today may lack the romance of the Bell era – but they are much more fair to everyone.

4)   Listening

For one of the greatest talkers the marketing world has ever known, Bell was also a wonderful, sympathetic listener. That was even more clever when you knew he had very little sympathy, if any, with your point of view.

Remember (as some of the obituaries didn’t), he was an account man, not a creative. His needed to take a brief. Once he had, Bell had an uncanny knack for erasing the usual client-agency dynamic and turning everyone into his cohort.

5)   You don’t need ‘creds’

All agencies struggle with The Creds -– credentials, the part of the presentation where you tell your client how unique your creative is, how dedicated your client service, how many awards you have won etc. The trouble is, we can, and all too often do, all say the same thing.

What Tim Bell learned – and helped shape – at Saatchis was the supreme confidence of an agency brand that didn’t need to explain who they were and why they did it. For a decade or so, they broke all the rules that say the agency shouldn’t be more famous than the client. And it worked.