Pitch, Please: You Have to Prioritize People Over Process
Welcome to the latest edition of "A Different POV," where we invite you to explore the evolving landscape of advertising and marketing through the eyes of our team.?
Today, we're chatting with Courtney Lewis , our SVP, Growth, to chat about the wild world of new business pitches. As the advertising world grapples with the delicate balance between creativity and process , Courtney offers a unique perspective on how agencies (and brands) must navigate these waters to demonstrate what makes an agency unique while showcasing its ability to deliver differentiated creative work capable of delivering business results.?
There has been a noticeable shift towards agencies emphasizing their "proprietary processes" in pitches. Considering clients' diverse and evolving needs, how do you balance the emphasis on proprietary processes with the creative core of our work to keep our pitches adaptable and focused on the client's unique needs?
Courtney: This is such a soapbox for me! Finding this balance is incredibly challenging because when you're working with a new client, they want to ensure they understand your process at every turn. But when you have to dedicate a significant amount of the limited time you have with a client in a pitch to process, it comes at the expense of a deeper demonstration of creative chops. Suddenly, a 90-minute final pitch becomes 30 minutes of strategic process and creative process and another 15 of onboarding process - cutting the time spent on the fun stuff to a paltry 45 minutes.?
I liken the balance to the process of picking a home builder. You want a builder who knows how to build a home and has done it many times, knows the right specialists, subcontractors, and materials. But you also don't want the same house they built for 12 other families. Because you're unique and want a unique home that suits YOUR lifestyle and YOUR needs. Clients want to know that we've done this, know how to do it well, and have the process to secure a quality output but have the judgment and skill to get creative and bespoke based on their unique business challenge and creative appetite.?
With every client bringing a unique set of challenges and perspectives, why does that one-size-fits-all mentality jeopardize the agency-client relationship from the jump??
Courtney: This question gets to the heart of a bigger issue: clients must understand that to run an agency with any profitability and deliver work at the speed clients expect, there has to be some degree of process in place. Managing work through a process actually benefits a client, but it certainly can't impede creative quality. We've recently taken another look at our process articulation and actually split out how we talk about it.?
First, we have a set of strategic principles. These are grounded in a set of immovable beliefs about what it takes to create great work rooted in what makes our agency unique.?
Second is an articulation of the actual, literal process, with the caveat that at each stage, we pause and reflect on whether the process as-is is the right next step or if we need to go off-script to get the best work.?
This idea of a hybrid approach (fixed principles with a flexible process) has resonated with clients so far.?
As AI becomes more integral to agency processes, can you share how we integrate AI to enhance our creative and strategic outputs, ensuring that this technology complements rather than replaces the human creativity and intuition at the heart of our pitches?
Courtney: On the strategy front, AI is a massive help in culling through large amounts of information in disparate formats - data, articles, secondary research - and analyzing and summarizing it in a way that would have historically taken days. Clients are looking for valuable insights, which we still develop with real humans. But now we can dive even deeper – and more efficiently – to help inform those insights thanks to AI.?
Creatively, I feel comfortable saying our team does some of the best Midjourney prompt engineering in the industry. They've functionally learned a new language in a matter of months, allowing them to comp ideas and give form to thoughts at a speed that used to be impossible without an army of art directors and several late nights. The team is using it to get clients to proof of concept faster and as a tool to sell ideas in a more compelling way. Real people do all the thinking, but we have the tools to bring it to life at a scale we've never seen before.?
With consultancies encroaching on traditional advertising spaces with their process-oriented approaches, how is our agency asserting the indispensable value of creative intuition and human insights in solving these unique client problems, differentiating our approach in a landscape increasingly dominated by data and analytics?
Courtney: As a recovering management consultant, I love answering this because I've seen both sides. The fatal mistake an agency can make is summarily dismissing the consultant's way of doing things.?
The reality is that there's value in taking a process-led approach, but there are drawbacks. Agencies can have the first mover advantage by finding ways to deliver on the security of process and data-informed (NOT data-led) thinking in a way that strikes a balance that consulting firms will need help to achieve. Consultancies are highly data-driven, and often, their outputs and recommendations, while logical based on their observations and analysis, need to be more realistic. They may not consider business operations, supply chains, staffing, and other realities, which can prevent insights from becoming actionable. Agencies – especially those that can compete with consultancies when it comes to data, insights, and strategy – actually have the upper hand; they need to use it.?
What advice would you offer to brand leaders on structuring their RFPs to foster a balance between innovative, creative solutions and the structured processes necessary for their execution?
Courtney: The process question is virtually always grounded in a fear of some kind. Fear that the agency can't repeatedly deliver great work, fear that the process doesn't allow enough time for feedback, fear that they'll be sold something the agency can't deliver on, the list goes on …. My advice is to tell your agency partners why you want to understand their process. Is it because you had a negative experience elsewhere? Is it because you're worried it'll take too long? Clear but kind goes a long way, and if you can be direct with your prospective agency partners, chances are you'll get a better answer.
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