Strategy + creativity + pizazz + chemistry = success

It’s a bizarre process, you get the team whipped up into a frenzy of activity. Everyone’s buzzing, working into the early hours. The big idea is put in front of the Creative Director, he gets into a huddle with the account team who start foaming at the mouth with excitement. The studio is cranked up another gear; producing layouts, mood boards, mock-ups… what ever’s needed to hook that juicy new account.

All in all, it’s a highly charged process. All hands to the pump, beers and pizza at midnight, hysteria at 2.00am and crashing in the boardroom just as the sun comes up.

But the real fun is to be had at the pitch itself.

I once had the pleasure of pitching to a marketing big wig from Napolina. I had to present a TV script for tinned tomatoes that involved a tongue-in-cheek Italian operetta, and poor old muggins had to play the parts of both tenor and soprano. It was the kind of script that could only be performed with molto gusto.

So after the pre-amble and recapitulation of the creative brief, I sucked in my  gut and belted out a sub-standard Rossini number at the top of my voice. I was in the zone, eyes tightly shut, convinced of the creative genius of the script. I got to the final flourish and was just about to take a bow, when the client looked at me, completely devoid of emotion and said – “is no good… next”. Thank heavens I hadn’t gone to the trouble of wearing a fat suit and cummabund.

No doubt, if it had been up to the late, great Peter Marsh, it would have been presented in the Royal Opera House on horseback.

Peter Marsh was famous for his flamboyant pitches. When his agency, ABM, pitched for the British Rail account back in the 70′s, the clients, including chairman, Sir Peter Parker, arrived at the agency and were pretty much ignored by the receptionist, who told them that Marsh would be down shortly. Half an hour passed as the increasingly irate client sat in a filthy reception filled with half-empty polystyrene coffee cups and dirty ashtrays.

Disgusted with their treatment, Parker and his team made for the door. As he stood up to leave, Peter Marsh appeared and announced, “This is what your customers have to put up with every day, now let’s see how we can put it right.” The client was impressed and ABM won the account.

Peter Marsh was the grand master of the big pitch, some of his more triumphant moments included:

• Hiring a brass band to parade outside the agency’s offices to impress a marketing director at Honda.

• Tearing off a dinner jacket to reveal a white, sequined suit, in a pitch to Woolworths. Even though the client was impressed, he still needed reassurance that ABM was big enough to handle the account, so requested an office visit. Marsh agreed and to seal the deal, showed them around a larger agency owned by his friend,  Rodney Millard.

Big pitches, of course, need equally big budgets and things have changed dramatically since the 70′s. However, there’s still a lot more to pitching than just showing off your creative skills. Ultimately, as the saying goes, ‘people do business with people’.

Andrew Gillespie, the group director of marketing operations at Barclays sums it up beautifully. “It’s not about us testing whether you can do it – it’s about us testing whether we can work with you.”