"Nobody knows anything. Not one person
in the motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work.
Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one." - William Goldman (1931-2018)
My
first big pitch. I had a pitch jacket that made me look like a featured
extra from Miami Vice. I was shitting myself and had a fixed smile on
my face in the futile attempt to appear professional.
I
remember the senior suit saying to me, the client wants to look you
straight in the eye. He wants to stare at you to make sure you are not
going to fuck him over. The suit kept saying look him in the eye. Over
and over. Like it was a mantra that would keep him safe.
We walked into a large mahogany lined boardroom smelling of Red Bull,
Spray Glue and fear. We did our pitch and I had my first out of body
experience at a corporate level. I felt like I was floating. I was
watching myself from one of the expensive light fittings.
There
was an awkward atmosphere because the clients were supposed to be
looking at us, yet they were secretly looking at each other. They were
looking for inaudible clues as to what their boss or the big boss was
thinking. Also, I was staring intently at every client in the eye like a
psychopath. We got to question time. The junior clients asked some
vague non questions that wouldn't get them into trouble. We moved up the
chain until we got to the big boss.
The big boss had a far
better jacket than me. It was one of those jackets that made you suspect
he had a garage with many vintage cars. He stared at me for about 30
long very quiet seconds. Then he asked me a question. Do you believe in
this idea? The suit who kept obsessively straightening the pen and pad
in front of him made a weird strangled high pitch sound that fortunately
only I heard. I looked at the big boss and answered him with the only
appropriate answer in the situation.
Yes.
Another stare.
Then he stared at his sweaty people who were trying to say yes, maybe
and no at the same time without using language. He nodded and walked
out. The next day we were told we had won one of the largest accounts in
the country. 4 weeks of late nights all came down to about 45 seconds
of staring.
This scenario happens every day all over the world.
I have described pitching as the most human part of advertising.
It
is the part of the business that hasn't really changed. Fundamentally,
you can have lots of work and a slick presentation but trust is the
thing.
It isn't fashionable to write about this. In a business
that uses words like data and algorithm in every sentence to create a
feeling of certainty and precision, trust seems like a very human and
imprecise quality. But this is often one of the main reasons business
that is worth huge sums of money changes hands.
I have won
pitches I thought I had definitely lost. And, I have lost pitches where
everybody in the room believed we had hit a home run. I have seen this
randomness drive people insane. You catch pitch fever. Did I say the
wrong thing? Is our idea shit? Did it make sense? Was I funny? Was I too
funny? Was the coffee too strong? When Jenny sneezed did it irritate
them? Is my shirt weird? Dave is sweating a lot. Stop sweating Dave. For
the love of God stop sweating Dave.
The only antidote to this insanity is for an agency to trust itself. Once again there is that word. Trust.
Strangely,
pitching can help with this and do the opposite as well. Win a few and
the confidence grows. Agencies get braver. They back their ideas and
tend to win more. But, when an agency loses a few and loses its
confidence, it's like watching a planet lose it's gravity. And sometimes
its mind.
For me, the pitch process is the best example of why
the advertising business has always been and will always be about two
very human building blocks. Trust and confidence.
Clients want to trust.
Agencies want to be worthy of that trust.
Despite what many say, nobody knows what is going to happen tomorrow. The future will always be a journey built on trust.
When that big boss stared into my eyes he wanted certainty. But his question was if I believed in the idea. Belief.
If
pitching has taught me anything it is that after all the stats, proof,
debates and discussions I am always asked if I believe.
Belief is always the question.