We presented ourselves to two potential clients last test cricket season. They were ‘pitches’, or they weren’t. 

This wordly, not worldly, confusion arises from a certain prickliness about pitches. 

In a typical pitch—perfect pitch?—you are expected to produce work as a preview to what you will achieve for the client. We say no to these.

Although it did get me thinking about pitches and so I want to use your time to think about this unspoken stage of creative projects.

Introductions

The first pitch was technically an approach, by a nationally known satellite TV broadcaster, seeking a new identity to reorient themselves for the digital age (yes, again). The second was a Request for Proposal (RFP) for identity design for a national MBA institute. 

Your place or mine

The satellite TV people wanted an online meeting even though they were just an hour’s drive away. We insisted on an in-person meeting, and eventually won one.  

The MBA people insisted on an on-campus presentation, at a town 2400 km away and no direct flights.

Coy bride

The satellite TV people were experienced agency-handlers. They were coy about asking to see creative work, couching it as “approach” or “what you can do for our brand”.

This is the typical pitch, in thin disguise, which we politely refuse. It’s like seeing months of work and conversations compressed into a week, minus the conversations. Design is a conversation with a client; the exchanges of ideas are precious. 

That’s our view. Agencies, some whose work we admire from time to time, see it differently. Ram pitched for Sita, right?

Anyway we went in with our show and tell—some prior work,  an appreciation of the brief and thin slices of creative possibilities. 

All with the disclaimer that this is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to the real work is accidental, and no animals were harmed or children exploited. 

Managing management 

The MBA’s faculty and their purchase department organised their process like a government tender for an electric sub-station. 

Due diligence—bills of past work done to prove value—phone numbers of clients. 

There was a marking formula, both to qualify and win. It was an algebraic expression with variables like C1, C , T1 and T and weights like 0.7. It took technical strength and price both into account.  

I presented in an olympic-sized lecture auditorium, to an audience of three academics. For a moment I wondered if the rest bunked the class.

They liked our work; but wondered if we, as consultants, would help them win over the section of the faculty who didn’t think the identity needed to be changed in the first place! Imagine the BCCI asking Shubman Gill to approach the Government for permission to play cricket in Pakistan. 

Results, examined

The satellite TV people took a month to tell us that they’d found someone who understood their problem better. They sounded satisfied, but creative markets are like any oversupplied market. 

Clients hold all the cards; agencies lack agency. Clients make sure to hire the best from among the desperate, and repeat the process as the relationship runs out of gas. Both are half-expecting this outcome; it’s a race to the bottom. 

The MBA guys took five minutes, over a ‘bid opening call’, online. Envelopes opened, prices announced, calculators came out. We missed the first spot by a hair. 

Given that we were nearly four times the price of the winning bid, we were therefore FAR ahead on technical evaluation. Playing on a different pitch. 

So did the ‘objective’ result meet the objective? 

Finally

Client or agency, whoever you are, can you admit to this? Or do you care?

It’s up to you, and do tell me what you think. 

My view is that you should care. It’s tempting to pitch, but the price is high. If you win, you start a relationship as a subordinate who is grateful for the work, not an equal partner in a creative collaboration. This means your chances of making a deep impact are worse, and you will be satisfied at faithfully carrying out instructions or being admired for a skill rather than your thinking. Also it’s a short term win: it postpones the moment when you come to grips with the fact that your job, as a designer, is to make the pitch unnecessary—to get invited, to propose, to accept and indeed, to reject business. Of course, this applies to ‘true’ pitches, a design swayamvar1.

0-2 and happy,

Itu

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1. Refers to the scene from Ramayana where Ram came first in the bow-breaking pitch for Sita’s hand in marriage. Some versions of the epic also have Ravan as a contestant.