The Human Cost Of Pitching For New Business
When agencies are invited to present their ideas for business that only one can win – often for no fee - it comes with costs. We’ve already looked at the financial costs of agencies pitching for new business in depth. Many of these are concrete and quantifiable. Any creative agency should be able to tell you what it cost them in hard currency each time they’ve pitched to a potential client. There are, of course, all the opportunity costs that have a financial impact too.
Agencies may or may not choose to track all the financial implications of pitching, but this is only one part of the story. There is a human cost to creating these pitch presentations too.
Agency pitching requires teams and hard work and dedication
Because pitching through presentations has ‘always’ been part of agency life, most agencies accept that some level of upfront investment is necessary to win work. Competition isn’t always a bad thing. It can focus thinking, inspire innovation, and create positive momentum. At its simplest level, the process is designed to build lasting partnerships that benefit both parties.
There will often be a dedicated new business team working alongside existing client teams to manage work flow. Design, commercial, tools and data, and any specialist teams might be called upon to give their expertise to help win a pitch.
The pitching process can have a physical and emotional toll on these individuals and teams who work so hard to deliver winning pitch presentations. They can be worth huge amounts of money – and build or lose reputations. As agency fortunes fluctuate, winning or losing a pitch can mean the difference between growing a team and shrinking it – or worse.
The changing pitch landscape
There has been a shift over the past decade or so in the intensity of competitive pitching. It used to be more of a ‘credentials-led’ conversation. These days it increasingly requires strategic modelling, campaign concepts, commercial frameworks, and highly produced presentation materials at an early stage.
As agencies continually up their game, outdoing the competition means applying more resources each time. In a world getting increasingly used to speed and urgency, pitch presentations need to be turned around in less time. Speaking about changes and difficulties in pitching, a senior executive at Mother Design told Creative Salon that:
‘Gradually, over the last decade, we’ve moved from retainer model client relationships to more project based models. Instead of there being four or five pitches a year there’s probably fifteen. The pitch process has more and more meetings involved. It’s actually overwhelming and can feel like a constant conveyor or treadmill.’
Agency culture and dealing with rejection
Research and behavioural models including the ‘job demands-resources model’, suggest that sustained deadline pressure, limited control over outcomes, and repeated evaluative rejection are linked to stress and fatigue. The process that agencies go through to win new business combines all three of these.
Deadlines are often fixed externally and generally require long hours and late nights. Outcomes are commonly influenced by variables outside the team’s control – or even knowledge. Statistically, most pitches end in loss as multiple agencies will have been invited to present and only one will be appointed.
While agencies may understand this intellectually, the expectations and internal response to losses does not always reflect this. Having worked for many years in this environment, I know that individuals can take it personally or even feel as if they are somehow at fault. Rejection might be part of a job, but that doesn’t necessarily make it any easier. This is particularly true after weeks or months of significant effort and emotional investment.
Working on speculative pitch presentations as well as other client work
Working on creative pitch presentations often happens alongside existing commitments, just adding to the pressure. Designers will be moving between live client deadlines and speculative decks for potential clients. Account leads will alternate between delivery and preparation and teams will also need to stretch their time across both. Knowing all the work you’re doing could be for nothing can all take its toll, especially when it happens on repeated occasions.
Creative burnout is a real problem in agencies
Creativity needs space to breathe. Original thinking depends on it. It’s often in quieter moments, when you have time to switch off, that it strikes. When you’re working towards a pitch presentation that has so much riding on it – and so little time to get it right – it can be hard to stay engaged and focused.
When you are pitching for new business, ideas are being developed primarily for evaluation. They may never see the light of day and this can lead to a psychological shift. Motivation is strengthened by competence and purpose. Great ideas can be rejected for reasons that have nothing to do with their innate quality. The human response to rejection will be the same though.
Burnout in creative industries tends to build gradually through the sort of sustained intensity the continual cycle of pitching creates.
Developing and retaining talent
The retention of talent in the agency world is already a strategic priority. It can become increasingly difficult to reconcile the values agencies promote and the ones their staff end up living by. The constant pressure to perform - often against the odds – can become too much. People are more likely to suffer from burnout, leading to a change of job or even career.
According to a survey of people working in new business or on pitches by The Great Pitch Company, 43% had considered changing their job and 33% had considered leaving the industry completely.
The human cost of pitching for new business can be high but it is easy for this sort of intensity to become normalised and expected. At best it will manifest in poor energy levels, motivation, and resilience – none of which are ideal for the creative process.
Are the days of pitching for business numbered?
Human capacity is limited. We know that the ‘work hard, play hard’ attitude of the 1980s and 1990s is unsustainable. In those days, poor mental health was either scorned, ignored, or just seen as a weakness that needed to be weeded out. These days we know better.
As new generations with different attitudes and priorities rise up the ranks, we need to ask ourselves if and how the agency pitch process can or should change. Stay tuned because we’re exploring this in our next blog.
Have you suffered creative burnout? Do you think it’s time the industry changed? Get in touch if you have any comments or questions - we’d love to hear your thoughts.