How To Win Your Next Pitch: Sparrow, Jen Davidson & Graham Webster Weigh-In At Cannes In Cairns

The industry’s favourite pitch doctors piled into the Reef Auditorium and Cannes in Cairns, Presented by Pinterest, to ruminate on the biggest issues of the day when it comes to agencies, clients and winning business.

But, as the first session of the day, following the epic Pinterest Welcome Party on Monday night, Greg ‘Sparrow’ Graham had a small piece of housekeeping before diving into the questions — distributing Panadol to the attendees!

With that out of the way and questions pouring in from the audience via Slido, the trio launched into a remarkably energetic Q&A considering last night’s activities.

First among the questions, what do agencies consistently get wrong when pitching for work?

“Agencies spend far too much time talking about themselves in a pitch,” said Graham Webster, CEO of Enth Degree.

“If you’re allocated 45 minutes to pitch and you spend the first 20 minutes restating the brief, giving them a deep-dive into their target audience which they already know and go through your agency’s processes, you cut out a hell of a lot of time. You should be engaging with the idea that you came up with and then allow yourself time to work with the client, talk with the client and interact with the client in the pitch process.”

Jen Davidson, managing partner of Tumbleturn Media, added that agencies often didn’t consider the most important thing of all — the client.

“It always surprises me how agencies can come into a pitch having not really thought about the client and what their needs are. They spend a little too much time trying to sell themselves as opposed to understanding how they can contribute to that particular client’s business.

“It’s critical to have a perspective on the client’s work, even at credential stage.”

Then, the three musketeers of pitching moved onto the agencies themselves and whether, despite the branding, they’re all too similar.

“It’s all about the people,” said Davidson, “and making sure you put the right people in the room.”

Webster, meanwhile, said the key for agencies was to really differentiate themselves on pitch day.

“Agencies look the same when the client has five in a row. We try and avoid that because it’s unfair on the agencies but it happens and you want the client to have as much attention as possible.

“To differentiate yourself, cut out a lot of the stuff beforehand. The best pitch I’ve ever seen was when one guy came to me and said ‘The answer [to the brief] is so obvious that you’ve probably already seen from the other agencies what Im about to tell you and if they haven’t, they’re all wrong.’ He presented within 10-15 minutes and engaged with the client for the next half hour or so and won the pitch before the door had closed. It’s the first time I’ve seen that happen.”

Another big issue in pitching at the moment is diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) casting. The audience asked the panel how important it was in understanding the pitch process.

“It’s increasingly important,” said Davidson.

“But it amazes how often you see agencies saying ‘Oh, here are two women, let’s just match them up.’ People see straight through that. But it’s going to be very important in the next 12 months or so.”

Perhaps one of the biggest tests is winning a pitch as an incumbent. The panel told the audience that honesty really was the best policy when looking to retain a client.

“If you’re an incumbent pitching, it’s important to acknowledge where things aren’t great and have a good reflection on what has happened and feed that back to the client and say ‘This is what we’ve learned and what we will do differently moving forward,’ said Davidson,

“Eating humble pie is critical.”

Webster, meanwhile, acknowledged that not all pitches are the same.

“We finished a review not long ago and we had two years of service diagnostics and the scores kept going down, down, down. So there was a company that was never going to win,” said Webster.

“But pitches aren’t always called because a client is unsatisfied, there’s often a three-year process and they have to do it. It’s part of corporate governance that they need to run a pitch. A client should say whether they have no intention of changing but I’ve never been in a situation where there is no intention.”

Then, the trio moved on to one of the big questions dominating all the sessions at Cannes in Cairns — creative versus media.

Sparrow said clients are “perfectionists” these days and he personally “loves it” when agencies use other resources and bring creatives and strategists into the pitch.

“I just don’t think we can go back to the old days when the media guys got five minutes at the end to show the spots on a schedule.”

So, you’ve all been warned — there are no excuses for losing a pitch ever again.