Managing The Commercial Communications Process (Week 23)
If you’ve been with me since the beginning, you’ll know in the early days of my blog, Vic informed us we would be required to take part in a real-life agency/client live brief as part of CW3. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, please click here to have a quick read about i and stay posted for next week's blog article on what the CW3 brief entails.
The time is drawing near to when we find out what agency we will be presenting to and for what client. If you’re as excited as I am to find out what brand we will be brainstorming campaign ideas for, please come back next Monday!
Until then, today (week 23) introduced how to run a successful pitch, what should be included, the process etc. Vic’s lecture on this was extremely helpful as I (and probably the majority of the class) have never pitched ideas to an agency before so it was a really great opportunity to gain a heads-up! It can be a quite daunting experience, especially if you’re not the best presenter or public speaker. As it was a great help, I’d like to share the results of the lecture with you today.
If you have any tips or recommendations on anything else you think a pitch should include or just remedies to get rid of “stage fright” do leave a comment below. I’d love to know!
The marketing budget and therefore marketing communications budget can often be referred to as “The Great Wall of China”, thus appointing new agency is a high risk, time consuming and costly project. These disadvantages can affect both the client and the agency in similar ways. This also means that it can involve several processes and indeed take different forms; The Straight Pitch and The Procurement and Auction Lead Pitch. It also now involves a variety of different types of personnel and organisations and costs a lot of money.
To give you some idea, clients perceive agency pitch costs to be in the region of £31k for a large pitch. However the reality is that it actually costs agencies more like £178K (approx 99 man days). Why is it so expensive do you ask? A break-down of just a few cost examples are outlined below;
·
People
working on pitching
·
Subs
time on existing business
·
Cost
of primary research
·
Travel,
other resources
·
Excludes
the new business team time, when prospecting for new clients
Reputation
How
do you get “on the radar” or gain a good reputation? This can differ in regards
to agency level and individual level. At agency level, numerous awards are
available such as the IPA Effectiveness Awards, D&AD, Media Week, PR Week
and more. Authentic tests in the workplace are also common in the PR industry
to test employees, potentially gaining them a higher reputation in the office.
On a personal individual basis, a good reputation can be achieved through work
examples and your display of expertise and its effectiveness. For example, an
individual interviewing for a job role with past successful experience in a
specific sector is more likely to be hired than an individual with no
experience. Once you gain a positive reputation, it is then important to know
what to do with it;
·
Guarantee
it continues to grow and on a consistent level
This
can then help to gain new potential business and stops you from losing it.
·
Successfully
market that reputation
–
Trade
body membership and participation
–
Be
visible in the “right” media
–
Be seen
at the right place e.g. conferences, networking events etc.
–
Apply/gain
prestigious awards if possible
–
Other
sources of influence e.g. LinkedIn, other social media/online methods etc.
Please
click the YouTube screenshot below to view the IPA’s video content on "Pitch
Legends";
Clicking the IPA icons below will also take you directly to their recommended "Pitch Principles";
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