Category: Communication
The Night of the Losers. A look back in pictures and a few words.
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On Thursday, August 27, we hosted The Night of the Losers at our offices. An after-work event dedicated to a key topic: the challenges surrounding agency pitches and competitive tenders.
Lessons learned
A few fellow agency professionals joined us to share their experiences, anecdotes and defeats.
- Romaine Travelletti, from North Buro, told us how they won a pitch in collaboration with a partner agency. The latter was quickly dropped by the client. Despite these red flags, Romaine and the North Buro team decided to continue the collaboration… Only to be dropped themselves a few weeks later.
- Guillaume Mégroz, from 23bis, shared his thoughts following a pitch targeting Generation Z. After the presentation, the verdict was in: they hadn’t won the pitch. One feeling lingered: that they had been expected to create a message designed to appeal to a jury of baby boomers, rather than develop communication that was genuinely relevant and impactful for the actual target audience — young people in their twenties.
- Gaëlle Valentini, from Baston, shared a pitch in which creativity seemed to play a particularly important role. After several rounds of adjustments to meet the client’s expectations, the client ultimately decided not to move forward with the collaboration. The reason given? The art direction was deemed… “too creative.”
- Raphaël Pasquali, from TWKS, shared a defeat that came despite his agency having won a pitch to produce a film accompanied by a 360° campaign. The film was complete, and the campaign was ready for international rollout. But not so fast! At the very final review, the client decided to pull the plug on everything. Budget cuts, an unstable situation… End of assignment.
Shared responsibility
Granted, prospects and clients sometimes put us agencies through the wringer. And losing a pitch is never easy to accept, especially when we feel like an afterthought or when the odds seem stacked against us.
But it would be far too easy to avoid looking at our own practices critically. Perhaps it’s time to take a stand and stop encouraging poorly defined pitches. Here are a few ideas that might help change the way things are done and, one day, lead to fairer competition.
- Never be both judge and jury! If you’re involved in the pitch process or in drafting the brief, step aside when it comes to participating in the tender.
- Say no to unpaid pitches! And CHF 1,000? That’s just insulting — we can all agree on that.
- Challenge the numbers! Question how many agencies are invited to participate in a pitch. Three is more than enough. Five or more? Red flag! Three creative concepts? Way too many. Three weeks to submit a proposal… no comment!
- Respect your hourly rate! The free market is what it is. But CHF 100 per hour? Simply not acceptable. Let’s respect our time and our work.
More Love!
To wrap things up, being fellow professionals is surely much more enjoyable than being competitors! The idea is to exchange ideas, share experiences and call things out when our profession isn’t being treated with the respect it deserves. It’s as simple as that!
See you next year for the second edition of The Night of the Losers!
p.s: Got ideas or recommendations for the next edition of The Night of the Losers? Here’s where to share them: hello@lanuitdeslosers.ch (I’ll take them all to heart)
p.p.s: Curious how the lanuitdeslosers.ch website itself came together? We wrote about the making of The Night of the Losers, from paper wireframes to the bowling game made of sponsor logos.
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