Caspian asks

Caspian from Smooth Fluid in New Zealand has asked me a question about pitches.

"Pitches. You win some, you loose some. When you loose you'll usually never hear why, and when you win the reasons given should be taken with a pinch of salt (just read BLINK and the smoke is lifting, that, in addition to a masters in psych, has proved very handy ammunition in this field of our). I digress.

Maybe I slept through a class once. Maybe it should be all to obvious, but presenting one's own work is one of the hardest thing we ever have to do, in particular for awards and the like. What would be really handy is on anonymous person who is on a panel saying what pushed his/her buttons about the presentation (not the work), but so far I
have been unable to locate any.

Do you have any advice? Thoughts? Or maybe you listeners do."

You can read my thoughts on free pitches and pitching in general here.

The main thing about pitching is that you lose more than you win. I reckon you win on average one in every (insert number of people on the pitch). So if you're always up against four agencies you'll probably win one in four.

When you're on a roll you'll win more than that, when you're going through a bad patch you'll win less.

I have sat on the other side once. I was on a pitch panel for a public sector organisation looking to appoint someone to look at their identity. It was only a creds pitch but here's a few of my thoughts.

1. Only half the agencies (there were 6) had laptops. For some reason, the ones with laptops looked better. A lot better.

2. Most people had a standard presentation. This looked shit. Someone had taken the trouble to scan in some current literature from the organisation and they talked about that for a bit. That was brilliant.

3. Everyone was nervous as hell. Even the big, experienced agencies.

4. People showed their work as if it was the Mona Lisa. It wasn't.

5. Some people were just boring.

6. Most people came in two's, but only one agency had taken the trouble to work out who was Bert and who was Ernie. All the others kept interrupting and overlapping each over.

7. Everyone wore a suit, or a least a jacket.

8. Some people forgot to hand over business cards (ooohh that makes me mad).

9. The ones who were the best were the ones who had actually read the brief. You'd be surprised how many people hadn't.

10. In the end we went for the one who inspired us the most.