The Pitch Positive Pledge: our thoughts a year later

The industry wide Pitch Positive Pledge led by The IPA and ISBA was launched almost a year ago, encouraging agencies and brands alike to focus on behaviour changes in a bid to improve mental health, cause less wastage and reduce costs.

Although pitching and the future of the pitch is a weathered topic, it was the first time we saw the industry unite for change and for that we commend it. There’s been many positive outcomes; it has resulted in more agencies and clients to talk about best practices and behaviour changes and given people something to lean on in on discussions and challenges. 

But is the Pitch Positive Pledge going far enough?

From what we’ve seen over the past 12 months, real, deep change is yet to be seen.

We’ve heard of clients, even those who’ve signed the pledge, still falling back into old habits; not rewarding agencies for their time, exacerbating the length of the pitch and still putting immense pressure on agency resource.

And we know that the Pitch Positive Pledge itself focuses on removing unnecessary pitching and basic asks from the client in the first instance (which we believe the be the bare minimum of a modern-day pitch process) but what happens when the pitch is deemed necessary and the parameters are set, yet the process still drains agencies of resources, contributes to burnout and doesn’t provide a sense of what a real-life working relationship is like for brand-agency partners? 

In our Future of the Pitch report published last year, we discovered that 81% of agencies and 74% of brands don’t believe the traditional pitch process is providing a true sense of what a brand/agency would be like to work with nor does the industry believe it to be in line with ethical and responsible business practices (97% of agencies vs 59% of brands). 

And with that we believe that the biggest enemy of change is lack of visible and viable solutions which can truly change the pitch process. 

This involves a shift in emphasis around expectation at outset during the pitch; with more of a focus on interrogation and diagnosis of the brief together, rather than demand for answers and solutions developed in a vacuum during a constructed process. This means focusing on strategic tissues and co-authoring the brief rather than presenting creative and written responses, providing an idea of what a real-life working relationship may be like going forward. 

We’d like to see and promote more real-life examples of clients and agencies taken a modern-day approach that in turn does everything the Pitch Positive Pledge sets out to do: improving mental health in the industry overall, less waste and reduction in costs. Given we are still in a state of permacrisis and yet to see any real end to the uncertainty, the time for change is now.