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Contact UsThe Worst Pitch - with Lucy Botham at Silverbean
Lucy is Head of Commercial at Newcastle-based agency Silverbean. The affiliate marketing agency have worked with the likes of John Lewis, New Balance, Hello Fresh and L'Oreal to name a few.Â
It's safe to say the team have been through their fair share of pitches for big name brands. Here, Lucy shares her pitch horror stories and recounts the lessons learnt...
Lucy says "I've been working at agencies for nearly 15 years, luckily the majority of pitches I've been involved in have been good experiences but you don't go 15 years without seeing a few bad ones!"
I'm sure everyone will have experienced this... when you put your heart and soul into a pitch, get there and the client couldn't give a sh*t, spend their whole time glued to their laptop or phone and ask no questions.
At the end you realise there was never a chance of you winning it, you were just the agency brought in because procurement had told the client they had to have 3 agencies to pitch (even though they had already made up their mind).Â
In my previous agency we did a lot of work for a large FMCG company and I had one client who sat down and before we even started she said "whatever the cost is I'll expect a 10% discount", I respected her for being so forthright but she could have at least waited till the end!
I'm sure we've all been in pitches when a spelling mistake has slipped through the net, always pretty mortifying especially when you're discussing your attention to detail! On one occasion however we started the pitch and the client stopped us, someone on their team had sent us the wrong brief, all that work for nothing. Lesson learnt - always follow up with questions once you receive a brief to avoid this scenario!
Another pitch gone wrong was in central London, we were 15 mins into it and the fire alarm went off. The whole building was evacuated onto the street. Our client had a flight to catch after our meeting and didn't have time to reschedule so we continued the pitch leaning against a wall on the side of the River Thames. Despite this disaster we won the work, I guess we showed we could deal with adversity!
Wise words and some cautionary tales from Lucy. If you'd like to share some of your pitching highs and lows, get in touch with the team today!