David Bernstein: Cash-free enterprise

Some 15 years ago I suggested to a journal, not unlike this one, an idea for a regular comic strip. It would feature a couple in charge of a design group. I based the characters on two of my mates (big, then and now) in the business, Rodney and Michael. I called them Foetus and Pitch, the one a creative, the other a salesman. I was reminded of this abortive attempt at gaining immortality by some recent correspondence in these columns.

“So what is a free pitch?” asks Nick Ovenden (Letters, DW 29 September) and provides the answer: “A piece of buckshee design work offering a solution to a client’s problem.” Well, up to a point Lord Copper. The answer assumes that the pitch incorporates work specifically originated for the purpose. The word “pitch”, however, means “a salesman’s particular line of persuasive talk”, and who would want to pay for that?

I’m all for a freepitch when a creative team practises its selling skills (thus demonstrating its commercial credentials) and makes the case for the company, without, of course, selling – correction, giving away – its birthright. And it’s this last which has become the accepted meaning of the term. Most pitches today, I would guess, are speculative. Nick Ovenden is right to complain that strategic expertise also comes gift-wrapped with the creative work.

What makes a creative outfit do such a thing? Either or both of the motivating forces at work in the City – greed and fear. Winning a big account and not losing out. Hope also plays a part, not to mention self-delusion and hubris. Whether those astute financial folk in the City would act this way is doubtful. They would probably conduct a cost/ benefit analysis. Whereas we creatives rush in, anxious to show off our skills, creative and analytical, and gain the business by demonstrating our indispensability.

We are dazzled by the potential gain – the income and the fame – and thus blinded to the considerable loss. Doing justice to the task will take time and involve either moving key people off other work or bringing in supplementary talent. Not doing justice to the project will make us feel uncomfortable – and, given how clients move, may well mar our reputation and chances in a future encounter. Not getting the business, of course, will be dispiriting. But even getting it may be unsatisfying. The client may feel that solutions costing nothing are worth the same and will assume that now you will start the work proper.

But all this logic is at naught when the adrenalin surges. Nick Hornby might write a book about it – Pitch Fever. I’m an ex-sufferer. A well-known oil company who shell be nameless invited three outfits to pitch for a massive identity project. There would be no fee. We knew the names of our competitors. We knew our client. We knew the product area. We possessed the talent to crack it. We gave it everything. There were two presentation stages. The vibes at stage one were excellent. Stage two looked like a formality

The atmosphere at stage two was different, uncomfortable. Over lunch we were informed that the project had been put on indefinite hold and there would be no appointment. A subsequent attempt to bill for out-of-pocket expenses met with silence. But we were the lambs, not insisting on a contract with a clause covering postponement or cancellation. Moving the Goalposts – a chapter in that book.

I don’t think we ever free-pitched again. We either agreed a nominal fee or presented for all we were worth without giving anything away. Otherwise, we simply refused. It wasn’t easy to deny ourselves the challenge of the chase, the buzz and charge of working on something new, especially when that account might contribute to a new identity for the company and attract, in time, new business.

So what is the answer to free pitches? Clients won’t stop asking for them. Design groups won’t cease being tempted. I have a suggestion. There should be an industry agreement that all pitches must be paid for at a fee decided upon by both parties. Failing that, a nominal fee shall be paid by the client to a charity specified by the design group. Details need to be worked out – a sliding scale of charges, for example, but not too complicated – and the scheme branded, launched and publicised. Something like the Design Council Protocol. And each design group’s terms of business would include a sentence to the effect that it is a signatory.

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