Creative pitches are shifting to prioritising relationships and lowering costs, according to agency insiders.
70 non-media pitches, including creative, were completed in the last six months of 2024, according to TrinityP3 State of the Pitch survey.
Damien Eley, Many Australia's founding partner, told AdNews that shorter project-based work is wrapping up in four to six weeks, with big brand or global pitches taking more than six months.
“It's a huge investment, especially in markets like the US where multi-phase processes and paid intermediaries are common. In Australia, things can move faster, but not always with better outcomes," Eley said.
“And the longer the process, the deeper the financial hole you dig before you’ve even started the client relationship - which means you’re working to recover that cost and make profit, usually on a relationship that’s inefficient in its early days.
“In an era of AI-enabled speed and shrinking CMO tenure, that maths often just doesn’t add up. If the win doesn’t last long enough to pay back the cost of winning it, it’s not a win!”
Economic conditions, such as the cost of living, are influencing pitch length, AKQA Australia chief growth officer Jeremy Smart said.
“Large stakeholder groups can slow things down and it’s often about diary alignment and figuring out who is actually responsible for making the decision," Smart said.
“Economic conditions have also made clients understandably more risk-averse, with some marketers taking more time to ensure decisions are well-informed.
“Government or quasi-government pitches sometimes pay a modest pitch fee to help offset participation costs (often to a small, closed list of agencies), which can help encourage participation, but those processes still tend to be slow.
"On the flip side, some growth industry sectors – like online trading, crypto, and certain finance categories – are not feeling those turbulent or challenging economic conditions as much and therefore move incredibly quickly, making decisions without extended delays or heavy budget negotiation."
While some pitches are supported by fees, By All Means managing partner Georgina Pownall said that most aren't paying unless it’s a government pitch.
“And it feels like there may be a lack of understanding on how long a pitch takes to run,” Pownall said.
“If we’re going to be in market in September, they might go out to pitch in March.
“Which is an incredibly short time to pitch and to land and consolidate the client.
"A lot of time is needed in consolidation, confining and the production.”
In a post-COVID pitch environment, increased clarity and chemistry between the client and agency has been put to the forefront.
“This is partly driven by economic pressure and the higher stakes of getting it wrong," AKQA's Smart said.
"There’s also more discussion around the role of AI, often with assumptions about cost and speed that require careful discussion to align expectations.
“Price has also become more of an early-stage filter: many clients now shortlist based on cost first, and only then assess chemistry and capability.
“This is a reversal from the past, when chemistry often came first.”
Many Australia's Eley said that despite the range of requirements in lengthy pitches, clients inherently go for their 'gut feeling.'
“Shorter pitches are more transactional: “show us your thinking, show us the team, show us a cost.” Longer ones are often over-engineered: credentials, workshops, rounds of creative, then back to strategy again," Eley said.
"The ask keeps evolving. And yet most of the time, the client ends up going with a gut feeling about the team.
“If the scope isn’t sticky enough, the client doesn’t stay long enough, the business demands unrealistically quick returns, or the CMO doesn’t even last long enough to implement a vision, no amount of pitch success actually adds up for the agency.
“The ROI just isn’t there. If the traditional AOR is largely dead, why are we still running pitches built for it?”
Independent creative agencies are typically working with smaller budgets and teams, which Pownall said is leading to burnout.
“All we are is our people. We can’t cut down on equipment as we are a salary we need to achieve every month," Pownall said.
“Whenever we do unpaid work, it takes away from paid work.
“Larger agencies have a much bigger advantage in that they have pitch budgets yearly. They've got freelancers and resources to help them.
“That's the tough thing, watching our team to ensure there’s no burn-out and ensuring they get enough down-time.”
To shorten pitch times and ease the pitching process, Eley believes clients should focus on chemistry and agency connection.
"If I were a client, I’d be trying to look into the future past just the 'can you do the work?' phase to the 'what’s it going to feel like when things get messy?' stage," he said.
“Chemistry and people matter as much as anything. We lost two pitches in the past 12 months after all feeling great about the chemistry and the team but losing on some small annoying thing about the creative or the media.
“Both those clients have recently come back to see if we could work something out: they realised that chemistry and the right team was probably as, if not more, important than the little things that distracted them."
DDB Group Melbourne chief creative officer Psembi Kinstan said that the pitch is an opportunity for agencies to collaborate with clients.
“The pitch is an opportunity for your agency to show what it can do well, and how it likes to partner," Kinstan said.
“So approach every pitch from the standpoint of; how do we show them how we like to work to get to the best results. If clients don’t like the way we work, too easy, we shouldn’t work together.
"But if they like our style of partnership, then we’ll both reap the rewards."
"That means deep collaboration with clients, thorough research and an understanding of the consumers, a proper understanding of the business and stakeholders involved, all in aid of creating big distinctive ideas that will push the business to new success."
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