Losing pitches to boring work

Posted by Chris on 22nd October 2019 (about a 1 minute read).

I really felt for the writer of this post. https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2019/10/04/why-do-mediocre-ads-keep-appearing

She had been part of an agency pitch for a brand, which she lost despite having what they thought was a great pitch. When the TVC from the winning agency appeared, it was pretty mediocre.

Losing a pitch hurts.

If the winner then produces amazing work, you understand why you lost.

But when the winner produces boring work that anyone could have made, what was the point of the pitch?

Having said that, I’ve won lots of pitches, and the final work very rarely matches what was pitched. Exciting and creative ideas are often ground down by “our customers might not understand it”, “our retailers might not like it”, “we haven’t tried this before”, “our CEO likes the colour red”, “everyone should be smiling”.

So, did the other agency win by pitching boring work that the client loved, or did they win by pitching great work that they were never allowed to execute?

Guess we’ll never know.