It’s the thing and agency dreads – the repitch. But this year there could be a bumper crop of repitches just around the corner. According to our friends at COMvergence (an independent research and data consultancy, which analyses media spend investments), they’ve identified an estimated $40billion worth of media billings that is likely to go into review in the not-too-distant future.
Among the largest multinational advertisers whose global media spend is greater than $200M, they identified just 45 (out of 200) who have not conducted a formal regional/global media pitch for more than 4 years. And given reviews tend to happen at around the three year mark, there are an awful lot of companies that might come up for repitch soon including Disney ($3.3B), Apple ($2.7B), Renault Nissan ($2.7B), Stellantis ($2.3B), NBCUniversal ($1.4B), PepsiCo ($1.5B), GlaxoSmithKline ($1.4B), Sanofi ($1.1B) and Sony ($1B).
Having run and won some of the biggest repitches over my thirty-year career in the industry, including P&G Northern Europe, L’Oréal in France and Italy, as well as far from dreading the re-pitch, I love the challenge. It’s not about retaining the business; it’s about winning the hearts and minds of the client all over again.
Of course, statutory time-led reviews are not the only reasons for repitches. There are many other reasons, those outside of an agency’s control include new client leadership, scope changes, consolidation into fewer agencies, and economic environment. Others more directly linked to the agency’s performance include the client’s business results and agency performance in terms of relationship.
Incumbent – a good or bad thing?
In my opinion there’s no greater advantage than being the incumbent.
Clients see you as the known quantity. If you can point to results in a healthy relationship and a great return on their investment, then you are automatically going to have a leg up over anybody else coming from the outside. But let’s face it even the best agency relationships have some issues. The key is to acknowledge them, then quickly and clearly address them.
Of course, even for an optimist like me, there is bad news too.
That knowledge and insight that you’ve built up can also be your downfall. All too often it stops you from presenting a great solution because you’ve tried something similar in the past or know something about the marketplace or the client’s preferences that may put you off. In other words, you self-edit your presentation and pitch. Whereas one of your competitors, unencumbered with that knowledge might confidently present the same idea but with gusto and persuade the client afresh.
The second bit of bad news, and this has happened to me time and time again, is, unfortunately, the agency team will always believe that the relationship is better than it is.
I once worked on a repitch for a network of mobile phone operators across the whole of Southeast Asia. The account team told me that our relationship was good, and so we put together a fantastic pitch with an amazing strategy, a truly innovative approach, it was just fantastic.
But we didn’t win. So, I went and saw the procurement people afterwards and they said, the reason you didn’t win was that we wanted you to fix the day-to-day issues. Instead, you tried to sell us the Rolls-Royce solution when we were looking for the Toyota solution that was going to deliver great work, day in, day out.
To repitch or not to pitch?
Like any pitch, a re-pitch needs rigorous qualification. Of course, it’s all the harder with a repitch because there is a clear revenue downside if you decide not to. Unlike an ordinary pitch, where winning means a clear upside in revenue.
Nonetheless, you need to qualify hard. Use your repitch scorecard to face the difficult questions. And then having completed the scorecard, gather your management team and decide whether you truly commit to win this repitch or not.
Because with a repitch you all must commit to win. In the knowledge that it will take a huge amount of effort, resources, and time.
The cost of the repitch
According to US trade associations ANA and the 4As, the average cost of a pitch to an agency is $204,461 whereas a re-pitch is near double that at $406,092. (We wait to see if the IPA and ISBA will replicate the study in the UK.) Now of course, that is an average and depending on the size of the prize agencies will spend less or a lot more than that. Certainly, if you are defending a pitch where the billing is over $1B, the cost of the repitch is just as staggering.
Given that, you should do everything you can to avoid the repitch. One way is to ‘repitch the business every year.’ Of course, not literally but have the mindset that you are going to ‘win the client’s hearts, minds and business all over again – each and every year.’
Some years ago, I pitched and won the global Microsoft account with my boss at the time, Stewart Pearson at Wunderman. He taught me that as soon as you win a client, you instil a yearly opportunity to ‘pitch.’ Fitting in with the client’s yearly planning schedule in the summer, he would ask senior management their biggest challenges for the year ahead. Then over the summer he corralled resources and pulled together a pitch-like presentation to senior management in early September. Year after year, they were won over and Wunderman retained the account for many years.
Chances of winning a repitch?
Certainly, perceived wisdom throughout my career is that the incumbent is significantly less likely to win. But in recent years, there has been some evidence from different surveys that the chances have been increasing. Again, in the absence of UK data, we look to the same robust report from the US which found that in fact 60% of repitches resulted in the incumbent retaining the business.
Why might this be? Firstly, clients are less frequently inviting their current agency to repitch ‘out of politeness’ especially if they genuinely believe their agency has no chance of retaining the business. No client has the time or bandwidth to sit through pointless and time-consuming pitches.
Secondly, agencies are becoming better at qualifying the repitch. They are being more honest with themselves about their chances of retaining an account, weighing up the cost of pitching and likely limited resources. Taking the decision to repitch pitch or not takes serious analysis and consideration.
And thirdly, in previous years, ‘new and shiny’ would often take precedence over the ‘tried and tested.’ But today, changing agency is a hugely complex, expensive, and risky task so there must be clear water between any new potential agency and the existing one.
Two is better than one
So how do you increase your chances of winning. Here are two ways.
Firstly, have two teams. One team that concentrates on running the day-to-day business perfectly. And the second team that concentrates one hundred per cent on delivering a brilliant pitch. Because we’ve all tried using just one team, who have to run the day-to-day and run the pitch. It’s unfair on them and you run the real risk of making an error at a critical time.
Secondly, present two options. One is your safe bet. Knowing what we know we would recommend X. It should still be a brilliant and a smart evolution and you should clearly highlight why it is different from before, underlining the key changes. The other should be your wild card. And would be your recommendation as if you came in afresh, unencumbered by what you know about the business and the client.
This can be as far out as you like because then the client can see that on a continuum, they’ve got an agency that can deliver a safe bet at one end and an extremely creative and different approach on the other. An insider’s point of view and an outside perspective.
Repitch = Reinvention.
A repitch means total reinvention. Not just a few tweaks here or there. Not just a bit of optimisation. I mean reinvention across the board.
Reinvent the team. Bring in new faces for sure. Create new future-facing roles such as ‘head of e-commerce,’ ‘retail media’ or ‘data insight’. Create an expert panel. We did this once with a big national lottery operator. We identified expert people working on lotteries around the world and created an expert panel. Once a quarter, the expert panel would review the best creative work from lotteries from around the world and share their point of view. It was a way of reinventing the team, adding value and bringing expertise.
Reinvent your offering, probably through the lens of AI. Whether it be products or services. The services are more obvious. If you are an advertising agency, you might want to think about going back with a CRM approach as well, or a perspective on PR and so on.
Or you reinvent the products you offer. For a media agency, that might be about new ways of leveraging their data, better dashboards and so on.
Reinvent your compensation approach. if you haven’t done so already, propose a performance-related element or shifting from a cost base approach to pricing to one that is value added.
You can even reinvent the name of your agency or the location of the team, nothing is sacred. I heard a great example the other day, when an agency pitched for Wrigley’s. Rather than hold the pitch in the agency building, they held it next door in a newsagent. They secured agreement from the newsagent to take out some of their shelving, close the store for a day, they put a table in the store and held their pitch there. Why? Because it’s in the convenience store that a brand like Wrigley’s is going to win or fail.
When I say reinvention, I mean reinvention. This isn’t a tinkering, with minor changes across one or two of these areas. It means reinvention in every single area we’ve mentioned above.
It’s not over until it’s over
Remember when Virgin won the contract to run the UK National Lottery by snatching it off Camelot? Maybe not and that’s probably because Camelot managed to get the decision reversed and retained the licence for another decade or so. “When the pitch is over, the works starts” as we like to say.
Whether it be a carefully orchestrated contact strategy that builds further commitment and convinces the client that you are the right agency or further timely iterations of your recommendations reacting to world events, have someone who is responsible and focussed on making it happen, not distracted on other business.
And finally..
Two final bits of advice. First, make procurement your friends. Some of the largest pitches and repitches were won because of a great relationship with procurement. Second, get an outside perspective. Myopia is never a winning strategy.
Marcus Brown is founder and CEO of The Great Pitch Company.