How to blow a new advertising business pitch even before it starts
Every advertising person has stories about how their agencies have blown new business pitches, often because someone said or did something stupid. There is a classic story about an agency which pitched a car account but not one person showed up at the client’s office driving the client’s brand. There is another story of an agency pitching a watch account, but the Agency President showed up wearing a Rolex. I had to start drinking Stout though, first as Octagon Marathon Account Director for the Legend Extra Stout brand in 2001, and further as Chief Executive of a Guinness Nigeria-Retained Agency, R&B, in 2005. I would love to collect your stories if you can top the one that follows. I know quite a lot of them can be very funny, even in the telling. When new business prospects come to visit a prospective agency, they can always sense and feel whether there is good chemistry among the agency participants. In many cases, even agency principals who do not ...