The Pitch on AMC should be must see TV for anyone involved in advertising, marketing and/or public relations.
Each week two ad agencies square off in a shoot out to land a piece of business with a major corporation.
The agencies visit the company’s headquarters, do their research and form their pitch, all within a 7 day time span. Then they have to present their campaign to the potential client.
The corporations offering up a piece of their advertising pies are no small players. These are big time national businesses like Subway and Waste Management.
Cameras follow the entire process. Like most reality shows they do side stories of some of the personalities involved. AMC keeps the pace of the show moving briskly.
A recent episode indicated how important it is to listen to the needs of the client.
One business told the two competing agencies not to use their corporate holding company name, or even part of it, in their campaign. Yet one agency was going to use it anyway before the client stopped them on a mid-week phone call discussion.
The same competiting agencies were also told to create a campaign that got the phone to ring with potential customers.
Once again the agency that was going to use the corporate name also failed on this strategy. Their final commercial was excellent but played more on the heartstrings than it did on direct response.
Needless to say the other agency got the direct marketing aspect of the campaign correctly and nailed the business.
Those of us involved in making these type of pitches on a national or local basis need to be better listeners than talkers.
Failing to do so may not only cost you some business, it can make you look arrogant and unprofessional, especially on network TV.
