Rebecca Bellairs wants to fix pitching. She spent more than a decade working at brands, leading marketing procurement for companies including Deliveroo and Asda, and witnessed the inefficiencies in the process first hand.
Now, she has set up Pitch’d, a platform designed to bring fairness, transparency, and structure to agency selection.
Bellairs spoke with MediaCat about what’s wrong with the current system, how Pitch’d fixes it, and what the future of pitching could look like.
Why did you start Pitch’d?
I’ve been in procurement for getting on for 15 years, and specifically marketing procurement for about 10, and I’ve become massively disillusioned with the pitch process. So my partner Christopher Bellairs and I have been building a pitch platform for the last year and a bit.
The purpose of the platform is to make the pitch process something that normal teams can operate themselves, to manage media commercials and agency selection, and to support independent agencies getting a shot. So it’s end-to-end pitch management and an add-on consultancy for the pitch process.
What are the main issues with the pitch process?
I think there’s a vicious cycle between brands and agencies at the moment. Economic pressures and a shift towards big consolidations mean there’s a real bottleneck of agencies.
There’s also a huge pressure on demonstrating return on investment for every bit of ad investment, and that’s increasingly difficult, particularly with more non-traditional channels.
So the pitch process has become really, really opaque. I think a lot of intermediaries operate in pay-to-play lists, in terms of the agencies they’re putting forward, and there’s just no standardised way to operate. So there’s ethical issues, and there’s also efficiency issues, and then actually the education piece is falling behind as well.
I think specifically for media [agencies], it’s really difficult to demonstrate through a presentation how you’re going to deliver. It’s a lot more about the technical ability, tools being used and the plan in place.
And because it’s such a big investment, I think there’s a tendency to ask for a million different things from media agencies in order to prove their ability, but really the proof is in the trust and performance.
There’s almost a level of theatre involved. A lot of times a brand will go out to market thinking they need a new agency, but they won’t have articulated what problem needs solving. And without answering that, there’s nothing that agencies can do.
Have things got worse over the last 10 to 15 years?
The number of pitchers has increased because there are a lot more options for agencies. The hold co’s are still there, and then there are a lot more independent offerings and channel specific agencies out.
The fact that there is more pitching creates more challenges, and I do see that that has got worse and more urgent. Tech has made it inconsequential for a lot of brands to just re-pitch every year or two.
What do you think needs to change?
Transparency is essential. We talk about it in every conference I go to. We’re building out a comprehensive agency database with over 50 touch points on each agency, and a brand can go through and select some very specific agencies that match what they are actually looking for at the start of a process.
The ability to manage commercials back and forth within a platform adds a layer of objectivity to the process. I think there’s a lot of mistrust because media is one of the top five spends in a whole organisation, so the audit trail and governance scrutiny is something that’s really important.
A lot of processes fall down, or the incumbent gets re-selected, because there isn’t a clear route to taking that recommendation and actually implementing it. So the key to change is transparency, the right agencies, the right brief and good governance.
You talk a lot about reducing the amount of agencies on a shortlist. Why is this important?
I think at the very very start, when you’re just looking at credentials, then eight to 10 is fine. But once you get past that point, it’s impossible to evaluate [that many agencies] in any meaningful way.
If you can’t come up with the top three or four after an initial meeting, then you’re not clear enough on your specification and brief. So you need to go back to it.
The time it takes to coordinate, even just to coordinate a meeting for more than five people, is so difficult. So to manage all of those proposals, rounds of negotiation, it becomes impossible and really hard to make the right decision.
I truly believe the best pitch processes I’ve been a part of have had three, sometimes four, agencies past the initial chemistry phase.
And if you’re one of three agencies, your odds are so much better, and you’re going to put your A-team onto that and you’re going to feel like it was a worthwhile endeavour. It’s not really fair to expect the huge amount of hours and time that are put in when you’re just one of six.
How does Pitch’d help?
I don’t know any other intermediary that’s offering a level of marketing pitch solution that has got such a robust process knowledge.
Just having a robust agency database that can be accessed offers an unbiased way to find the best agencies almost instantaneously and then be able to have templates and communication that can be managed through the platform with optional consultancy on.
So I think there’s a real obvious gap in the market. There’s a huge consultancy spend in the UK right now, and I don’t think there necessarily needs to be. And given how much tech has advanced, it seems crazy that the pitch process hasn’t undergone sort of a tech revolution. So I think we’re prime for it.