Agency leaders should feel confident to drop out of ‘disappointing’ pitches: Dan Monheit

Originally shared via Mumbrella.

During a period of increased pitches, particularly high profile ones, Hardhat CEO Dan Monheit has warned others agency leaders that they need to be confident to pull out of them if they don’t feel right.

As agencies compete hard for new business in an increasingly challenging economy, Monheit has suggested there has been increasingly questionable behaviour from clients who might underestimate the magnitude of effort and energy that goes into the pitch process.

“As long as there are agencies hungry for work, and there are clients with work, pitching will be here forever. But, I think the thing we often tend to forget as agencies is that if we don’t like how things are going, we don’t have to go,” Monheit told Mumbrella.

“No one is forcing us to do this. There’s always reason to knock back pitches, like scale, cultural fit, and conflict,” he said. “But increasingly I’ve noticed in the last six months we’ve been pulling out of pitches for things that just don’t feel right in the process.”

His comments come as the so-called ‘pitchapalooza’ of 2023 continues, with TPG Telecom, IKEA and Unilever being the latest to take accounts to pitch.

Monheit says that lately, questionable processes seem to have been taken to the next level.

“There was one unpaid pitch that stipulated in the NDA that the client owned everything that we presented,” Monheit said, describing one of the more extreme examples.

The pitch required each participant to come up with full strategy and creative ideas.

Monheit’s biggest concern was not the risk of the brand taking the agencies ideas for free, but that the process itself was indicative of how little “value they [brands] placed on the work that agencies do.”

Another issue he shared was of clients “not providing budgets” ahead of a pitch. Without an understanding of the budget, agencies are left both without the ability to correctly tailor the strategy, but also without an understanding of whether the effective “risk” of pitching is worth the value of the account or project.

“There can be an assumption that we would be happy to work for their business and it doesn’t matter much what’s in it for the agency.”

Monheit’s advice for other agencies that are met with pitching terms that feel unfair is to remember they have the opportunity to walk away if they feel it’s not right.

“It’s about having the confidence to know when it’s right and when it’s not right, and what you’re not okay with,” he said. “We don’t have to go into a relationship where it feels like we are being exploited before it’s even started.”