The weird and wonderful world of ‘hybrid’ pitching By Rebecca Nunneley
Nothing beats the feeling of face-to-face pitches being back in the diary. It’s been a long 18 months since we were all sitting round one table with senior marketers and agency folk and, at AAR, we’ve missed it. But there are definitely some parts of lockdown pitching we don’t want to lose. Some things we were forced to adopt have actually improved the experience for all parties. We expect the future of AAR selection processes to include some combination of virtual and IRL, and so we enter into this weird and wonderful world called ‘hybrid’ pitching.
Lockdown learnings Virtual all-agency briefings, Q&A’s and check-ins have been a game-changer, allowing agencies greater access to clients and their wider teams, particularly those based overseas. We’ve been able to open up the invite to virtual briefings so that larger pitch teams can attend. 36
Recording all sessions means clients can rewatch meetings to make sure that feedback is thorough, and agencies can re-visit these as many times as they want throughout the process. Check-in sessions are much simpler with no meeting rooms to organise, and no travel limitations. Clients can make themselves available anytime throughout the week for quick 30-min check-ins, in addition to the more formal tissue meetings. The frequency and relative informality of these sessions helps to create a more collaborative and discursive process, helping to replicate what it would really be like to work as partners. Pitch theatre has been stripped right back, levelling the playing field between agencies of all sizes, and putting a greater emphasis on the team, the thinking and the work.
What we’ve missed For all the positives that virtual pitching has brought, there’s no substitute for face-to-face interaction when gauging chemistry between potential partners, or that sense of anticipation
