EVERYDAY SOMETHING

Posted on December 6, 2011 by James

Pitching is something that is usually part of the average graphic designer’s life – I’ve experienced it both in agencies, as part of in-house design teams and as EVERYDAY SOMETHING since setting up in April this year.

I must admit for being an absolute sucker when a pitching opportunity comes along – I can’t help but think of the possibilites for new ideas, new clients, new business revenue etc. As a fairly new business looking to grow I’m constantly on the look out for ways in which to pursue new and interesting design projects. I tend to forget the other side of pitches – the risk of not getting the business is extremely high, the time spent is usually free of charge, and a considerable amount of the time the client already has an existing agency/designer in mind (more on this later).

Since setting up this year EVERYDAY SOMETHING have been involved in 3 pitches which were all unsuccessful. The pitches covered branding, a huge website redesign and also the development of an existing brand. The pitches would’ve equated to over twelve thousand pounds worth of business. Personally, I have a terrible record at pitching (I have been involved in 2 pitch wins since the beginning of my career as a designer). With this in mind, following the most recent pitch loss I decided to write this post and re-evaluate both my stance on pitching and my general plans going forward. As a general rule (and from my own personal experience) designers hate pitching, so below I’ve tried to look at the positives:

Positive things to take from pitching
—The process of putting pitches together actually seems to help with the generation of strong ideas. Having to rationalise and explain an idea or concept and sell it in to a potential client pushes you to present the strongest idea and make it as clear as possible for someone to understand. Pitching forces you to communicate as succinctly as possible, so I see this as a positive.

—Pitching exposes you to potentially huge possibilites – this is the temptation factor. If I had been successful in all the pitches I’ve been involved with, would I be writing this post? I think not. Winning them brings new business, new clients, exposure and revenue for your business.

Changing attitudes
As I said above, I’ve always been a sucker for pitching. At the same time I’ve always respected people who don’t pitch or give ideas away for free e.g. edenspiekermann_ Their attitude is one that I wish we all had, perhaps we could form a non-pitching alliance? It’s also worth checking out No Spec a site dedicated to educating the public about speculative work. It’s all kind of relevant, especially with the amount of protesting currently going on in other sectors, maybe as designers need to actually start standing up for ourselves and our ideas? If more of us did have this attitude we would more than likely to add value to ourselves, our businesses and ideas. Should we just accept it as part of the industry? I’d like to know what others think. My opinion and attitude has been changing with each experience I have had, in particular, the last pitch I was involved in really made me take a step back and evaluate…

A recent experience
I was made aware that a local arts organisation had posted a tender online for the opportunity to develop their existing brand. I took a look at the brief and budget, and decided that it was worth spending half a day (as that was all I had in down time from other client projects) putting the tender document together and coming up with some relevant ideas for the cover. As it was an open tender, I knew there were probably going to be a large number of submissions from local designers and agencies but I didn’t let that deter me (did my ego get the better of me?). I confidently put together a couple of concepts that I felt were relevant to the brief. I submitted my tender a week early. I waited to hear if I had made the short list. I didn’t. The response was, ‘we liked the sense of fun in your work’ and, ‘we received over 50 applications and the standard was extremely high…but have decided not to shortlist your proposal on this occasion’. Same old story.

A friend who’s a designer also pitched for the work and failed to get through to the shortlist. We decided on a ‘show and tell’ to each other of our presentations and ideas. Between us we felt we had some strong ideas that were both relevant, original and visually interesting. But that didn’t matter as they’d chosen not to shortlist either of us – our ideas weren’t what they were looking for.

Then we started to think of the numbers. If 50 people spent on average half a day on the pitch (I’d say this is a low estimate)  - 4 hours x 50+ applicants – that’s over 200 hours of design time allocated to this tender, FOR FREE. Then we looked at the amount of ideas generated. If every applicant submitted 2 ideas then that’s over 100 free ideas submitted to the client. These numbers start to show how ridiculous the pitching process can be (especially in an open pitch situation). All this time, energy and effort done for free – in a time of economic struggle! It seems incredibly lazy of clients – and rather inept of us as designers that we let this happen.

Then there’s the other side of the pitching coin. This is the main reason for my change of attitude…

Accepted practice
It’s widely accepted that in many pitch situations, the client already has a designer/agency in mind before they’ve even seen any ideas. Whether a client has to tender work out in order to get funding or not – the practice of wasting every other design agency’s time and putting them in a situation they never had any chance of being successful in is ridiculous and as far as I can see, illegal (although I have no idea how you could go about proving that a client had actually done this).

It’s for this reason (you couldn’t prove the bad practice on the clients’ part) that I have every intension of avoiding free pitches altogether and aim to spend time on more pro-active, confidence building, mind expanding activities (see below).

Alternative plans for the future
—Self initiated and art based work – I currently undertake self initiated projects (see here and here for a couple of illustration based pieces) and art based projects (see here and here) as it’s usually to satisfy a personal theme or idea that current client related projects can’t do. I also find that I usually learn something from these type of projects and use elements in client based work. Therefore there’s a great deal of value to be gained from just ‘doing’.

—Guest blog posts by my peers, mentors and experts on business and design. I am no business expert, I’m a graphic designer attempting to run a design business, so I’m aiming to get some people on-board with more experience and knowledge to share.

—Case Studies showing the success of graphic design projects undertaken by EVERYDAY SOMETHING.

—Not participating in any free pitches (if you catch me pitching, tell me to stop).

—More blogging in general across design, art, business, good practices etc.

Discussion
I’d love to get feedback from anyone else with regards to what they think of the practice of pitching, alternative ways of generating business, and any general opinions on pitching. Please comment below!

Relevant links
No Spec
edenspiekermann_