Anyone who has spent time at agencies knows that the new business pitch process, though a necessary evil, is absolute hell. You expend lots of resources, usually under impossibly tight time constraints, while jumping over hurdles to meet unreasonable demands seemingly designed to prove that you really do want the client's business (e.g., would it be possible for your team to present your final proposal on Thanksgiving Day?)
But in all fairness, I can't imagine it's much better for the client. All the time spent drawing up the request for proposal, cherry picking the small handful of agencies that you will invite, reading puffy round one written responses, sitting through two or three successive rounds of presentations, hating most of what you see but knowing that you need to choose an agency and get on with business.
The pitch process seems to be as broken as the agency model itself.
Enter Pitchh.com, a 2.0-style start-up that aims to change the way agencies and clients get to know one another. Their proposition is pretty simple -- that making the pitch process open-source will make it easier for agencies of all kinds to level the playing field and get their ideas in front of prospective clients, and easier for clients to find a virtually unlimited pool of new, cool, smart, creative and (most likely) smaller off-the-beaten-path agencies that are hungry for their business. And of course, it's all done online, community-style.
With agencies and clients alike looking for ways to harness distributed creativity and the wisdom of crowds, something like Pitchh seems like a logical next step. But I figure their long term success will hinge upon their ability to attract even a few big brands and a major agency or two. Just now soft launching in beta, they're nowhere near that point but already look like they might run the risk of becoming a marketplace that connects tiny agencies with the smallest clients with no budgets.
I'd love your thoughts, especially if you're an agency slave laborer or a marketer that makes agency decisions. Do you think something like this will work? What would it take for you to join and start using it to find your next marketing partner?
