New Business Diaries: Resilient pitching with Oli Richards, Louise Lang and James Appleby

Saatchi & Saatchi's Oli Richards, Forsman & Bodenfors' Louise Lang and Conquis' James Appleby join the IPA New Business Diaries to explore resilient pitching. They cover the impact of pitching on mental health, why it is so important to think about the people you are pitching with and pitching to, before sharing their top tips for pitching best practice.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:10

Welcome to the New Business Diaries brought to you by the IPA New Business and Marketing Group. In this series, we speak to some of the biggest names in our industry on the hot topics in the new business world. I'm Ollie Richards, Chief Growth Officer at Saarchi Sarchi, and today we'll be talking about resilient pitching with Louise Lang and James Appleby. James is a media planner and client leader by trade. He spent most of his 24-year career in UK media agencies running household name brands like Sainsbury's and Compare the Market. With his most recent role as managing director, he spent his last 10 years involved with NABS Fast Forward, a course that is all about better pitching across creative media, where he met Louise. He is now managing director and founder of Conquis, a pitch skills company, and is on a mission to make world-class pitch skills accessible to all. Louise is a creative agency leader by trade with over 30 years experience in agencies ranging from the establishment like Sarchis and Densu to creating work at the centre of culture at Virtue, which is a part of Vice Media Group. In recent years, she has developed a professional and personal interest in building resilience in teams and individuals, and how resilience in teams is essential to better creative work. She is now the managing director at Forzman and Bonefors London and is also a member of the NABS Fast Forward course. So today we're going to talk about resilient pitching. Because while growing agencies are expected to create and evolve a culture that performs for the business and works for the health of its staff, supporting mental health has shifted from being a nice to have to being a clear expectation. 64% of agency respondents confirmed that the pitch process has negatively impacted mental health. That's from Pitch Smart in 23, a piece of research done by MediaSense. So helping agencies and their people manage the needs for growth and mental well-being sustainably is a key challenge that agencies face every single day. This is where resilient pitching comes in. So resilience is about skills, practices, and processes to build up our top talents, abilities, and confidence in resilient pitch-winning thinking. It is a massive subject, and we've got two brilliant guests. Let's get stuck in. So to start with, I it's just always interesting just to get a little bit of an idea of where your journey started, the journey you've been on. And so how did you get into advertising and pitching? Louise, do you want to kick us off?

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Well, I actually used to really hate pitching. I was one of those people that when they were like, Is anyone free for a pitch? I'd be like, Oh, just really look at my shoes on the floor, can't you know, I would hide. And one of the reasons why I was not keen was because you knew you were walking into the jaws of a lot of hours and fraying your mind even more than it probably already was delivering the work you were doing. So I was not a fan. And it was only after, for a number of reasons, it kind of earning a badge, otherwise known as the most resilient person everybody knows, um, that I started to realise that I could make the way the team were pitching and I was involved, my involvement in that, I had more control over making that feel like a more resilient experience. And actually, that was where for me pitching became, you know, also when you're more senior in agencies, you have to run more pitches. And for me, it just became an area of like, we need, I personally need to be much, much better at making this experience work better for everybody else and myself. So I went from kind of thinking, oh, it's the thing I hate the most about my job, to actually if you do it right, it can be amazing, rewarding, all of the things you want it to be, and ideally also win. So that's where my interest kind of comes on the topic.

unknown 3:53

Great.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

And it I suppose it's changed over time as well, hasn't it? I think we we've all been doing this a long time. And that kind of pitching at the early part of your career, resilience wasn't really part of it. It was sort of just bashing through it and getting through it as much. And I think that awareness of mental health has grown massively in the last few years.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Well, I think agencies also pitch more now. Like so that you know, everybody says retainer clients are rarer than they used to be. It's much more project-led. You are just going to be pitching for those projects. So there's it's become everyone used to say it's the life love at an agency, and you'd be like, is it? And certainly there it was a much rarer event in agency life. Now, I don't know, I think most agencies will tell you at any one time they're on a pitch of some kind or they're gearing up for one. It's a constant part of the way we work now. And you have to even kind of make sure that the way you scale your team is uh so you can be pointed at it all the time. And I do think that's changed hugely. It used to be you could put the A-listers on it who were very experienced at it because there were only so many of them happening, and now it's everybody in the agency is going to get involved at some point, regardless of the size of the business.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

James, talk to us about your journey. Like how how how are you here? What what's what's happened in your career to bring you to this point today?

SPEAKER_01 5:07

So I, as you mentioned earlier, um am uh I guess a media, a media bod through and through. And early experiences of pitching was when I was very junior, and you kind of get pulled into a room and someone might give you a little task to do, and you had no real idea where that's at in the the the the bigger pantheon of things. And of course, by osmosis, you start to understand that as Louise says, it is the lifeblood of an agency. Um, every time there was a win, there'd be a massive party. So you knew it was important, you knew there was something, you knew there was something going on.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Free drinks, it must be important.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Exactly, exactly, right? Back in the good old days. Um, and and then uh I think the first five years of my career didn't really do much pitching, do the odd task. Then I went to MEC. I was still a TV buyer at this point where I started my career. Um, and I got pulled into a couple of pitches, and I thought, well, this is this is good, these guys seem to really know how to do this. And it was a team of people who were, if you look back between sort of 2005 and 2015, MEC was on this incredible run, and it was you know, growth, growth, growth, growth, growth, a lot of that through new business. Um, so I had this I guess unparalleled experience of just being being in parts of that and near that. Um, so I I I got um invited to be in a pitch as a TV buyer um and do a TV bit. My first ever pitch I was actually in was for Orange, um, and I got to deliver this 15-minute bit for this account, which was huge, and we won it, and it was amazing. And I thought, well, of course, this is great. And you the moment I got a taste of that, I was like, this is this is the best. Um, and then I became a planner, and then of course, you were asked to do more pitches. Um, and then it just became the thing that I got asked to do do more and more of because for me personally, it's like the fun bit. So, like, much as we all love sitting at a desk and processing data and you know, coming up with plans and living in our inbox, the performance, there's something about the communication of it, the the fact that it's time-bound and the there is a real deadline, and you get this incredible sense of achievement just by delivering one, and delivering a good one is obviously next level. Um, and I loved it so much, uh, and love it still still so much, but loved it in agency so much that when I set up my own business, that's what I now focus on. So I teach people uh pitch skills. So that it's it's basically, I guess, been my my career passion.

SPEAKER_02 7:28

Great. And and you guys, I I love the balance between you because very much creative background from Louise's perspective and very much media background from yours, James. And so you guys have come together now to to share some of that experience. What is it you could what did you do together? Tell us a little bit about the the the the the collaboration.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

It's interesting actually because you know how from a creative agency perspective, there's always this media don't understand the creative process. You know, this is a thing that is often said. And we found actually through kind of the NABS Fast Forward course part, because that's designed to bring those two disciplines together, that actually having a live conversation about how pitching is the same but different for the two types of disciplines was really, really interesting. Like there was lots of commonalities. You have to tell a story, you have to have a really decent strategy that's based in the brand insight and then the consumer insight, and there is performance and there needs to be a red thread and it needs to be beautifully simple, like all of the things. And there in there is just this slight difference in terms of the people involved in the ideation bit, but ultimately it's the same. And uh the way that media agencies will have run their pitches is slightly different from creative businesses, which is interesting given that actually so many of the things that you're delivering are the same. So actually, kind of comparing and contrasting around that has been really helpful. But I think also just the two of us got talking about there's got to be better ways to do this. Like you hear all the stories of when it goes really well, and then you hear all the stories of when you're like, oh, you could just you know, you put your head in the hand to say, Well, everybody saw that coming. And it feels like as elders, if we if we can refer to ourselves as that in the industry, we can do a lot more to make that better for people. And I've certainly been in a position I know you have, James, of people coming into your business who are in their twenties and their thirties and they've never worked on a pitch, suddenly like, hey, you're running a pitch, good for you. And they're like, Because they haven't done it before, they realise everyone's expecting them to know exactly what to do, and they're kind of handed the task, good luck, here's your exploding bomb, carry it around. And without people sharing, you know, the shortcuts, don't do this, do that. If you take my advice, this is where I'd be pointing your focus. Without people supporting with that, you are totally blind. And that is when the everybody saw that coming moments do tend to happen. Because if you haven't done it lots of times before, had a bit of experience, got a few scars, and also a few medals, then you're in a really difficult position because you're being asked to orchestrate people with completely different levels of of seniority and experience, completely different skill sets, personalities, everything, and get them to do a bit like you know, you said you love pitching because it's a bit like it's the theatrical bit of your life. Yeah. You know, it really is a bit like running a theatre uh a play. You know, you've got to have a decent script, you've got to have decent performers, everybody brings something different, there's different characters, there's rehearsal, there's the moment, then there's everybody getting a cold afterwards because all the agenda leaves their body. You know, all of those things happen. Um, so I think we just felt that there was an opportunity for James's love of there are skills that you can bring that make pitching, you know, here are the shortcuts. Take it from me, they've worked. And actually, what's interesting for you is that that that plays in businesses outside of advertising just as much as within. Yeah. And then for me, it's okay, we've got to make this uh work in a way where people come out of it with some reward for the experience, rather than feeling like they are walking into the valley of stress and they just have to keep walking.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

We don't uh spend enough time thinking about the fact that pitch skills are quite different to the everyday skills that agency people are doing on existing clients. Um, and I think we're gonna have to get better at that as an industry because for all the reasons we've talked about um and may come on to later today, are the fact that we, you know, the frequency of pitching is increasing. So um things like it's it's okay to sit with a a detail-heavy client and go through um go through things in detail. They they they might love that. As most of us know, and those of us who've ever done pitches, you can't turn up thinking that that that level of detail is okay for a pitch. A, because it's not right for for the actual pitch arena that you're gonna end up in, which is all about being brief and punchy. But also, when you're running pitch meetings, you've got lots of voices to consider. You have to get good at summarising stuff and you have to get good at communicating your ideas sooner and faster to people. So I think there's there's a lot of shortcuts that the more experienced people in the industry can start to pass on to people. You know, we we talk about osmosis and how you learn pitches. Certainly, I learn pitches by turning up in pitch rooms and getting it wrong. You know, I'd turn up with armfuls of stuff and you know, paper spilling out and saying, right, okay, I've done 36 slides on this, and the CEO would look at me and say, Cool, can you do one? Um and then I realised, okay, right, okay, I've got to funnel all of what I know down to the tiny, tiny bit I've been given. Um, and that that takes loads of experience, but not everyone has 10, 15 years to keep turning up to pitch meetings to do that. If someone told me at the beginning, right, okay, there's there's some quicker ways to get you um better at better at pitching, um, I'd have I'd have I'd have absolutely loved that. Um and then of course there are you know all sorts of more performative aspects to pitching. I think um the theatrics of it, i.e., you know, people have been using people like Rada for a long time, and there's loads of people in that space, um, which is great and it's good for people's confidence and it uh and it is wonderful. Um and I think potentially actually on the media agency side, we're less good, I would say, at the at the entertainment, the theatrical side of it, um, whereas other agencies tend to be a bit more trained in those things. But some of the practical skills of like how you turn up to a pitch meeting, what you're talking about, how you're delivering it to people, you've actually your first job is to pitch to the people around that table. You know, you don't realize it's almost a bit like a script room. You're turning up and saying, My idea is this. Does that make the cut? You're not you you don't you you can't just sit there and go, oh yeah, well, I've I've I've done 50 things and wait for them to edit you. You kind of have to self-edit. But again, those those skills can all be learned.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

I also like the fact that you are good on the things like, have you profiled the client? Like, what kind of client? What kind of person are you selling to? Are they, you know, do you know if they're a visual thinker and that kind of thing appeals to them? What kind of work have they bought in the past? You know, you're really hot on like these things aren't just nice to have, they are shortcuts to success. They help you make decisions, they get you through the process better. So I I'm a big fan of the fact that you bring really important tools into the process and the storytelling. And it's not just kind of okay, is your idea any good? It's have you thought about who you're selling it to and the kind of the way to sell to them? Have you thought about the kind of story they're interested in? Have you checked it back with various strategic frameworks to help it make it come to life? I think you're you're really good on these things, aren't nothing. They're actually confidence building, they get you to a better answer quicker. You can then back your answer better. That's really important, all of that.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

That for me is the most underrated part and it's often the most overlooked part of the process is understanding the other human beings in the room. And I say human beings because it's not what's their job title, what's their function, what is it they're trying to deliver. I think we're all relatively good at that, but understanding what makes them tick and understanding what they are or aren't going to buy. And I've definitely found, dare I even say the words, AI has been exceptionally useful for this stuff. Yeah, it is. Where you can so you can now pull very, very quickly an idea of the things they've said, the podcast they've featured in.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

Yeah, you can scrape the LinkedIn and get a profile of them.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

You can use that now. It's giving you a talk tip, James.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

Um I'm already doing it. But it's interesting because a lot of this stuff is, I think, in a lot of agencies and businesses, lives in this sort of fluffy HR nice training world. So, okay, relating to people, communicating better with people, management training, right? All that stuff which some people can't see me tilting my head to one side. Um, but you know, it's that kind of slightly fluffy stuff.

SPEAKER_02 15:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

Whereas actually, if you take that and apply it to this prevailing idea that you're pitching to a business, it's us pitching to big big business X or Big Business Y. The person in the seat who's buying it, they might be a detailed person, they might be um a kind of creative and energized person, they might be a super organized person, they might be a bold person who doesn't even really want to sit through your PowerPoint presentation if you're daring to put one in front of them. And that bit of work is is not hugely complicated and it doesn't take loads of time. It often takes a conversation and maybe a little bit of a chat with people who know that person and noticing what it's like when you speak to that person, that can change the entire course of how you present your idea. And and and um hopefully with much more successful results. That's what I see time and time again, anyway.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

Definitely, and I uh I can definitely mirror a lot of that experience in what I've seen. I think we when I first started doing this job, we learnt as we went on pitches.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

And so we we spent time with very experienced people that had been doing it their entire career, and we absorbed some of the good stuff, but we also absorbed some of their bad habits. But I think that because there's no been no formal training, you sort of just pick it up as you go. So you end up with this sort of Frankenstein knowledge of how to put it all together. Also, in new business, often you're working on your own in isolation. And so, sharing that best practice, this is quite a recent thing. You never used to share best practice because you consider it to be a commercial or a confidential advantage that you don't want to share with another agency. And so I think it's great that we're now starting to talk about this stuff because it is an imperative for the business that we get it right quicker and more often. We don't have time just to learn as we go, and we certainly don't have time to pick up other people's bad habits. Yeah. Which sort of bit brings me on to the next subject. So we've we I'm having talked to you guys, I know how important this is to you. We've talked extensively about um proper planning in pitching, and I know this is dry, right? But we've all been there. The Gantt chart that you create at the beginning of the process, which no one then looks at for the rest of the process, right? It's it happens almost every single time. Um, what's the secret to a great pitch plan? And how can we ensure that they're actually useful for the whole of the pitch and the pitch team actually dip in and out of it and use it?

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Yeah. So for me, this is it's one of those things where everybody thinks, oh, writing a plan boring, like literally that's the least interesting thing that we're going to be doing, and everyone's super excited to get on to let's look at the brief. But if you haven't, it there's this thing about kind of organizational design almost with pitches, which is if you look at the you're you're always going to have the thing you have to accept is there will be limited time. There will be a start and an end. And you have to make the best use of that time and the people you have with you in that beginning and end. And if you don't design using the time at its best, you've already put stress into the system. And if you think about resilience as like the there's a definition of it which is around the ability to respond and adapt to trauma and toughness. So it's about the ability to be kind of to be flexible, to get through something in a way where you are as robust as possible at the end. So if you start at the beginning with the intention of everybody needs to be robust during the process, so I'm gonna use the time as well as I can. It's massive. And actually, my experience recently on the um with mentoring a group was me and the other mentor were like, You've got to do a pitch plan right at the beginning. And you can see them all looking at us, going, Why? That's boring. Can't we talk about the insight? Can't we talk about going off and doing a TGI scrape? We can't wait for all of that. You could tell they were just really uninterested in what we were saying. And I was a bit sad because I just thought, oh, I've just given you some gold dusted advice there. You've totally walked past. But it reminded me that it seems like the most uninteresting thing, and yet is actually the beginning of everything going a bit better. Because it's through that that you say, all right, when are we involving leadership? How many reviews are we gonna do? When are we gonna put a pens down and actually get this work into the studio and worked up or go and do some research? Like you stop a lot of the last minute thinking that turns pitches from something quite fun to something really full on that's can be not the opposite of fun. So for me, it's sounds really boring, it's actually the most exciting thing. And someone that um I used to work with, a very senior creative, until you put that plan in front of them, there would be a ball of anxiety about that pitch. Because what they were thinking was, I have to explain to my wife that I'm going to be working every weekend for the next six weeks again. I think I'm going to get divorced quite soon. That was what was going through his head. And the minute I put the plan in front of him and blocked out no weekend working in between the blocks of what we were actually doing during working hours, you could just see him just the whole body language just breathe out. And he then focused on right, okay, what's the brief? We're going to be talking about it. But until you put that plan in front of him, he wasn't thinking about the brief. He wasn't thinking about the pitch. He was thinking about his private life, which is completely acceptable for him to be worried about. So the fact that you, you know, that a plan can show that you are holding everyone. That's what I think is so interesting about it. So yeah, it's it's not just like a boring tick box exercise, it's actually emotional safety, psychological safety.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

I know you talked a lot about this, James, like the that emotional safety, but also that idea that it's not going to eat into your personal life, it's not gonna start impacting your mental health outside of work, therefore you're gonna perform better in the room. And I think that's what a lot of the when we talk about resilience. There's a business imperative here, isn't it? That we're gonna get people at their very best when they've got that security, when they know they're gonna go into a process where it's not gonna eat in. Talk to us a little bit about that in terms of your experience and how that's under.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Yeah, so there's this, I think there's still a sort of certain element of machismo in new business. This is kind of like, right, guys, crash the diary, call the wife, the husband, knock the dog away. You know, there's all that stuff which happens where hopefully less than ever, but I still think this it's just got a part of it. It's like this excitement, like, right, you've been called up to the front lines, right? You're not actually going to war, you're just writing a document and doing a presentation, guys. But that I think that's still part of it. And so as a pro a as a result of that, there's still a lot of bad behavior that goes on around it. People will go, You know, I I have memories of a um of a CEO. You know, we came in on a Saturday. He said, We've got to come in and do this on a Saturday. Fine, okay, we're there for you, no problem. We all said yes. I had a very small child at the time. Um, and I didn't particularly want to come in a Saturday, but I'll do it, yep, needs to be done. We were there and we were all getting through the very specific things we had to do. I was doing slides 35 to 50 or whatever. And another team were there doing their bit and they would come over to me and we were talking about it. Meanwhile, the CEO had come in, he was sitting he was sitting with his feet on the desk watching the cricket uh in an open plan office, and I just thought, I'd rather you weren't here because you've just you I think in his mind he thought that was moral support. But basically, this this kind of I just thought we'd we'd actually been so efficient with our time we'd done it in about an hour. Two hours of travel time and an hour of uh and an hour of work that we probably could have done on the Friday night or the Monday morning or whatever. But you could see he just thought, this is good. We're we're we're putting in the hours, putting the extra hours. It's just nonsense. So I think there's a huge element of saying that I absolutely echo Louise's point, which is one of the best things you can say to people is, guys, we can do this, we can work brilliantly efficiently as a team. I do think it's a slightly male thing, um, which is men like to sit about in rooms and talk about things endlessly. I think women are better in groups at saying, can we just can we just get this done and go home? Right? It's you know, I've I've observed it many times. I'm probably not alone in that. Um but it's really important because the senior people who might not be actually doing the pitch, they can pop in at 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. and say, well, I've you know, I've said I've got to work late and then do what they need to do, and they go home at 8 o'clock. Meanwhile, everyone at 8 o'clock has then got to begin the work. And I think people those people I've I've been that person and I've felt quite abandoned, and you feel worried, and you've got and you've got haven't got someone there to ask for advice anymore, and you just kind of feel a bit hung out to dry, to be honest. And you're not gonna and those people are then tired and they've got existing client work to do. They've got to get up at seven o'clock in the morning so that they can get a head start on their client calls for the next day if they're working in client service or and we've all got clients, right? So I think I think actually it's really powerful to say, right, there's boundaries to this, and we're probably in in most cases, 99.9% of cases, we are not directly saving lives. It is a pitch. So um, so yeah, I think that's that's a really powerful thing that leaders can do.

SPEAKER_02 24:24

The the diminished efficiency when you start working either weekends and after I don't know, 10 o'clock, nine o'clock. Like the amount of times I vividly remember sitting, and this is a pre-teams, pre-remote, even the abilities. We used to work with spiderphones. Who could who could forget spiderphones? Yeah, amazing times. So before the technology allowed it to happen, but sitting in rooms with paper on walls, with three pieces of paper that hadn't been designed yet, and you can only go home. Anyone, no one can go home until that last piece of paper has the right design on it and it's got a little tick on it. And I am really pleased that those days, well, hopefully, those days are behind us.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Yeah, very little good happens after 9 pm in an office, does it really? You're probably better going home and going to bed.

SPEAKER_02 25:07

But also, you don't need everybody there. Yeah, like it should be a bat and pass on this sort of stuff. Um, something you've both said, I think, was is really interesting, is about agency leadership. And I think it it comes up all the time on um pitches. And I think from my experience, certainly on the really, really big pitches, you're probably going to have agency leadership involved from start to finish. But we work in a world now where everything comes in in lots of shapes and sizes. And I think what uh from your perspective, what are the best ways to utilize top agency talent that ensures that you've got people that are actually pitch doctoring and not pitch butchering?

SPEAKER_00 25:41

I so I know James and I completely agree on this for uh lots of similar reasons. So helpful. Uh you have to involve them early. There's this really weird thing that happens where people get to a certain level in their career and they think that they are successful if they're not bothering the grown-ups in the business. I'm doing a great job because I haven't asked for that, haven't needed to pester them. And so they get on with what they're doing, they're running their pitch, it's all going great, they're really pleased with it, and good news, I haven't bothered the management who are super busy anyway. And then management at some point asks to see it, or there's a review closer to the pitch date, and um that's when things start to get tricky. Or you might have a senior leadership team who are very, very keen on wanting to show that they have added value to the process. And actually allowing them to do that is really important because usually they've done it plenty of times before, their experience gets them to a good answer quite quickly, and they feel more relaxed and more confident if they know the direction of things, that means that they can step away. So I would always get them in early. There was one agency who I spoke to a few years ago who had actually had a brilliant run of new business and we're doing really, really well. And I asked the, it was the ECD I was talking to, and I said, Come on, what's the secret? Why are you winning so many pitches? And he said, We have just changed our process. So that what happens is the senior leadership team, we take the brief and we disappear for a day, or as as much time as we can, you know, go to another room and lock ourselves off. And we spend time talking about the brief, and we get to an early strategic direction, an early sense of where we want the work to go, and an early, depending whether it's a campaign or brand platform, an early endline. And we have our kind of working ideas right at the beginning as a result of that. And then it gave them time to go and research it, evidence it with the client early in the first issue session, show the client that they had the ability to respond to feedback as a result of that. If they were wildly off, then they were wildly off and they would start again. But it meant that because they'd got something early, they were feeling good about it, they had the opportunity to show a client that they could respond, they had an opportunity to then um get it tested so that by the time you get to the pitch, clients already bought it, you've shown that the audience are up for it. So much, much easier to appoint you off the back of having done a robust robust process, and much, much easier for them to sell that idea in their business because you've shown it's de-risked. And for me, it was the bit where he said we get together right at the beginning and we set the direction, that was revolutionary at time. I don't think I think I'd heard about anybody, any agency who was working like that. And that understanding of you've got to get the people with the most experience somewhere early, and then make sure that you're bringing everybody else on the journey and including the client, I thought was fantastic. And it explained to me everything about why they were winning so well at the time.

SPEAKER_02 28:42

Joe, that is interesting to get your perspective on this because I think um on creative pitches, from my experience, I love what you said there in terms of getting everybody together. Creative agencies generally have quite fixed swim lanes on pitches. You've got a creative person, a strategy person, you've got a suit, and they sort of they do respect each other's disciplines. I've my experience with media pitches is it's a little bit more anyone could throw their oar into anyone else's business. How do you what's your take on what Luz just talked through there? And and how how do you manage that dynamic in a in a media environment?

SPEAKER_01 29:12

It's really interesting because actually I would say that's relatively co common, maybe not common, but I've seen I've seen a fair bit of that. So like when when it's being done well in agencies, you will get the brain strust together, you know, the A-team. And and I think it's really important because first answers are normally the best answers.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

That's the thing, like with an industry, we should back off.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Yeah, and I and I think the difference isn't that if you've been doing it for 20 years, you've all of a sudden got magical answers, you know, coming out of your paws. It's that you've got the confidence to say, I've seen this before, it's going to be something like that. Right. And if you're a junior team, you go, Oh, I think it's something like that. But maybe it isn't, and then you come up with 10 others, and then you waste two weeks, and then someone steps in and goes, It was your first answer. So that's I think that's a really important thing about agency leadership is that when you say there's this there's this common thing around like that all agencies will have an A team for pitching, right? And we know who they are. They're also the most senior, most time poor, most expensive people, most demanded by clients. Those people don't have to do all of the work on all of the pitches. And this might sound really obvious, but I have seen, you know, when anything goes remotely wobbly, like person A, head of head of X function, why are you not close to this? I've heard rumors that this is going on. But I think that then has to be an element of trust. It has to be an element of delegation. If businesses are going to be running pitches on multiple fronts, if you're going to be running the A-team pitch and there's you know the big global one, you've got to have your most senior people in, those people are gonna have to chisel out a bit of time to then also be managing other pitches, smaller pitches maybe, um, that are run by up and coming uh stars of your agency. And that's that's how that's basically how how businesses work, right? It's it's you know a kind of delegation model. I think that's that's gonna become more and more important because you people will be running pitches on multiple fronts and they will have to trust people. And the only way to trust people is you're gonna have to give them a bit of space to get stuff wrong. Kind of comes back to your point about how things change earlier, is that the idea of getting something wrong on a pitch, I think, 20 years ago, is like a sin, because that's inexcusable. Why would you ever do that? Unless you'd placed a big bet and you'd got it wrong. That's kind of okay, right? Whereas now to be able to say, Oh, we've had people on this making different decisions and doing things differently, it's very easy to look at it and go, you know, we just haven't got the right caliber of people, and then you end up dragging the A-Team back in it. And those and the cost of that is massive, because the cost of that is not free time, you're exhausting your most expensive and valuable resource. And that's all very well until they go and get signed off sick, and then you're stuck across everything. And that also is happening now.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

That's really interesting, actually, because whilst there's a process in creative agencies of like, so you know, strategy in charge of this bit up front, create department are in charge of the development, then there's okay, maybe we need to bring production in to bring that to life. There's, you know, the makers get involved in evidencing it. And then as an account person or a new business person trying to conduct it from start to finish. There is a there is a sense of baton pass usually. Do you have that in a media team?

SPEAKER_01 32:14

Sort of. Like it's in it's quite interesting because obviously in a in an ad ad agency pitch, and I've never been directly inside one, you're creating a you're creating an uh an ad idea, right? In the middle. It's the the magic, the creation of the magic in the middle of that. And that requires, importantly, very importantly, process. I'm not saying you don't create ideas in media pictures, you do. You always have to create an idea, but there's also loads of other stuff that's been created, loads of plans by loads of different kinds of specialists. So you're basically sort of setting off eight different horses all running in a similar-ish direction at the same time. Problem is, you if you wait to tell them what the direction is, you lose time enough to do the work. If you set them all off at the beginning with no direction, they could all end up in north, south, east, and west. So there's that's where this sort of brainstrust is so important, particularly in media agencies. And I think it's why it's a bit more common. Yeah. Because you kind of go, we need to go roughly north-northeast. Roughly. Um, and and then you have to keep communicating, keep course correcting. Someone will come back from one specialism and go, that doesn't work for us. You go, okay, fine, let's all get back together. Um, so yeah, it's very different in media agencies and sort of, you know, chaotic in a fun way, I think.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

Oh, that's really interesting, actually. There's like a because you're conducting the orchestra in both incidences, but for you, there's like a kind of somebody needs to give you the prelude.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

More like a jazz orchestra.

SPEAKER_00 33:33

A musical theme that everybody's saying to take on.

SPEAKER_02 33:36

Yeah. But I think in media it's not uh a lot of the time on pitches, you're not starting from zero every single time. I think on creative we often challenge ourselves and go, we need something truly original and category-defining that's gonna turn everything upside down. Yeah. I think on media you you just accept that it's been done before. There is a blueprint, but and and we but you know, we're insulting. But we are and we're gonna we're gonna tweak that and change that, but it is it is just by its nature much more formulaic. And I think that's interesting because it's as the process goes on, it's sort of I think it differentiates as time, as, as time twists and turns on the pitch, whereas I think on creative you set off with that in mind. We've we've talked a lot about um how businesses create resilience in the team and our role as leaders in making our teams more resilient, but the other part of the puzzle is about personal responsibility for your own resilience. And I know Lou, this is a big a big thing for you. Um, what advice would you have to anyone listening who's looking to stay more mentally healthy and build their own personal resilience?

SPEAKER_00 34:35

So, this is the thing that I wish someone had taken me aside and told me when I was, I don't know, 21. For a number of reasons, I ended up learning quite a lot about resilience and I have a kind of you know an amateur neuroscience fixation now. And that's partly because, you know, professionally you work in an agency, you you learn how to be resilient, especially if you worked in an agency of the 90s. Um and then personally, a couple of really difficult things happened to me. Um, lots of people know this, but I lost my husband to lung cancer, and then I also myself uh ended up with a breast cancer diagnosis. And at this point I was also working, and people were looking at me going, You're literally the most resilient person I know. How are you doing that? And I started to get curious actually about it. Because I thought, do I approach things differently? Is there a different perspective that I have that is helping me with this? There is an amazing TED talk, which I think anyone should watch if you're interested in the topic, there's a woman called Dr. Lucy Hone, who is a New Zealand psychology uh I was gonna say psychologist, but um she's actually a PhD. And she actually specialises now in talking about resilient grieving because she very tragically lost her young daughter. And she talks about the habits. This TED talk kind of for me was a really formative moment because she talks about the habits of resilient thinkers. And the number I was very good at say two out of the three pillars, if you like. So the first one is you have to accept that bad stuff happens. So that kind of stoicism that, you know, yeah, life can be incredibly disappointing, it can be amazing, but it stuff is built in that's not great too. And not fighting the reality of that is really important. If you fight it, actually you just go around in a world of pain for a a very long period of time. And I've actually seen people do that. And when you think about um work, I don't know, there's that person that drives everybody mad. And you just have to go accept that they're a pain, accept it, they're not gonna get any better. And the second you kind of let go of the why are they so annoying? You know what? You get on with things a little bit better, like just let it go a bit. And that's a you know, that's a smaller way of thinking about it. A bigger way is you have to expect accept that, you know, really bad things happen to people. So I was very good at that. And then the other thing is, you know, what I call creating agency for yourself. So, okay, ex accept that the bad thing is happening, accept that you're in the situation, what can you do? What can you control within it to make that better? And I've always been really good at that. And again, so at work, you know, in a pitch, you don't have loads of time. So let's divide up our time as successfully as possible. Have we got the right people giving us advice? All of the things that you can do. And in personal life, I mean, you know, I had to get to a point where I went, okay, I need to learn a lot very quickly about how this treatment is going to work for my husband. So there are things that you can do to just give yourself a sense of momentum and it creates energy for yourself. So I was great at those. The bit I was terrible at, and this is the advice I wish somebody I had given me many years ago, is the bit where you look after yourself. And there is this idea of toxic resilience, which is the the bad definition of resilience, is you just trudge along with that rucksack full of woes, and you just take on all the problems and you just keep going. And of course, that's how you end up in burnout. I mean, you end up in a bad place if that's what you're going to do. So I think people used to be called resilient if they were also heading for burnout. And I don't think it's a compliment. I think that's really dangerous. You are resilient if you are managing your health mentally and physically during a difficult process. And I kind of call it um assessment, like, you know, just assessing is what I'm doing helpful or harmful. Am I looking after myself or am I not looking after myself? And again, in a pitch, you know, creating boundaries for people where there is some downtime. Back to your point, James, of like, so that people can turn up with the best intellectual and physical energy because you need it. People turning up exhausted are no good to anybody. They make mistakes and they're unhappy. And so for me, like learning, okay, checking in with yourself, are you looking after yourself? Because usually, if you're an account person or a new business, you're the one who's got to bring the you're the CEO of Vibes, you've got to bring the happiness. You've got to walk in and go, Oh my god, so excited we're doing this pitch again today, guys. And everybody has to go, oh, thank God you're here because you look happy, maybe it'll be all right. And you can't do that if you're exhausted yourself or you're feeling really disenchanted and disenfranchised about the process. So for me, you know, I call it the three A's, except agency assessment, but the bit where you look after yourself and others is way bigger than you think. And just as a kind of coder, I was doing a talk on International Women's Day about it. Um, and a woman uh who was based in another country on the Teams call said, So what? Sorry, you're saying the answer is wellness. She was furious. And I said, Yeah, I I am. Like it turns out that people who've been boffing on about that for years were onto something. She was absolutely furious that I didn't have a different answer for her on that topic. People want a silver bullet, there isn't one. You've got to look after yourselves and others. That's the basic thing.

SPEAKER_02 39:49

So we always end this podcast with three key takeaways. And I think the big thing that I've taken from today is that left to your own devices, most people will take all the available time in a pitch and just fill it with work. But actually, this is not resilient pitching at all. So, number one is plan it properly. And a plan's important not because it looks good on a gancha, but because if you tell people up front that they're gonna have time where they're not working, you create psychological safety. And that's the first stage. The second is just because your people are really smart doesn't mean that they've got the right skills to go into battle on a pitch. Make sure your team have got those right skills, pass on that knowledge, don't assume that it's just gonna be absorbed via rhythmosis because we are having to do this over and over and over again much more frequently. Finally, think about your own resilience, think about yourself, how are you gonna look after yourself? Louise's three A's agency, acceptance, assessment. Really, really important and great tips that are very applicable. What a brilliant discussion. Thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

Thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_02 40:53

What a pleasure. Really appreciate it, and thank you all for listening. Uh, we hope this episode has given you fresh ideas and confidence for your own new business challenges. If you enjoyed it, please do follow, rate, and share the new business diaries podcasts so more people in our industry can learn from the conversations like this.