The Traditional Pitch is Officially Outdated

I no longer believe in the traditional pitch. After spending fifteen years in the agency world, I see a definitive turning point that we collectively and actively need to address. I’m happy to explain why in my latest blog post.

Our industry has evolved faster in the past ten years than ever before. Creativity no longer stands alone, and strategy has increasingly become business strategy. Technology, data, AI, and customer experience have also become progressively interwoven. The clients I’ve spoken with in recent years were less and less interested in an agency that merely builds campaigns, websites, or platforms, but rather one that

helps them grow, adapt, and reinvent themselves in a world that fundamentally shifts every few years, putting their market position under pressure. Integration is the buzzword, and they can’t achieve it through in-house teams alone; external creativity and execution power are definitely required. Yet despite all these changes, there is one aspect of our industry that has barely evolved alongside this new reality: the way clients select their partners or agencies namely, the pitch.

Growth System

I find that remarkable. The challenges for which organizations seek a partner today are fundamentally different from those of ten years ago. Growth is rarely generated by optimizing a single channel or running a better campaign. The real challenge for both client and agency lies in connecting marketing, sales, service, technology, data, and AI into one cohesive "growth system."

Clients increasingly involve us in challenges surrounding organizational change, breaking down silos, and creating a customer experience that holds up across the entire organization or across all business units. In my view, these are complex challenges yet organizations still evaluate potential agency partners using a selection process designed for a completely different era (i.e., ten years ago).

What follows is a briefing, a pitch, a few presentations, a creative proposal, a price comparison, and ultimately a scorecard with or without a pitch consultant. As if you can determine on that basis who will best guide your organization through growth, innovation, and transformation in the coming years. You can't.

Design Flaw

And that is precisely where the fundamental design flaw of the traditional pitch lies. We expect a partner to integrate disciplines, break down silos, and help transform organizations. Yet we evaluate that same partner using a selection process built entirely on isolated disciplines, separate evaluation criteria, and fragmented decision-making.

Unfortunately, I see too many cases where the resulting collaboration ends up just as fragmented. The first silos are formed before the partnership even begins: Marketing writes the briefing (sometimes with Sales). Procurement manages the entire process. IT gets involved later. Data enters the picture halfway through. Customer Service is almost always absent. Everyone acts from their own functional responsibility and worries about their own piece of the puzzle. Completely understandable in bureaucratic organizations where no one feels true ownership of the most relevant question: Which business partner will truly help us transform and grow our company over the next three to five years?

Treating the Symptoms

The international discussion on this topic is by no means new. The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) has long warned against the enormous time, costs, and inefficiency of traditional pitching processes. The UK's IPA and ISBA also introduced the Pitch Positive Pledge: an initiative urging clients and agencies to make selection processes simpler, fairer, and more future-proof. Remarkably, that debate still revolves mostly around refining the existing pitch, whereas the more interesting question is whether the underlying model itself still fits modern client challenges.

The good news is that our industry in the Netherlands is also beginning to recognize this. In my view, the Pitchcode 2025 was an important step forward. The initiative by Nicolette Hulsebos and the joint trade associations deserves praise because it finally addresses several persistent abuses: too many pitch participants, unpaid pitches, unclear rules, and a lack of transparency. It’s great that this was initiated. At the same time, I can't shake the feeling that we are mostly fixing an outdated model. With good intentions, we tweak a process whose underlying design premise may no longer hold true. We must avoid merely treating symptoms and delve deeper to build a genuinely new framework for selecting business partners. That is challenging, but in my eyes, essential for both client and agency.

Stop Applying Band-Aids

I believe we need to stop applying Band-Aids (tweaking traditional pitches) and start designing better collaboration models. We need a selection process where client and partner don't sit opposite each other, but work together from day one to see if there is a real fit.

Not through a months-long creative "beauty contest," but by tackling an actual business challenge together. That way, both sides experience how decisions are made, how various disciplines collaborate, and how the agency integrates with in-house teams. Such a process also tests whether client and agency can constructively challenge each other.

Ultimately, I believe a client chooses a way of thinking and a fresh external perspective on creativity, leadership, innovation, and customer experience rather than just an execution partner who is easily replaceable. The question that needs answering is: how does a client choose a partner capable of connecting separate investments in brand, marketing, technology, data, and AI into a single system that drives real growth?

The Next Plateau

Our industry has reinvented itself in almost every area over recent years. We no longer talk to clients just about advertising; we talk about growth. It’s no longer about cool campaigns, but ecosystems. Clients don't want to talk about isolated disciplines anymore, but integrated customer journeys where technology, data, AI, and people converge.

And so I repeat the main point of this blog: virtually everything has changed except the way we decide who to build that future with. I honestly believe this represents one of the biggest innovations our industry needs to design together with clients. Both client and agency stand to benefit from a new selection method. So don't select the agency first; design the collaboration you need first.

I wanted to share this thought and blog post with my network first to see if my observations align with what's happening in the market. Next, we need ideas and concepts to move this innovation forward. I'm already working on this and find it fascinating to engage in conversations with industry peers. If there's one thing we need right now, it's sharing knowledge and keeping the dialogue going so we can push our

industry forward to the next "plateau" where we can fully cultivate the synergy between client and partner. It goes without saying that the broader business community benefits as well: working together to create the ideal conditions for growth through creativity.