Phil Lynagh is regional managing director at Tag: Worldwide JLT
“Remember – it’s not what you know. It’s what you know about the people in the know, who know you know what you know. Confused? I am.
In the golden bygone days of yore – about 10 years ago or slightly less – it was all about being very good at what you did. The market you worked in may not have been the best or the most creatively advanced in the world, but if you were king of that particular hill then all was fine. The pitching was worth the effort; in fact it was a noble endeavour. It showed off your agency’s skills, win or lose. Mutual respect betwixt partners was seeded and sometimes great work with a fair remuneration would blossom.
I remember the old gut feel comment after a pitch, “I’m 90 per cent sure that’s in the bag,” etc. To be honest, I was sometimes wrong on the percentage, but rarely on the actual outcome. These days, I haven’t got a clue. It’s not that the prospects are harder to read; it’s just the expectations are becoming generic, weak and diluted. Weak rambling briefs result in thin and pale solutions, unqualified participants dilute the value of proper responses and ‘finger in the air’ budgets and randomly discounted rate cards price the capable out of contention. Pitch decisions can take 12 months, yet agencies are requested to pitch in less than a fortnight. If work isn’t won on intelligent insight or inspired creative, it’s won on low cost or graft.
It’s nothing new. Back in 17th-century Rome, a very long time before the Burj Khalifa, the facade of St Peter’s needed a do over. The Pope, Urban VIII, could choose between three geniuses: Caravaggio, Bernini or Borromini. One was a brilliant yet unreliable painter, one was a gifted sculptor without any architectural experience and one was an outstanding architect who had designed some of the most revered buildings in the city. The Pope obviously chose the sculptor, Bernini, for this important construction task because they were best mates and allegedly he was cheaper than the architect. Borromini, the architect, was actually brought in to fix the mess he’d made later. Sound familiar?”