Dearest pitch writer,

Although we feel very honored by your invitations, we will have to disappoint you. Creneau International will no longer partake in pitches because of the following 10 reasons.

As a company with over 27 years of experience in our field, we feel we have proven ourselves in our design and operational skills. If you work with us, you may rest assured your project will be executed with the utmost professional excellence and nothing less. We do not need a pitch to be able to prove ourselves. Proof of our expertise is found within the successfully completed projects on our website: www.creneau.com (or you may of course visit them in real life).

Never in over 27 years, has an idea that won a pitch been realized the way it was pitched. This is due to to the fact that during the pitch phase there’s usually not enough concrete information at hand or because the key persons within the organization haven’t taken the time to get involved with the pitch project. That’s why, as a design agency, you practically start all over again after you win a pitch. This is an incredible waste of energy and money that is never recovered.

The pitch process usually unfolds as follows; a client draws up a brief, based on which the design agency gets to work. After a much too short period of time, we are expected to present the result. This is not the way a normal design trajectory works. A design trajectory is built upon a close collaboration between client and agency, involving meetings at key moments to achieve a result that pleases both parties. The process of consultation and adaptation is entirely bypassed with a pitch. No wonder the result of a pitch ends up as ‘just not the desired outcome’ and the agency may simply start over after it won a pitch.

Let’s be honest; there’s many agencies with as many good ideas but at the end of the line the idea or the concept is just the tip of the iceberg. What makes a project successful is, for a start, the relationship between the client and the agency. Second, it is the way in which a creative idea or strategy weathers political, operational and all other storms. This aspect of nurturing an initial idea, can never be proven by a design agency with a pitch. It just so happens that this is something we have proven in all of our completed projects.  

We learned the hard way that some pitches are actually pseudo pitches, who were conceived to select an agency in what is allegedly ‘a politically correct way’. Meanwhile the winning agency was known well beforehand.

The time and money that we invest in a pitch is almost never recovered after we won the pitch. Should we submit a quote together with our pitch, it would most likely be higher than a quote that was requested without a pitch. This is due to the reason mentioned before: we know that more often than not we have to start all over again after we win a pitch.

Pitches are often an unfair competition because some agencies will take things a step further than what was indicated in the brief and deliverables. As a result, apples are compared with oranges.

Pitches cost a great deal of money and working hours. Hours we’d much rather spend on perfecting projects already underway for clients that did indeed commit to collaborating with us.

Many a time we uncovered, after we’d lost a pitch, that the ideas we presented were in fact used by the client and the winning agency. This is theft of intellectual property and we do not like to be robbed.

Pitches disrupt the market and multiple companies have perished because of it. We do not plan to succumb to that.

Pitches are a rather unintelligent and blunt way of selecting an agency. They cost, not only the agency but also the client, a great deal of money and time that could have been spent more productively.

That’s why we advise you to proceed as follows;

Select a small number of design agencies that appeal to you. Talk to these different entities about your product, market, challenges. Listen to them and find out whether they may provide you with new insights and a true added value. Ask them how they dealt with other projects, what their challenges were and how they tackled them. Talk to the people who will be working on your project. Is there a spark? Do you feel they offer an added value? Ask how, as an agency, they would go about your project on a strategic (not a creative) level and what it would cost to execute it.

Always share the project budget. In our experience, clients keep their budgets to themselves to hide that in fact they have none. This only leads to disillusionment, time loss and additional costs. We believe in transparancy that goes both ways.

Hoping for your understanding and a better world we salute you,

Creneau International

Creative Network and Flanders DC, two Belgian organisations, launched Creative Fair Play. They present seven best practices to collaborate successfully with creative entrepeneurs. Check out their website!