Who Presented vs Who Sold at SXSW

The following is a blog from Luke Sullivan, CD at GSD&M and author of Hey Whipple, Squeeze This. Luke does a great job of discussing the need for selling ideas as opposed to simply presenting ideas.

To read his blog directly, go to www.heywhipple.com

Here is the cut and pasted version...

The ideas that were actually selling here at SxSW were the ones that were actually sold – by a fantastic speaker.

Now I agree, some ideas are so great they don’t need to be sold. For example, they day they discover a cure for cancer? They won’t need an ad agency. They can take out a classified ad in the Tulsa Weekly-Bugle and the world will know about it within a week. But for those of us with ideas less world-shaking, we will need to sell them.

Fact is, most of the presentations I saw this week kinda blew. The content was great, no question. Pretty much every presenter had something cool to say. (With one exception; one speaker was so 1998 she was puttin’ up slides about how “Consumers can now scan bar codes with their phones!” Dude. Please.)

The big difference in the transmission of ideas comes down to this: Passion. Power. Clarity. Energy.

I don’t care if you’re just on a stinkin’ panel about banner ads, when you have the mike you’ve been given the gift of the attention of 200 people and you’re failing if you do not knock it out with passion, power, clarity and energy. Of the sessions I attended, every single speaker failed. I know, I know, they weren’t all that way. In fact, at last night’s party at GSDM, most people were talking about Gary Vaynerchuk‘s speech. People were blown away by it. Blown away. Damn, I wish I’d seen it. I didn’t, but I heard about it. And you know what? Even if it turns out his speech was content I’m not really interested in, I woulda ended up interested in it because he made me interested.

President Bill Clinton came to speak here at the agency a couple a times (he’s best friends with Roy Spence, himself a legendary speaker). I remember watching Clinton that day and just soakin’ it in, trying to learn everything I could; his intensity; his command of the material; his pacing; his eye contact; his comfort in front of people; his accessibility. It was the full package and, man, it was mesmerizing.

So, if you agree we’re in the business of spreading ideas, of selling ideas, make it your business to learn how to speak publicly. To learn how to put on a kick-ass presentation.

TWO FINAL NOTES:

My friend here at GSDM, Jenn Totten, she told me to CTFD. (Calm The Fuck Down, a hip abbreviation I predict will soon to be in the national lexicon.): “You are cranky, but you’re right. The panels were the worst. They all winged it. But I found the solo speakers to be pretty good across the board.” Another agency friend, Lauren Walker, agreed with Jenn. “The solo presenters were great. The panels were ‘eh’ and the discussions just tanked. There were certainly a lot of interesting topics to discuss but moderating a discussion is a fine art. It requires tact and a large knowledge base. Most of the discussions I attended were steered in one direction early on and stayed there. Next time, no discussions for me.”

Dang, I wished I’d been in those cool solo presentations. (BTW, folks. SXSW is very good about listening to feedback, so fill out those survey thingies.)

Final note: I really liked these “Ogilvy Notes” things I saw here and there. I wonder if my own agency oughta do something like this? Maybe have our own artists make big-ass drawings this cool, for those presentations we have to make more than once – like, say, agency themes, case histories, stuff like that. These boards are more interesting, more playful and informal than stupid Powerpoint slides.

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Thanks for a great blog Luke!

Mark Schnurman
Filament Inc.

Pitch Consultant
Twitter: @markschnurman

Tips for Nervous Presenters

The following is a blog written by my partner Pam who is fantastic at working with nervous presenters.

She will be adding different tips with each new blog entry.

http://tipsfornervouspresenters.blogspot.com/2010/11/common-misconceptions-about-handling.html

Mark Schnurman
Pitch Consultant
http:www.filamentinc.com

How many people should attend a pitch?

A recent blog question posed to me was how many people should attend a pitch. Based on the question, I am assuming it came from a small to mid-sized agency and the piece of business in questions is not a huge, multi-national assignment with multiple partners. For typical pitches facing small to mid-sized agencies, there are a few general guidelines that I tend to recommend when considering the size of the pitch team.
First, do not overwhelm the client. If there only going to be two or three people representing the client side, do everything that you can in order to keep your pitch team as small as possible. This does not mean that you need to bring only two or three people, but it does mean that you should not bring 10 people.
Second, everyone on the agency team gets a speaking part. Bringing a junior person that does not have a speaking role so that the client can “meet the team” does not count. Clients want to get to know the person and see if they are a good fit, not simply put a name to a face. If you send a person to the pitch but do not give that person a speaking part, the client can get the impression that you do not trust junior staff. The advantage of letting a junior person have a role in the presentation is that the bar is set lower for the day-to-day person. You may find that with a lower bar, the day-to-day person will sail over it and wow the client.
Third, it is good to bring at least one day-to-day person. Clients can only assume the worst if the agency is not willing to bring any day-to-day staff to a meeting. This is not to suggest loading up the entire team with more junior staff, but bringing a day-to-day account or creative person is probably a good idea.
Given those three guidelines, there are seven key roles to be played on a typical pitch team.
The role of the executive – a CEO, president, managing director, etc. – is to open and close the meeting and discuss the agency. He or she should not talk about the specifics of the client’s work unless the executive is going to be working on the account. Another role of the executive in the room is to field questions and distribute them to the team. If the executive answers every question it can appear that the team isn’t trusted to answer the questions. Artfully moving the questions to the appropriate team member can help to promote team chemistry.
The planner/high level account person will talk about strategy. Depending on the resources of the agency, this could be a planner, director of account services, or a high level account person.
The day-to-day account person is not necessarily 100% assigned to the account. This person is simply the primary point of contact for the client, usually somewhere between 50% and 100% billable. This person will typically discuss tactical executions and how the strategy will be implemented.
It is great if everyone can speak to digital, but typically this requires special expertise. The advantage of bring the digital person is that you have that extra level of expertise. The disadvantage is that digital can look like a separate department instead of one, unified creative team.
Creative staff is typically one high level and one day-to-day staffer. The higher level creative staff can outline the challenges that the creative assignment presented and set up the first concept. The day-to-day creative can then present some concepts. It is a good idea to have the creative director come back and summarize all of the different concepts that were shown.
Some pitches do not include Media, but even then it is still useful to have someone that can serve as the bridge between the agency and the media buying firm. The absence of this role can leave some gaps in the pitch. We have all seen the role of media change over the last five or so year. Media truly is the new creative. With that new role, comes new responsibilities. In the old days, the media section was what done when everyone else was finished with their presentation. Now, the media section may be asked to carry a pitch. Presentation and storytelling skills which were never stressed in a media department are now very important and can make or break pitch.
The pitch is the client’s opportunity to get to know everyone on the team, so remember to give everyone a substantive role. This does not mean that the role needs to be complex. It does mean that each presenter needs to have enough time to connect with the audience and enough time to establish him or herself as an important member of the team. While team size is probably not going to make your team win or lose the pitch, team chemistry can, and the larger the team, the more difficult it is to show chemistry.

Mark Schnurman
www.filamentinc.com
Pitch Consultant

Differentiation vs. Betterentiation

If the goal is to differentiate ourselves from the competition, then why do agencies spend so much time just telling their clients and prospects how much better they are than the competition? The difficulty with focusing on what you do better than the competition is that the agency can rarely back up its claims. As a result, it just sounds like sales puffery that clients politely listen to and completely ignore.
After years of effort, agencies are now selling themselves as “full-service” and “integrated.” However, what they are basically saying is that we all do the same thing. The result of all of our effort is that we have created non-differentiated agencies and commoditized our product offering. When clients have a difficult time distinguishing one agency from another, there’s just one thing they use as a differentiator: price. This is not the situation any agency wants to be in, but it is where many agencies find themselves right now.
The key to a point of differentiation is that it is provable. Saying you’re better is mostly just stating an opinion. Differentiation always has a point of proof.
“Our creative is better” is an opinion. Your agency’s creative may in fact be better, but unless you have a shelf full of awards, you have no proof. And recognize that every agency has won a creative award or two, so unless you have a shelf full of awards, your claim is just your opinion and will not resonate with your prospects.
“Our agency has better experience than any agency in the business when it comes to biologics” is an opinion. Nearly every agency has biologic experience. “Our agency is agency of record for more biologics than any other pharma agency” is a fact.
The problem is that simply claiming to be better is easier, and as a result more agencies go down that path. It is easier to simply claim to be better than to go through the difficult work of actually making the agency different in some way. The question for agencies is, what is it that you can own in the marketplace? Odds are it is not about what you do better. These types of claims have difficulty gaining traction. It is more likely a controversial point of view or a method for executing some part of the advertising process that will help to put some distance between you and the competition.
One most popular differentiating claim is that an agency’s people make them different. While it is wonderful for morale, it probably is not true. If you are based in the New York area, those people that you claim make you so different probably worked for your competitor just one or two years ago. You could claim that your culture makes you different, but you would need to point out the specifics of the culture before the claim had much of a chance of sticking.
As if this were not difficult enough, the next danger is giving something a name and claiming it is different only to have the client say, “I have seen that before.” An agency’s branding process typically falls into this category. Having seen hundreds of agency new business pitches, both pharma and consumer, I know that if your agency has a process that includes concentric circles, a pyramid, or some kind of structure with columns supporting a roof … it is not unique or differentiating. Just because you have a pithy name for the process does not mean that the underlying process is different. It just means that the name is different.
So where does that leave an agency? There are still plenty of ways to carve out your own niche in the marketplace. One way is do primary research and uncover a hidden insight about the market. This is probably the oldest PR trick in the book. In the absence of news, make your own news. You can than build upon this research to become the defacto expert on the topic.
Another strategy would be to develop a unique point of view about the role of the agency, the role of promotion, or the direction of the industry. Anything that gives you a platform to discuss your topic as an industry leader and not just another agency in a sea of similar agencies could work.
While none of the solutions to the conundrum are quick or easy, the value of being different is immeasurable. It may seem silly to preach the value of differentiation to an agency, but sometimes we all need to listen to our own advice.

Mark Schnurman
Pitch Consultant

Pitch swag

I was involved in a pitch recently where one agency was criticized for not giving the client a goody bag. Mind you, the client did not put it in so many words, but the message was loud and clear.

The agency did provide the presentation on a memory stick, as well as 10 bound leave behinds (as required by the client)...just no gift bags.

What are your thoughts? Have you heard this kind of feedback before? If you are a client...what do you think of the goody bag? Is it a pitch necessity or a lame pitch bribe?

I am interested to see everyone's feedback.

Mark Schnurman
Pitch consultant
www.filamentinc.com

Stop talking about rehearsing

During the pitch process, every agency gives lip service to rehearsal. They plan for rehearsal time and schedule a conference room, but how much time is actually spent rehearsing? Odds are people would rather talk about rehearsing than actually rehearse.
We have all been in sessions where it took half a day or even all day to get through a 90-minute pitch deck. There is a great deal of spirited discussion as to the content on slide 37 and whether the strategy is well articulated in the strategy section. In addition, everyone is happy to report that they spent a full day rehearsing when, in fact, they spent 90 minutes rehearsing and about seven hours talking about rehearsing.
Discussing the content, removing slides, wordsmithing, etc. are all important parts of the pitch process; they are just not rehearsal. Once the presentation deck is tight and the discussion of content is over, this is when rehearsal starts. Rehearsal is the part of the process where presenters become so familiar with their content that they can start to concentrate on other issues. For example, connecting with the audience.
Agencies get so wrapped up in the content that they frequently forget that the audience is a group of living, breathing human beings who want to be conversed with, not simply presented to. When pitches work well, agencies often hear that there was good chemistry. If chemistry is such an important part of winning pitches, doesn’t it make sense to at least make some effort to enhance the chemistry in the room?
Chemistry happens when the presenters make an effort to connect with the audience. The presenters need to be more than just automatons, getting up and delivering their slides. They need to be personable and charming. In essence, presenters need to give the impression that they would be a pleasure to work with. The more conversational tone the presenter has, the more chemistry they will be building.
This kind of tone is natural for a precious few presenters, but for others, it only comes when they are no longer nervous about forgetting their part. It is rare that an agency hears that their strategy or creative was bad, but it is not uncommon to hear that the chemistry was bad.
Think about the acting world. Actors have read-throughs where the actors sit at a table and read their parts. This is not the time to practice the physical part of acting. This is the time just to get comfortable with the lines and what comes before and after the actor’s part, much like the first read-through of a pitch deck. After the first read-through, the actor goes home and practices. The next step is to get up and rehearse. Here the actor rehearses both the words and the delivery. Finally, we are ready for a dress rehearsal. The actors go through the entire performance without stopping, without discussion. Actors are smart enough to know that the first time they get through their performance without stopping should not be on opening night. Agencies can benefit from the same rigors when it comes to rehearsal.
The question is how to allocate time when the timeline to get a pitch ready is so compressed. Typically, agencies work forward from the day the pitch process starts, and rehearsal time is whatever is left over after the team is done talking about the deck. Winning agencies work backwards from the day of the pitch. Those agencies know exactly how many rehearsals they need in order to have their best chance of winning. Typically, it is a relatively low number of rehearsals. Four or five usually do the trick. Winning agencies also do not rely on working until midnight the day before the pitch. They finish at a reasonable hour and get some rest. This way if they need the extra time, they have it.
Agencies in the consumer world suffer from the same short pitch timelines, but they still manage to dedicate significant time to rehearsal. You can bet that when the Martin Agency won Geico and NASCAR, they didn’t decide to wing it on pitch day. That team was rehearsed and ready to go when they arrived at the client to give their presentation. If rehearsing helps to win at the big consumer shops, then it can clearly help give agencies the winning edge in the pharma world.
If your agency is not winning at least 40% of its pitches or if you’re hearing that the chemistry is not right, perhaps now is the time to rethink the pitch process and dedicate a bit more time and discipline to rehearsal.

Simple Rules for Q and A Mastery

It is virtually impossible to win a pitch with the Q&A session, but it is fairly easy to lose the pitch.

Agencies seem to feel that the Q&A session that follows the new business pitch is there to promote the free exchange of ideas. After 90 minutes of a finely crafted presentation, where the agency has scripted every word, every interjection and slide, the question and answer session is more of a test than it is a conversation. The client is using their precious 30 minutes of Q&A to kick the proverbial tires of the agency. Is everyone on the same page? Do they get along? Will the agency be easy to work with? Will the client need to suffer through an agency’s internal squabbles? These are the questions that the client is trying to answer when they ask, “Which concept would you recommend?”

So the question becomes, what is the agency doing that is getting them closer to a win during the Q&A? And what is the agency doing that is potentially losing the business?

When you start to look at Q&A as a conversation versus a test, certain behaviors become either positive or negative. For example, when you look at it as a conversation, team members discussing an issue makes perfect sense. When you look at it as a test, when one team member adds to another team member’s answers, it gives one of two possible impressions. First, that the team members are not on the same page. While this is bad, it is not nearly as bad as the second impression, which is that the person that adds on to the answer does not trust their teammate. This can be deadly. The client wants to know that not only are you all on the same page, but that you all trust each other. Other poor impressions that can result from someone adding on to an answer – the client may feel like the person just has a need to talk. We all know people like this.

There are two things you can do to combat the add-on. Train your staff to answer the question and then ask, “Does that answer your question?” If it does answer the question, most people would consider the case closed and would move on. If it does not answer the question, the answerer is now free to look for some help from your team. Asking for help is much more charming and intelligent than having five team members jump in for the save.

A second thing to consider during Q&A is to keep the answers short. The more you talk, the more likely you are to say something that you don’t want to say. Also, longer answers tend to make the presenter sound defensive. Keep the answers to 60 seconds or less. Closer to 30 seconds would be better. Don’t tell the client how to build a watch when all they asked for was the time. Another reason to keep answers short is that the goal is to get through as many questions as possible. It would be a waste of time to spend five minutes or more answering a question that was asked by someone that does not get a vote.

A third rule of thumb for Q&A is to not let any one person dominate. When one person answers the bulk of the questions it can give a number of non-favorable impressions. The first is that the agency has one smart person and a bunch of less smart staff members. Another impression is that the person answering all of the questions does not trust their team members. Remember, these are the same team members that are about to be assigned 100% to this account. Clients do not necessarily expect that their day to day staff will know all of the answers, but they do expect that staff to have the trust of agency executives. The goal is to get the pitch team involved and not let any one person dominate.

Finally, leave time for Q&A. The fact of the matter is that sometimes presentations run long. The danger is that if the agency leaves no time for Q&A, the agency is not so subtly saying to the client, “Your thoughts and questions are not important to us. It is more important for us to talk than it is for us to listen.” This is not the message that an agency wants to send to a perspective client.
The rules are not complicated, but they do require discipline. As much as I preach the “no add-on” rule, agency staff can find it difficult to hold their tongues on pitch day. As difficult as it may be, stick to the rules, and the pitch will be better for it.

Mark Schnurman
Pitch Consultant
Filament Inc.