The Pitch Process Is (still) Broken
Why speculative creativity is the wrong test for a long-term partnership
Creative work is collaborative, yet the traditional pitch asks agencies to create in isolation.
A brief is issued, several teams contribute, and return with a strategy, a creative idea and a polished presentation. One is appointed; the others absorb the cost.
The process is familiar, but it does not reflect how strong creative work is usually made. A pitch can show who presents an idea most convincingly, but it is less reliable at revealing who will produce the strongest work through collaboration.
The Cost of Getting Through the Door
Pitching is often described as an investment in new business, but it can extend far beyond an initial conversation or credentials presentation.
Agencies may be asked to research the market, interrogate the brief, develop strategic thinking, and create several routes before any appointment has been made. Much of that work is completed without payment and with no guarantee that it will lead anywhere.
The pressure is felt throughout the agency, no matter the size. Creative and strategic teams invest time in ideas that may never be used, while senior people are diverted from existing clients and paid work.
The exact cost of pitching varies by agency, brief, and scale, but the burden is significant in both time and money. The 2025 What Clients Think report, based on 680 client interviews conducted on behalf of creative agencies, found that 74% would not expect to pay for a creative pitch.1 That leaves agencies absorbing the cost of strategy, design, senior attention, and lost capacity before any appointment has been made.
The Design Business Association advises its members not to participate in pitches requiring unpaid work. Its Code of Conduct states that pitch payments should reflect the time and effort involved, while its wider guidance describes free pitching as financially unsustainable and ineffective as a way for clients to identify the right agency.2
Free pitching does not remove the cost of creative work; it determines who carries it. Yet the financial problem is only part of it.
Solving the Brief Before Understanding it
The difficulty is that pitch ideas are developed before the agency has enough context to answer properly. Priorities may still be shifting, assumptions remain untested, and the people writing the brief may not be those approving or delivering the work.
As conversations develop, new information emerges and the original question often changes. Yet agencies are still expected to arrive with a resolved answer.
This encourages premature certainty. Instead of examining what the brief has missed, teams must make an incomplete picture appear finished. Strategy is compressed into a presentation, and ideas are shaped to persuade immediately rather than improve through investigation.
The result may be polished, but polish is not proof that the right problem has been solved.
Choosing the Relationship, Not the Pitch
Clients rarely invite an agency to pitch without already valuing their work, experience or point of view. The agency has shown that it can think and create; asking it to prove this again through an unpaid concept may be testing the wrong thing.
A pitch can reveal speed, confidence, and presentation skills, but it is less useful at showing judgement or how well the two sides will work together. The more relevant test is whether the agency can listen, challenge assumptions constructively and make the thinking stronger.
The ANA and 4As found that the average client-agency relationship now lasts approximately seven years, more than twice the average reported in 2016.3 Their research identifies trust and transparency as important foundations for lasting partnerships.
Those qualities become visible through conversation and shared work, not a rehearsed presentation. The client is not choosing a deck, but the people it will need to trust when the deck no longer applies.
A Better Way to Choose
Moving away from speculative pitching does not mean removing competition or scrutiny. It means assessing agencies through evidence that is more closely connected to the relationship being considered.
Case studies show how an agency thinks when the constraints are real and the outcome matters. References reveal how it behaves over time, while chemistry sessions allow the client to meet the people who will actually lead the work.
A collaborative working session can reveal more than a finished creative route. It shows how an agency listens, where it challenges assumptions and whether the discussion creates a clearer understanding of the problem.
Where original strategic or creative development is required, it should be commissioned and paid for. The DBA distinguishes unpaid speculative pitching from credentials presentations, chemistry meetings and paid creative pitches. It also recommends that payment reflect the time invested and that intellectual-property terms are agreed in advance.
The Pitch Positive Pledge, developed by ISBA and the IPA with agencies and intermediaries, calls for a more intentional and responsible approach to pitching, with greater transparency, lower costs, and less waste.4
A paid discovery stage or pilot project gives both sides the opportunity to test the relationship while producing something of genuine value.
Formal pitches will still have a place, particularly where governance, procurement or the scale of an appointment requires comparison. In those cases, the shortlist should be small, the process transparent and bespoke creative work paid for.
A speculative idea can be replaced quickly, but a poorly matched relationship is harder to repair.
The strongest agency may not arrive with the most complete answer. It may be the one that helps the client understand what needs answering in the first place.
1Design Business Assosiation, 5 Take-aways from the 2025 ‘What Clients Think Report’
2Design Business Association, Free Pitching: The DBA Stance
4IPA and ISBA, About the Pitch Positive Pledge