Having spent years running a number of successful agencies in Ireland and the Middle East- in addition to advising brands on the client-side- Ray Sheerin outlines why the current pitch process is damaged beyond repair and how it can be fixed.
Let’s be blunt: the agency pitch process is a bloated, wasteful mess. It drains agencies, frustrates clients, and squanders time, money and energy.
The ugly truth is that the vast majority of the work that agencies produce for pitches never sees the light of day. Even for the winning agency, only 20–30% is ever used. With 3 to 5 agencies pitching, that’s as much as 95% of the thinking and creativity generated being wasted.
According to IAPI, pitches cost agencies €7m a year, much of it third-party costs. That’s unsustainable – and, worse, it’s unnecessary. Imagine if that money were invested in talent, tools and ideas that actually benefit clients.
For clients, the waste isn’t just financial. It’s a distraction from the only two questions that really matter: do these people understand our business? And, can we work with them, day to day?
Slick decks, glossy mock-ups and polished showreels don’t answer those questions. They just burn time and waste money.
For clients, the pitch process can feel like drowning in homework. You sit through four or five marathon presentations, each one crammed with speculative ideas, slick videos and jargon-heavy decks. By the end, it’s hard to remember who said what, let alone who you’d actually want to work with.
The process is often misleading too: one marketing director told me she spent 10 weeks running a pitch and ended up with an agency team totally different from the polished group who presented.
Great agencies are like great restaurants
Manresa was a three-star Michelin restaurant in California which its chef-owner closed in 2022 with these words: “A three-star restaurant is a very expensive, very fragile thing. The model is broken. It is a gruelling, high-stakes game that requires a level of intensity that is no longer compatible with a balanced life.”
And just as fine dining is notoriously tough to run, so too are agencies. Both models rely on highly skilled talent, premium service and relentless reinvention – but the margins do not match the effort. According to IAPI, the net margin for agencies is around 11%. Accounting, legal firms and consultancies are well north of that, in the 17-20% range.
Unsustainable in every sense
In a world obsessed with efficiency and sustainability, the traditional pitch is the exact opposite. It’s out of step with modern business values, resource-intensive, and too often decided on the wrong criteria – showmanship instead of substance.
A beauty parade of free thinking may sound attractive – but it’s corrosive. It undervalues agencies’ most valuable and unique services and it punishes smaller agencies that can’t afford to absorb the high costs of pitching. Ultimately, it damages the very ecosystem clients rely on.
Costly, misleading, unfair, out of date – and totally unnecessary
The pitch system encourages flashy, one-off “wow” moments that may look great in the room but fail to deliver real results. Short-term stunts, not long-term strategy.
That’s not how enduring partnerships are built. It’s how relationships burn out.
The current process does not serve agencies – or clients. It’s time to replace it with something leaner, fairer and more sustainable. With a focus on finding the right partnership.
Agencies can’t fix this alone
I’ve seen this play out firsthand. Over 30+ years running agencies, I was involved in three pitching reform initiatives with IAPI. Each time, the idea made sense – and each time, it failed.
Why? Because agencies will always be tempted to “over-deliver” if their survival is on the line. When the lights are about to go out, best practice goes out the window.
That’s why the solution must come from clients. Clients must set the rules. Clients must decide what’s in the brief – and what’s not. Otherwise, the ecosystem will break down.
A mission to change pitching for good
After decades on both sides of the pitch table, I know the tricks, traps and time-wasters that bog the process down. That’s why I launched Level Pitch: to make pitching smarter, easier, and fairer for both sides.
My disruptive process involves building carefully curated shortlists, crafting inspiring, concise briefs, and running a process that’s efficient and sustainable. I know the agencies inside and out – many are staffed with ex-Chemistry people, now in senior positions. As a strategist and copywriter, I write briefs that inspire teams. And everyone who has experienced the Level Pitch process raves about it, client and agency alike.
Why clients – and agencies – win big
A much smarter approach to pitching enables clients to assess the right things: strategic clarity, creative spark, and a real rapport between agency and client teams.
And because agencies aren’t forced to bleed resources on work that never gets used, their businesses benefit and the industry as a whole is stronger.
The future of pitching isn’t about more work. It’s about better partnerships. It’s time we made the change.
Ray Sheerin is the founder and managing director of Level Pitch.
