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How to pitch and win - lessons from London 2012

I love pitches.

I love the adrenaline.

I love the tension.

I love the brutal focus on a client problem and  the relentless concentration on a strategic and creative solution.

I love working out how best to tell the story that sells the strategy and creative ideas.

I've wanted to meet David Magliano since reading the chapter on the London 2012 bid in Jon Steel's excellent book, Perfect Pitch (best book I have read on how to pitch and win) David's pitch strategy for the bid is a world-class example. He talked at an event at the IPA on the 27th as part of their "Pitching Legends" series. What a speaker! If you ever get the chance to go and hear him talk move mountains to do so - you really won't regret it.

I am going to try and encapsulate his story and share what I took out.

The first thing that David asked the audience to do was to think about the audience, the members of the IOC. He wanted us to put themselves in their shoes. He then showed us the first 30' of each potential host cities opening video - Paris, Rio, Madrid, Moscow, New York and finally London. Each video felt like a love story to a city - beautiful, stirring, emotional. Expansive cityscape shots, fly over views and smiling friendly people. London on the other hand started with footage of a sprinter at the beginning of a race and then showed the story going backwards to that moment when as young child in Africa this boy was inspired by grainy footage that he was seeing on a TV screen of London 2012. This wasn't a film selling a city, this was a film selling a vision - a vision of using the power of a London games to inspire young people all over the world to choose sport, a vision of re-connecting the ideals of the Olympic movement to millions of young people and a vision of legacy. It dramatized a problem and showcased a solution.

It still amazes me that so often agencies still choose to start their pitch with their credentials, Magliano calls it "the plumbing." He said "I trust that you have offices in the right place." Get to the heart of your thought right from the start, build that emotional connection from the outset, show you understand the problem, demonstrate empathy and understanding and then work from there.

The London 2012 bid script was so tight, each word was important. not a single word was extraneous. There was one phrase in particular that I just loved: "As leaders we have a duty to reach beyond our own time and borders." It's beautiful, like poetry even. It also makes the audience feel that its not a choice between cities, its a vote for the belief in the lasting legacy that the Games can bring. "What city," they asked, "has the vision that best serves the Olympic vision?"

In the Q&A David was asked how they could prove that London was more likely to inspire young people than New York or Paris. David's response was fascinating. "We didn't have to prove it because no-one else claimed it." I asked whether any other city had a similar singled minded thought that there pitch was based on, he said no and that they all  had multiple messages and all sold the city, not an aspiration.

Some other take outs - Authentic stories not just research facts: Seb's story of being 12 and being taken in a school hall to watch the Mexico City Olympics was hugely moving because it was authentic and because it turned Seb into a walking case study of what the London 2012 team were hoping to achieve around the world. Seb also talked about the fact that his heros were Olympics, "my children's heros change every month." Every parents or grandparent in the IOC must have been nodding along. 'But we must understand and respond to their world."

Know your audiences and tailor your messages: On the night before the bid the London 2012 team had a list of the floating voters (mainly the South Americans) who they needed to convert. Blair took a suite on the 55th floor of the convention centre and as each floating voter was coming up in the lift, he was being texted to say what hot buttons to push. Did this IOC member care most about the legacy in the UK of their particular sport, were they passionate about sustainability, did their grandchild just want a kick around with Beckham. They had all the options covered.

Ownership: Let one person write the script of the pitch, the "narrative arch", rather than each presenter write their own little bit and then worry how to piece it together. Its one story, with different parts voiced by different people. Think of it like a script for a play.

It was a night of illuminating anecdotes about the pitch - for example, when London and Paris when back into the conference hall to find out the result there were 57 photographers stationed in front of the Parisian team and only 3 in front of the London team, apparently in some TV footage you see photographers fighting and scrambling to get over to get pictures of the victors, so utterly convinced was everyone that Paris had won. David talked about the fact that they used images of Tony and Cherie Blair at the opening ceremony of the Athens 2004 Games, because Chirac and Bush had both decided that post 2001 the security risks were too great and had not gone. Simply by showing this image as part of a much longer film the IOC were being subtly reminded that GB was always an active supporter of the Olympic movement. Fascinating. Final anecdote, the strategy about inspiring a generation actually came out of an insight into a business problem that the IOC had, namely an aging TV viewing population which was less attractive for broadcasters and advertisers, so originally the strategy had been to get more young people watch the Games than ever before. It was Seb who made the strategic leap to say that actually its not about getting young people viewing, its about getting young people viewing.

I will find out if the event was videoed and post a link if it was.

Great night!

 

Don Draper and the art of pitching

I was running a "behind the scenes in advertising" mentoring session today with a group of sixth form students. I really enjoy doing things like this, it reminds me why I love the industry I am in. It is so easy to get bogged down in the day to day, the niggles and the frustrations that occur in our world of advertising/media/PR etc but when you have to tell a smart bunch of teenagers, who smell bullshit from 100m, what it is that is that makes your chosen profession so exciting it forces you to look up from your desk and remember the good bits. And there are so many good bits!

One of the things that we covered in our session today was presenting and how to engage an audience and tell stories that sell - sell a strategy, an idea or a campaign. One of the students presented to us and to illustrate his point he said, "you know that feeling when you have priority boarding on an aeroplane and you walk past everyone else in the queue and you just feel so special and a bit smug. That's the feeling that we want to bring to life." We just sat there nodding because we all know that feeling. And half the battle of any pitch type presentation is getting your audience onside and nodding. I was trying to think of the best example to give to the students and I still think that the Don Draper "Carousel" example is one of the very best examples that I can think of.

If you haven't seen it recently, take a look again. It's pitch genius.

 

 

Ferran Adria's top 10 tips for innovation

A lot of people tweeted me asking whether I could condense the Ferran Adria post into a top 10 tips list.

Based from Ferran's story I have pulled out what I think to be the key recommendations for any creative organization looking to be world leading. Hope that you find them useful. If I was starting an agency tomorrow these would certainly be my checklist:

 

1. Don’t chase short-term cash without a long-term vision
2. Make the time to reflect and think
3. The journey is not done when you’re number 1, that’s when its time to change
4. Make sure that your physical space is flexible enough to move and change with you
5. Do everything to avoid falling into routines
6. Bring in “agitators” from outside to push your creativity and thinking
7. Being creative doesn’t give you license to be an arse, you still have to take out the trash
8. Work out how your organization can function at its most efficient
9. Don’t sign away creative freedom for the sake of money
10. But always remember at the end of the day, it has to be about making money!

Ferran Adria and the power of innovation

It started with a question about Cannes. "If you could bring anyone in the world to Cannes deliver a keynote, who would you bring?" We'd been talking about the superstar speakers that had appeared recently - the likes of Bill Clinton, Kofi Annan, Bob Geldof, will.i.am (ok, so will.i.am might be pushing the "superstar speaker" descriptor, but you know what I mean)

My dream keynote, I said, would be someone from outside of Adland who would talk about innovation and creativity. The expression I think I used at the time was "science and magic" because to my mind that is the key combination that our industry needs. The person that I thought best encasulated that was Ferran Adria of El Bulli fame. Not that I actually knew an awful lot about him, it was more of the impression of the man gleaned from the incredible tales of his molecular gastromomy and ancedotes such as his closing of El Bulli right at the absolute height of its worldwide fame.

So when I got invited by Telefonica to be part of an audience with Ferran Adria at their start up accelerator Wayra I was enormously excited. I went with a Spanish foodie friend of mine who was quite possibly even more excited than I was. Everything was set up for a great evening. But you know what, it wasn't great. It was so much better than great.

Ferran told a story in three parts: the first was about El Bulli and what occurred there and why; his new Foundation and Bullipedia, the online gastronomic website that he is in the process of building.

I will tell you the story that he told, as far as possible I will try and use his words (I was noting like crazy) but if not then I will paraphrase and hope people don't mind: 

Right from the start E Bulli was only ever open 6 months a year but that's hardly surprising when you think that we were a restaurant located on the Spanish Costa Brava, a holiday coast where tourists simply didn't come to in the winter. So we had no choice in the matter. For the first 14 years El Bulli did not make money, but we believed in something. When success came it was hugely important for us to make time to refect and think, afterall if you don't make that time then you'll never reflect and think. So we decided to close at lunchtime. We lost the equivalent of £6m a year. But it was necessary. Then we decided to get rid of the menu. It got to the point when we had 2 million requests a year for reservations, which was also the point that we knew that we had to change. I said to the press that we were going to take a 3 year sabbatical. And do you know, no-one seemed to believe that we just needed some time out to focus back on creativity. No-one understood when we announced that we were going to launch a new restaurant which would also be a creative foundation and centre. They all thought we were crazy. But that is exactly what we are launching in Cap de Creus. The space will be utterly flexible, think of it like a film set, you're meant to move it all around and change it. We don't want anyone to fall into a routine. So we do things like change the pencils that we use every single year.

We will have three distinct spaces in our new centre - one for reflection, one for brainstorming and one for worksharing in which we will invite in "agitators" from other disciplines around the world to come and give us their point of view. This is about creating dialogue with other disciplines. The whole centre will be sustainable in every way possible, we want to be a reference for the world. We also want to create the most efficient environment possible. Just because you are creative, it's not like it's a divine right. You still have to be efficient. I really admire McDonalds in the way that they function. We take out the trash, we clean the kitchen. But we are also creative. Also I want to think about how best people work  - are you more efficient if you work 5 days and then have 2 days off, or are you better working 10 days and then having 4? Are you better in the morning or the evening? In a group or solo? We need to consider all of that.

We are also creating "Bullipedia" as an online gastronomic resource where you can learn with precision, accumulate knowledge and get inspired. You can think of it like a curated search engine, I like to think of it like a neat and tidy cupboard with a lot of drawers. It will not be sponsored as we want to have absolute freedom, I want to make the decisions. People will pay for it but we are working out the payment model, it's not fair that a young chef pays the same as a large corporation so we are looking at how this will work at the moment. It has to be economically sustainable, that's what the internet revolution has to be about. It's not about giving everything away for free.

It's impossible to do Adria justice with my re-telling of us story. But there are so many elements that I think are hugely inspriational and also hugely applicable for our industry, here are my 5 key take-outs: 

1. Take time to reflect and think  (given the Ferris Beuller quote that this blog is named after, that should be a surprise that I agreee so whole-heartedly with that sentiment)
2. Be prepared to forego short term gains for longer terms success.
3. When designing work spaces flexibility is key- keep changing.
4. Being creative does not mean you're allowed to be an arse.
5. Bring external "agitators" in otherwise you fall into the expected.

I will try and find out if Wayra have a video of the talk that I can post up here.