Presentation lessons from agency life N.1
Champions vs decision-makers - the great showdown.
- Champions - those who want the project to happen.
- Decision-makers - those who decide if it does.
Context
It's 2011 in Beijing, China.
One of the BIG German car brands has a challenge.
One of their beautiful high performance cars is not selling as it should. Despite the number of Chinese millionaires who love cars.
The marketing team wants to create a brand film that fuses adventure, brand and product.
At the agency, we had just finished a successful TV show with a BIG integration for this same client.
All the ducks were in a row.....or were they?
Spoiler alert - after months of work, the project got Jason Bourne'd
What happened?
All the work we were doing was actually to green-light the idea and secure the internal budget. But no one told us, or we didn't ask.
We thought it was a confirmed project.
What would I do differently now?
My friend and account director took the first meetings. As the creative director, I wasn't in the room. It was too early for me to be there....or is it?
In hindsight, I should have been there to listen and observe the moment.
To understand the client's goal and to know what they needed to happen to create ROI.
Everything leads back to increasing sales.
When I got the internal briefing, I was under the impression that the project was green to go.
They needed a creative treatment to finalise the budget and lockin the production timeline.
But that wasn’t the case.
Now, 12 years later, I read between the lines. Words like 'finalise" and 'lockin' mean "we need something to get this off the ground."
Back then, I jumped feet first into the exciting creative.
Now, I first assess the political, strategic and business landscape.
For creatives, the creative is fun. Talk about comfort zone; this is not to say that coming up with ideas is a diddle - but it's where we like to be.
Here's a Red flag for you.
Lots of meetings with the same people. If new people aren't in the room, this is going nowhere.
Each meeting needs to keep the idea fresh. But make sure it climbs the internal approval ladder.
Ask your champion who else needs to be aligned to make this happen.
A T&C for an agency is to have some say in who's in the room.
Meetings are expensive.
Preparing for, travelling to and presenting at.
If the idea is not getting closer to the people with the money, you are wasting time, effort and goodwill.
Sigh - oh well.
End of the day, the project could have been epic.
The presentation is lush. No one ever complained about the slides. The sizzle reel, the strategy, the marketing, and the influencer campaign.
Those are all great.
In hindsight, we over-pitched them. And this is like putting too much salt in your soup.
What we should have done was tease the creative. Show everyone it was terrific and then lock it away until we had a letter of intent with a budget.
Like the creative director needs to be in the room early on the agency side. The people controlling the flow of money from the client side need to be there as well.
When champions and decision-makers see trusted experts in the room. With the same goal of making £1M look like £10M. With ROI all over the map, the money is always there.
When a presentation is too top-heavy with creative it’s hard to move forward.
The money vanishes when the people whose jobs are on the line if the ROI doesn't balance with the spending.
It is a lot cheaper for the champion to write a short apologetic email. Saying that things are "out of their control" and "there was a change of plan at a higher level."
No, s**t things were out of control.
A ton of work got done, but it didn't get anywhere. No one got paid, and still, no one bought that beautiful car.
Takeaways?
Get as many decision-makers in the room as early as possible.
Get their needs on the table.
Understand them.
And then do your job, use your agency's creativity to solve their needs and then some.
Deliver such incredible value that this project lines up the next one. And you have a wait list of clients who need to work with you.
Make sure you are presenting to champions AND decision-makers.
My name is Martin Barnes; I'm back in the South West after 16 years in Beijing. And I believe that when you present, you have 8 Seconds 2 Connect.
I have 23 years of experience pitching ideas to decision-makers at Mercedes. The VW Group, BMW, Cartier, and Dior. Training teams at The British Embassy Beijing, Brunswick PR, and Google Shanghai. The CEO of Pico VR. Founders on the Chinaccelerator program. Startup Grind, and The Tech South West Startup Studio. Business leaders on the Digital Catapult MyWorld Challenge. Silicone Gorge, Software Cornwall and Innovate UK.
I stopped working as an advertising creative director to focus on presentations. Too many great ideas from talented people don't become a reality. Because they fall over during the presentation.
I am by no means perfect, as this is science, art and black magic. But I remember the assistant to the marketing director at Cartier China telling me. "I didn't think this was worth it. But it made all the difference. Thank you."
Let's schedule a call to discuss training your team with presentation skills.
https://calendly.com/martin_pitch_8s2c
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