What we can learn from elections and new business pitches.
As we await the news about Stephane Dion’s political future following Tuesday’s brutal results, I am reminded of Kim Campbell’s famous pronouncement that “an election is no time to be discussing complicated issues”.
The Gazette’s Craig McInnes put it this way in his September 12th column : It's not actually that issues can't be discussed, it's that debates and advertising in elections aren't about seeking truth, they are about winning. A politician willing to ignore the truth can easily twist a complicated issue to his or her advantage when winning is all that matters. Harper's attack on the Liberal's proposal to revamp the tax system with a "Green Shift" is simplistic and fundamentally dishonest, but also brutally effective as long as Canadians are as lazy as he appears to believe we are.
It made me think of the ad business, specifically the lifeblood of the business: new business pitches.
I once heard an ad agency veteran say that “the business of new business is not the business of advertising”. Just as an election is not a time to be discussing complicated issues nor is it during a new business pitch when agencies compete to win an assignment.
The brand might need a serious overhaul to succeed. The spending requirement might make clients run for cover. An objective analysis of the research data might show a glass that’s half empty. The operations might not be ready to deliver the brand promise. Or the client’s internal marketing resources might not be battle ready. It’s the truth and telling it usually loses you the business.
Think about it. How often do
you read about an agency winning an assignment because they confronted
the
“brutal facts”? (to borrow from Jim Collins’ Good to Great) I once worked on a
major pitch where it would have been wiser to tell the client to hold off
advertising until the organization was ready to live up to the brand promise.
We would not have won the business. Instead we said what we had to say to win and we packaged it all beautifully.
And the verdict was “We really like these guys. They understand our needs. We
can see ourselves working with them.”
At least until the next election.
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