An Ad Exec’s Strategy For Pitching To Clients

Nixon’s advisors would pitch him with three ideas: one that could cause a global catastrophe, one that would make him look bad, and the one they wanted him to choose.

Imagine if they went to him with 10?

A phrase I live by in the workplace goes, I always push for the best work possible, but I’m also a firm believer that it’s every client’s god-given right to ruin what they’re paying for.

A few years back I wrote an article titled Stop presenting so many ideas that underscored the points about why a huge deck full of a dozen or more territories, scripts, and one-offs is an idiotic strategy.

I generally go to clients with three options, and I’ve reiterated this point over the years to agencies, colleagues, bosses and even interns, with varying degrees of understanding. However, I’ve never shared my thoughts on the most appropriate way to actually present the magic three’s, so here’s my recipe.

A brief recap of the lesson in my last article: an array of ideas in one pitch is toxic; it creates the paradox of choice, a cognitive-impairment where people have a difficult time making decisions when faced with too many options.

Another point I never touched on there is that is you’re killing your own work. No client wants to see the same idea or script twice. You put all that work into a dozen routes, hoping they choose just one, and often lose them all when the client wants to do a second round. We all know those clients who believe the first pitch is just “testing the waters” and rarely actually put any consideration into any of them.

So I always try to keep to the power of three—the safe option, the middle-of-the-road, and the edgy one (or sometimes wild card, if you have a client who has a tendency to be bold from time to time).

I like to call this method the “Nixon Principle,” because despite the fact that his legacy is littered with controversy and a trail of blood, the world didn’t end, and he ironically remains more idolized by his party to this day than when he resigned. In any case, my Nixon Principle is a slightly tweaked approach to his advisors’ strategy:

The safe option

The kind of ad only a client would fall in love with.

Undeniably awful, the ad above represents what can happen when the client takes the safe option without a fight. The safe option should fully answer their brief, to a T, ensuring they will at least be contempt— but you can also subtly undermine it if the brief sucks, pinning the problems on their criteria. You don’t want them to buy it, but you also don’t want to irritate them by not providing what they asked for. You can convince them it might “make them look bad,” that the results may be underwhelming, and/or that their brief undermine their own brand, but make them realize it is what they asked for. One mistake I’ve learned from is to never, never walk in without giving them at least what they asked for. There’s nothing more annoying than ordering a meal and getting literally anything else. But you do want to convince them that what they want to order isn’t the best item on the menu—don’t poke holes in what you created, poke holes in their brief.

The middle-of-the-road

A touch of creativity while keeping it grounded in sell-ability.

It should be as perfect as perfect can be to the brief, and the safe option, with whatever creative site-streets you choose to take. It should still follow the key, most important points of the brief. If you can still match the brief entirely, fantastic. But if you need to steer off one or two points, do so while ensuring them this remedies the weakest points of their ask. Give it a mixture of sell-ability and creative freedom, with a more powerful strategy and promise. There are even times you can start to push the lines after you sell the middle-ground, with more creative flair to the finished product.

The edgy one/wild card

A mockup I used in a pitch once.

Edgy if they’re tame, wild if they’re the kind of client that is willing to take the occasional risk. This is where you do what you really want to do. Ideally you should still keep it in the spirit of the brief in some way—back to the restaurant metaphor, don’t try to sell them a fudge-fondue sundae when they’re asking for a Caesar salad; that’s what proactive work is for. Play it up hard, as you should, make it outstanding, make it exciting, make it seem totally worth their time, really try to sell the crap out of it, and do your best to bring it back to the mission of the brief.

This method strategic

The likelihood of going for the safe option is anywhere between 70% to 99.99999% with most clients. Needless to say, your biggest challenge is to steer them away from it at all costs.

The likelihood of the edgy one or wild card is anywhere from 5% to 0.0000000000000000000000001%, depending on the client. We all know this. Putting too much energy into it might make them uncomfortable and steer them straight to the safe one, they think you’re getting out of control, and they want to hit the brakes early. For some clients, it’s almost impossible to predict when they might get edgy, but when it happens, it’s magical. You can’t force it, but never give up on trying.

Given the two points above, the middle-of-the-road should be the fallback. You can sell the crap out of the wild card, rip open the holes in their brief with the safe option, and use those as buffers to ensure the safe option dies.

This is the Nixon Principle at its finest.

It’s not perfect, but it works.

I’ll mention that this is not a perfect catch-all recipe. Every client is different. You have the Fernando Machados we idolize, who love to hit the world’s headlines every day. You have the [NAME REDACTED] spawns of pure sin who fail upwards while driving their agency into the ground. But more often than not, this approach has worked for me.

This has been especially useful in new client pitches, when you’re meeting a potential contract for the first time, and they ask for something “more creative than what they’re currently making.” There’s no easy way to gauge what their idea of creative is, when you’ve never worked with them, so a spectrum like this can get them in the zone to read their attitude towards advertising, and identify what they might like for a round two.

The safe option doesn’t need to make the eyes bleed, the edgy one doesn’t have to be a Michael Bay production, but with most of today’s clients, stretching three ideas across a spectrum of safety and creativity tends to yield more than satisfactory results. In my own practice, this method has kept clients at bay, created decent work, spun out a couple wild cards, and made the worst of the work infrequent. And you may tweak these points depending on your client’s persona and your agency’s relationship with the brand.