Pitch differently and get the best idea.

The Briefing - rather than get all the advertising/design/creative agencies to rewrite the brief and kill the life out of it (agency briefs tend to be very dull), you the client write a clear brief (which does not need rewriting by the agencies involved). Host a half day session with all of the presenting agencies involved at the same time with the sole intention of inspiring and interacting with the creatives who are going to deliver the ideas - suits and planners are banned from the process.

The Pitch Presentation - All agencies have all been there. They have the ideas but need to deliver a seamless pitch presentation and so put in days and days to make sure that the final delivery is perfect. They put their best pitchers in the room and sometimes they even win when their idea, at a naked level, is not necessarily the best one.

Make the pitch all about ideas.

We have always bought into the concept that it should be possible to deliver the best ideas on a post it note. As a consequence give every agency just nine days to deliver each idea on a single sheet of A4. No agency credentials. No Appendix. No fancy videos. And for the three best ideas, just a 30 minute Skype call to give a little more background.

Total Transparency - Each agency has to submit their ideas in the same format completely unbranded (only one person at the client end knows the owner of each idea). In this way there can be no perceived favouritsm as the client didn't want to know where each idea came from, and so agencies can be confident the best idea will win.

If you have a very clear brief why wouldn’t you want to talk to the creatives directly about what you are looking for and to give them the opportunity to ask questions in a relaxed, open environment.

Good ideas speak for themselves, so by confining the responses to one sheet of A4 paper, you will be able to forget about the theatrics of how the ideas are delivered and concentrate the efforts purely on the creative solution.

Want to give it a try?