I was the director of biz dev at Arnold Worldwide for seven years, so I know how competitive it is and, more importantly, how savagely an agency will look for an edge over the competition in any given pitch. As long as it’s legal and wouldn’t get us kicked out of the pitch by the pitch consultant, we’d consider it. Well, we have a feature within the Ideasicle X platform that I wish I had when I was at Arnold. It’s an edge that I think will help the bolder agencies win pitches, but not every agency will have the guts.

where’s the edge In the inflexible pitch?

Not all pitch consultants run their pitches the same way, but there are two aspects to the typical pitch that I think most would agree are consistent:

• The pitch is on a tight schedule and violators will be towed.

• The agencies get limited, scheduled access to the prospective clients.

It’s unfortunate that agencies get so little access to the clients during the pitch process. Because when they do meet, neither are in their natural state. They are on their best behavior. The client wants to project to the agencies that they are great clients. The agencies want to project that they are a great agency. So lots of posturing going on. No one is truly “who they are.” Add to that the fact several rounds within a pitch may be held over Zoom and forget about building much of a relationship.

As a result, clients tend to pick a winning campaign that happens to be from Agency A versus picking a winning agency. That’s a lot of pressure on the work.

I understand why it has to be this way. The tight schedule accommodates the client’s timeline on choosing an agency. And the limited access is because your agency isn’t the only one in the race. The clients have to meet with all of the agencies - sometimes as many as twenty at the beginning - so it’s impossible for the clients to give much time to ALL of them. I get it.

But what if there were a virtual “back door” where your agency (and only your agency if you’re an early adopter of this idea) could invite the clients into your creative process, get feedback on your ideas, and, perhaps most importantly, build your relationship with the prospect? And what if no one needed to know about this back door except you and your prospect?

Invite prospective clients through the back door.

We recently added a feature to the Ideasicle X platform that allows the Organizer of an idea job to invite not only freelancers and/or employees to work in teams of four coming up with ideas over several days, but what we call “Observers,” who are given access to the Idea Stream where the four creatives are posting ideas, building on each other’s ideas, and riffing new ones.

Observers can’t interact with the team in any way. In fact, the team doesn’t even know they’re there. Only the Organizer knows. But Observers get email notifications whenever an idea or a build is posted, so can follow along with the creative process. Typically this feature is used when the Organizer wants to invite a colleague into the process as an FYI or to help monitor the ideas. But it can be anyone as long as you have their email address.

See where I’m going with this?

invite Prospective clients as Observers.

Imagine inviting a prospective client or two to become Observers of your campaign ideas as they are developed. You may not invite them on the first day, but after a few days when there are several ideas (good ideas) posted. We typically see 30-50 ideas posted within 3-5 days, so it won’t take long. What will this do to your odds of winning the pitch?

• Transparency. Lots of agencies claim to be transparent and collaborative, but inviting the prospects into your creative process in this way proves it.

• Feedback. Any client who accepts your invitation will have a hard time NOT telling you what they think about at least some of your ideas. Red flags will be red flagged, ideas with promise will be called out. And if you follow the client’s direction from this stage, you’ll have an ally in the room in the final pitch.

• Lay nails. We used to have a saying at Arnold, “Let’s lay nails for our competition.” Meaning we’d straw-man strategies or creative angles we thought other agencies might present, but we’d make a case against them in our pitch. That’s laying nails. And you can do that here as well by having the creative director monitoring the Ideasicle X job post strong reasons why various ideas posted will not work. The prospect will see those arguments and if they see similar ideas from other agencies they will be more likely to doubt the ideas or, better yet, will be armed with a ready-made argument against them.

• Confidence. Allowing the prospect into your creative process in realtime like this shows confidence in your agency. Clients are attracted to, and listen to, and buy great work from confident agencies.

• Relationship building. This is a "back door” where your agency has the opportunity to build its relationship with the prospect in a meaningful, important way. And in a way your competition isn’t.

In short, you will increase the odds of winning.

It’s cheap and easy.

Sign up for an annual Subscription to Ideasicle X today ($1,089). Not every pitch will benefit from this approach, but when you find one you’ll be ready. Schedule a demo, if you like, and I’ll walk you through the platform. Either way, we will onboard your team so they hit the virtual ground running.

Oh, and let’s not forget, in addition to the benefits of the Observers strategy above, with the Ideasicle X virtual model you’re more likely to come up with a pitch winning idea in the first place.

Now get out there and lay some nails.

Will Burns is the Founder & CEO of the revolutionary virtual-idea-generating company, Ideasicle X. He’s an advertising veteran from such agencies as Wieden & Kennedy, Goodby Silverstein, Arnold Worldwide, and Mullen. He was a Forbes Contributor for nine years writing about creativity in modern branding. Sign up for the Ideasicle Newsletter and never miss a post.