Pitch
In a Nutshell
A pitch is when an agency presents its ideas to a brand to win the business. In theory: a contest of talent. In practice: often creative work done for free.
What It Really Means
The pitch is the most exciting and most exhausting ritual in the agency world. Several agencies work for days on the same brief, present at a single table, and usually only one wins.
The problem: the ideas produced by the losing agencies are left out in the open. Sometimes those ideas come back, from a familiar place, inside the winning work.
A good pitch is the agency's showcase; a bad one is weeks of labor thrown away. The difference is usually determined by the clarity of the brief.
Winning a pitch takes skill; but constantly chasing pitches is often the strategy of hope, not of a business model.