How to Fail: A Pitch

Here's an editorial from our friends from down South at The Atlanta Egotist.

If you want to fail a pitch, show up late. There is nothing that says "we want your business" more than being on time. If there is a hard stop, plan your arrival time accordingly. Seventeen minutes prior should be plenty of time. Glad-handing and introductions will take up approximately 12 minutes, leaving ample time to review the 75-slide capabilities presentation you custom prepared for the day in the remaining 5 minutes.

Send your least senior employees to the meeting. Interns are best because they are generally very timid and cower, stutter and faint when asked pointed questions such as "how are you?" or "did you have a hard time finding our office?" This can be amusing and breathe life into even the dreariest of pitches. If no interns are available at the time, freelancers are second best. Since they have no real allegiance to your agency, are likely angry they haven't been hired on full time and probably would prefer to take the project on themselves, you are pretty much guaranteed not to win the project when you send in a freelancer.

Always come unprepared to a pitch you want to fail. It is important to be as unfamiliar with your prospect's business as possible. The more obscure the topic the better. It can be difficult to feign a misunderstanding of cotton balls, but no one understands futures trading, for example. In a pitch to a futures trading firm when you asked if you have any experience in their industry, relax. Respond with something along the lines of, "yes, we have a ton of experience in futures trading. Just the other day I was telling our Creative Director about how I thought Facebook was the future of television and he told me that he thought MySpace was the future of television. See, we trade futures around the office all the time."

It can sometimes be difficult to fail a pitch if a prospect is already familiar with your work and impressed by your portfolio. Overcome any interest they have by displaying specific examples of work you hate. It is not a requirement that this work even be your own. Pull up some competitor's website and grab some of their particularly mediocre work, slap it in a PowerPoint, set up some nice slide transitions (we recommend 'dissolve'), turn down the lights and put on a good show.

There are a few subtle things you can do to fail a pitch. Forgetting peoples names, or calling them by their reality/porn/Japanime star doppelganger's name can be effective. Coming in still drunk from the night before is fine too. Remark about how glad you are to narrowly pass the field sobriety test on your way over. Swapping DUI stories can be a great ice breaker. Dress casually. Come straight from the gym if you want. Chew gum. Smell like cigarettes. Swear often and unnecessarily.

At the end of the pitch you should be at your car before they can say "next steps." Practice packing up your bag in advance, a time of 10 seconds or less is acceptable. Never unpacking your bag is preferred. Prior experience on a pit crew would be helpful here.

After the pitch, don't bother following up. Maybe you'll receive a polite e-mail from an administrative assistant a few months later explaining that they're sorry for the delayed response and while they appreciate all your effort and recognize your stellar work, they've decided to go another direction. Maybe you won't hear anything. You'll completely forget about the pitch until one day you'll read on The Egotist that they hired that competitor, the one with the mediocre work. You'll run into one of the marketing coordinators at a networking event the following year entitled, "Facebook, The New Television" and you'll smile to yourself knowing that you and your Creative Director did trade futures that day.