Well, it’s 2011. And the new year will see many agencies across the US, and the world battling for new accounts. But will the new year bring with it a completely fresh outlook on pitching for new business?

Many up-and-coming agencies, and even more established ones, will face the following dilemma:

Do you do work to win the account? Or do you do the best work you can?

The uninitiated will no doubt think that the two are synonymous, but seasoned agency people will know that’s not the case. While some pitches require a genius strategy and bold creative ideas, others demand the opposite. The client may even be putting the account up for review because the incumbent agency is constantly delivering work that is too edgy, too risky or too challenging.

Should you, or your agency, compromise your creativity and produce work that you know is mediocre in order to win the account?

It’s an easy enough question if money does not come into play. Shit no!

If you’re looking to build an agency, a good one, then you want to do it with accounts that trust your vision and give you the creative freedom you need in order to do genuinely good advertising. Doing mediocre work will not help that cause one bit.

But unfortunately, the agency is staffed by people who want salaries. They need to eat and own cars and sleep in beds. Selfish bastards, the lot of them. And that means your agency may not be able to turn away every RFP because the creative opportunity isn’t there. Scruples are one thing, but going out of business to honor them is not going to help anyone. We all have to start somewhere after all.

So, what do you do?

Well actually, it’s more a case of what not to do.

The biggest mistake I see agencies making is that they will do whatever it takes to win the business with the intention of doing better work later.

“Yes, this is mediocre work, but we’ll get our foot in the door. Then, we hit them with the great work later on and win some awards.”

Sorry, that almost never happens. I’m sure you know many agencies that have fallen foul of this strategy, and have a client roster that makes most creatives want to hang themselves or run screaming in the opposite direction.

You win the pitch with safe, crappy work, the client wants safe, crappy work. If you go from Jekyll to Hyde six months into the relationship, they’ll be pissed. And rightly so. They selected you based on the work you showed them.

Imagine dating someone who has the personality of a tame Sunday school teacher, and suddenly she starts slamming tequila shots, staying out until 4am and has the sexual appetite of Charlie Sheen. Hey, a lot of people like that, but you started dating the shy wallflower because that’s what you wanted. And if you were dating a hellcat that gave up booze and became a born again virgin, you’d be pissed, too.

It’s a huge, huge error to expect the client to start accepting dangerous, edgy work when you purposely withheld it from the pitch. You did your homework, knew what the client wanted and gave them just that. A sudden turnaround on their part is not going to happen, at least not for many years or they have a sudden regime change.

Just know that the client you’re going after is a cash cow, and that’s all. Getting the creative department’s hopes up that this sad cow will become something more fun to work on is just disingenuous.

On the other hand, you could do your research and throw it to one side. You give the client a pitch that delivers, in no uncertain terms, some very wild, crazy and creative work that you know will bring in the customers. It’s a gamble.

In that case, you now know that if you win or lose, you gave it your best shot. If you lose, you may live to fight another day. If you win, you win with great work. Remember, of course, that the client still may water down that pitch work, but you’re on much more solid ground.

The other scenario is to turn your back on it. The RFP could require too much of your time and won’t be something you really want to win anyway. I’ve been in agencies where the owner halfheartedly announced that we won the credit card mailing pack pitch. Hurray. So exciting. It’s money, that’s all, and we never expected it to be anything more. And did we really need the extra money?

If it’s sink or swim time, you bite the bullet and find work. Any work. You get clients that deliver the cash to pay the bills, and do great work for pro-bono clients that will get your agency noticed. Then, start replacing those bad clients with good ones, as and when you can afford to.

But please, don’t ever try and pitch with poor work and expect a client to come around later. You’re not just kidding yourself but the rest of the agency.

Originally written for The Denver Egotist.

Felix Unger is a site contributor, ranter and curmudgeon for The Denver Egotist. He's been in the ad game a long time, but he's still young enough to know he doesn't know everything. He'll give his opinion, you can take it or leave it. If he uses the f-bomb from time-to-time, forgive him. Sometimes, when you're ranting, no other word will do. In his spare time, he does not torture small animals. He has been known, on occasion, to drink alcohol by the gallon. Do as he says, not as he does. Email him at .

A timely piece from the good folks at the Denver Egotist.

On the morning of November 17 I got a brief that asked me to write a post titled "Five Ways Your Ad Agency Will Work In 2011" for the Karsh\Hagan blog. And that afternoon, I saw this in Fast Company:

Over the past few years, because of a combination of Internet disintermediation, recession, and corporate blindness, the [advertising] assembly line has been obliterated -- economically, organizationally, and culturally. In the ad business, the relatively good life of 2007 is as remote as the whiskey highs of 1962.

Ouch.
I wasn't surprised by Fast Company's doom and gloom. The article was just a retread of all the Big Scary Death of Advertising stories we've been reading for a few years now. But being boring doesn't make you wrong. The world of 2011 looks nothing like the one in which many of us learned our craft.

In a 2008 interview I did with Scott Goodson on FutureLab, I said the greatest challenge for the marcomm industry was this:

Defining for new clients how we will approach their business problems.

I still think that's true. But while the pitch process remains a bit of a jumble, the agency business model has changed. In 2011, your ad agency will be faster and more innovative than ever before. Here are five reasons why.

1. Collaboration: Today, culture is made with mash-ups. It's about Kid Cudi mixing Christian Bale with LCD Soundsystem. About ideas that build on each other. That's how agencies will be working in 2011. Small teams of people coming together to add fresh thinking to existing work.

2. Content: Social media is great. But brands shouldn't jump into other folks' conversations uninvited. They should start by creating content worthy of conversation. And then listen, engage and refine.

3. Play: Ty Montague. Kevin Roddy. Alex Bogusky. Those are three of the biggest names in advertising and in 2010 they all quit their fabulous network jobs to explore the great unknown. Experimentation, play and the freedom to fail. Those are the seeds of creativity and the path to the biggest ideas.

4. Flexibility: To a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And to an agency with a bunch of specialists with billable hours to fill, every problem looks like it requires the attention of a bunch of specialists with billable hours to fill. To combat this agencies will hire people who have flexible skill sets and similar visions.

5. Platforms: There are fun individual executions. There are powerful integrated campaigns. And then there are flexible, infinite platforms. For instance, Karsh\Hagan's 100 Honest Answers campaign for American Crew has run its course. But the Ask American Crew platform we built underneath it will always be there if they want to use it again. Your agency should be thinking about the long, long run.

If the brief I'd gotten had asked for a sixth opportunity, I would add happiness to this list, and define it as "a blissful childlike state resulting from the act of creation." Because I think ad agencies are much less tied to the 30-second spot than the media would have you believe. There is so much cool stuff yet to be made. And as long as we're making it, we'll be so, so happy. Suck on that, Fast Company.

[Ed. - This post was written by Karsh\Hagan's Matt Ingwalson and cross-posted on his blog and Karsh Connect.

This is the first of hopefully many EGO SPY REPORTS on local events of interest to the Iowa creative community. This report was provided by a volunteer anonymous Egotist spy who attended the event. If you are interested in joining our EGO SPY NETWORK, learn more here.

The typical American Marketing Association meeting usually consists of the same group of people that all know each other and meet once a month over a mediocre lunch to listen to someone speak for about 30 minutes on something that should take about 2 hours. When I saw that this meeting was EXTENDED, I was convinced to see if it was worth my hard earned money. So my skeptic self settled in for the ride.

Besides the lunch still being mediocre, the rest of the meeting exceeded my expectations. The crowd was the biggest I have seen and the room was actually set up so I could eat, take some notes and face the speaker without dropping the crumbs from my bread on my neighbor’s lap.

As for the speakers, well, they kept my attention for the entire meeting; which is hard to do with my self diagnosed ADD.

Major points of interest from Rebecca Herold, aka The Privacy Professor:*
1. There are over 100 million tweets per day – I think Des Moines is responsible for 23 million and Justin Beiber is responsible for the rest
2. The U.S. Library of Congress saves every single tweet, even if they are deleted – note to self next time I have a beer and decide to tweet something
3. Research has proven that elementary students that use some form of social media have improved learning and cognitive skills – I’m going to leave that one alone…
4. UK lawyers have said that 20% of divorces have cited facebook as a reason for the split – Did you really think she wouldn’t find out what you posted on there? Duh
5. Once something is posted on the web, it’s there FOREVER

Major points of interest from Nathan Wright (who is 6’2’’ tall):
1. He sold his soul on eBay for $46 – and the character that bought it photographed the travels of Nathan’s soul – creepy…
2. Social media is the #1 online activity – can you guess what #2 is? If you don’t know then I am not going to tell you
3. The Department of Defense created the internet – I thought Al Gore did that
4. TV is going to be the next social platform so you can tweet during a show on the screen! – I think some people in DSM should not be allowed to do this (You know who you are, over tweeters)
5. If Nathan is OBSESSED, it must be good. For example, your vehicle could be the next mobile device, with apps.

*In case you couldn’t figure it out, I added my own comments.

So, my message to the AMA is this:
The speakers you have been bringing in lately have been pretty interesting. The food, eh, it’s hotel food so my expectations aren’t very high. The only other complaint is more for the people of Des Moines that attend these events. Networking does not mean talking to the people you came with. Get off your butt and meet someone new. You never know where that connection could take you.

A new editorial piece from a member of The St. Louis Egotist.

When Eddie Izzard does his stand-up show, I'd be furious if I spent $50 on tickets only to have him open up the routine with, "Hey! I'm Eddie Izzard and I'm a comedian! I'm going to tell some jokes and they're really funny! And you'll laugh extremely hard! ...Hey! I’m funny!" But this is essentially what most creative agencies do with their mission statements or "about us" pages on their website. I came across a new agency's site the other day, one conceived with much fanfare, for it had the best-and-brightest behind it (which isn't an exaggeration--they've individually done some great work), and found not a collection of great ideas, not an array of provocative work, but a stash of hackneyed Twitter-ready manifestos and slavishly prepared elevator pitches written about their selected group of collaborators. Oh 140 characters, how could you be so vacant? All of it sat on the same continuum of scrappy start-ups from years gone by with nothing all that new to offer. In the past ten years, I've seen agencies give themselves billboards, claim that they "engineer pop culture," that they "tell stories" and "build connections," or my personal favorite, "create meaningful relationships" with consumers.

I'm here to say that they do no such thing. Our job is to help someone sell something, and if you have a problem with that then you need to grow up. If you think we're in the business of doing something else, something removed from the grime of actually moving merchandise, you're insane. If you think that I'm implying that working at an agency has to be serious, dry, formalized and exacting, or that creatives should be preoccupied with placating nervous brand managers, you're missing the point. The reality is, cool shit sells shit and doing impossibly great work is a worthwhile mission. Hell, I remember walking into Target one day and being mesmerized by the giant, dangling, bombastically colored signs announcing that something I wasn't interested in buying was 20% off. I probably bought it. Bravo, wheels of commerce! And I bought other stuff too and rather enjoyed the whole experience. Barney’s, Diesel, Ikea, Vitra, Lukas Liquors, and others have had similar effects on me. I probably bought Under Armour gear, too, because I really wanted to protect this house.

These are tough times. The employment levels in the advertising industry have yet to match what they were in early 2001, before the crash after 9/11 wiped out thousands of jobs. Things really have changed, and with that comes a heavy dose of fear and confusion. I understand both of those sensations well. They have a funny effect on people—typical reactions often consist of lots of rambling theorizing, all in an effort to assert continued relevance. So we try to sound smarter and more important, attach our craft to something with greater “prestige,” kind of like how Massimo Vignelli started calling himself an “information architect” years ago instead of the more accurate and meaningful label of “graphic designer," and how other graphic designers seek validation from the art world or hope to be viewed as "authors."

My advice: quit assigning authority to sources who do not deserve it, and do not delude yourself into believing you're more important than anyone else. You're not.

The context of creativity is interesting. For instance: I’d argue that done right, advertising is infinitely cooler than just about any exhibition in an art gallery or museum of contemporary art (at least these days), yet we’re encouraged to lionize those grand institutions as bastions of cutting-edge exploration and intellect, even if the stuff on those walls is more likely to bore you stiff than change your mind. And, of course, we're told that advertising is somehow "lower." Why? Because it's trying to sell something? This is f-ing capitalism, where everything is for sale! That means the tickets to that avant-garde play, as well as the weed killer. The methods behind promoting each are the same. Also, the best ad/design work is exciting as hell and often ludicrously well-done. It has to be. I'd rather watch commercials--the funny ones, the maudlin ones, the ones laden with buckets of pointless but outrageously cool effects--than I would sit in some dingy theater imbibing what's probably an offensively dull independent film. Seeing a great piece of commercial design, one that’s been programmed to tickle my brain and tug at my heart, resembles the effects of five shots of Jack without the hangover. Why ad people would ever feel REMOTELY inferior to the fine arts is a mystery to me. I don't feel used or abused when I see your garrulously colored poster urging me to spend serious dollars on school supplies, I feel entertained. I feel like, "hey, at least they're talking to me straight, but I'm gonna skip the pink erasers." David Foster Wallace wrote an monumental novel about pervasive marketing/entertainment but I don’t loathe it in quite the same way he did. I DO loathe the pretentious. And I DO feel used and condescended to when I traipse around a gallery looking at photographs of stacks of books or egg cartons, which has happened this year (that said, Chris Kahler’s paintings at Bruno David were mesmerizing and I wish I could afford one). At least the ad doesn't pretend to have long-term, epic value simply because of the location of the wall on which it's posted. Even Jeff Koons figured out that in addition to selling vacuum sweepers for ungodly sums, he could rip off liquor ads, print them in limited editions of 2, and turn a profit. Need I mention that Warhol guy? Forget contextualizing. Don't pretend an ad is something else. That’s true deception. There's nothing wrong with trying to sell something.

Ads are cool. Design is fun. Creativity is thrilling, and creativity is a function of action. Why try to be something else? What’s with all the talk? The posturing? The chest puffery and braggadocio? Let the market decide if it’s effective.

So let's skip the moral and ethical debates, let's avoid arbitrarily and subjectively declaring the value of creative expression, and cut straight to the point: your concerns about having a job ten years from now, and more pointedly, if the job you do have then will continue to allow unwashed blue jeans, water guns, inappropriate mass emails, and other minor luxuries. Or if you'll have to start shopping at Banana Republic and show up on time to things.

Well, you'll probably be fine as long as someone thinks it's worth spending money on what you do. Emphasis on “do.” As I tell my students: jobs go to those who can do the work. Not those who make themselves look like pirates in their Twitter profile photo or coin themselves “revolutionaries.” You are what you do, and more specifically, you are what you do repeatedly. Listen. Think. Ask some questions. Think some more. All of this will enable the production of cool shit. Then do a lot of cool shit—repeatedly--and all will be well. Making this business sound more complex and mysterious than it actually is won’t enhance its reputation. Talking about innovative collaborations, enterprising solutions and engaging in other empty hyperbolic exercises is the equivalent of talking about decorating a cake. Window dressing is more effective. Forget what other people think about it. Forget about the honors it might get or if it's art or authorship. Don’t worry about how to describe it or whether or not you’re getting enough press for it. Just make something.

Brad Gutting is the first St. Louis Egotist member to write an editorial. For this, we applaud him and urge the other great thinkers in the community to follow suit. Brad started his career with VSA Partners in Chicago in 2002, spent three years at Adamson Advertising, and has been an art director at Cannonball since 2007. He graduated from Indiana University in 2000 with degrees in history and film, and attended Portfolio Center afterward. He finds everything interesting.