Resource Shortages, Mental Health Apathy, Diversity Tokenism, a Thank You and Respect for Personal Commitments

The results of the Great Pitch Poll 2023 are out!

The results of the Great Pitch Poll, the annual industry survey undertaken by international business development company The Great Pitch Company are out. The survey measures pitching and business development practices across the industry’s top UK agencies exploring key topics such as new business challenges, personal concerns, wellbeing and mental health, diversity and new business training.  All respondents work in New Business or marketing teams in London’s media, creative, digital, PR, direct, performance, design and healthcare agencies.

Key Findings

1. Our industry still faces a resource shortage with new business associated with an extra burden.

• Lack of staff to work on pitches is still a problem for 50% of respondents and this has not changed over the three years. 
• General heavy workload reported by 40% of people, although down from a peak of 60% in 2021.

2. Pandemic related ‘working remotely’ or ‘pitching virtually’ no longer an issue for most.

• ‘Work remotely’ was considered by only 15% as a challenge (down from a peak of 48% in 2021)
• ‘Pitching virtually’ similarly now only considered a challenge by 13% (down from a peak of 52% in 2021). 

3. Perception of competition is up across all three counts (‘agencies similar to us’, ‘new agencies’ or ‘in-house agencies’)

• ‘Increased competition from in-house agencies’, up to 19% (versus just 10% in 2021)
• ‘Increased competition form agencies similar to our agency’ reported by over a third of respondents 36% (versus 30% in 2021)
• Whilst a quarter of all respondents noticed ‘increased competition from new agencies’ 24% (versus 10% in 2021). 

4. The state of the world adds extra stress to all ready workload-burdened staff.

• macro-economic issues:  job security (24%), promotions (18%), pay rises (28%) and bonuses (23%)
• the cost-of-living crisis would impact them including rent rises (21%), rate of inflation (37%), mortgage rate increases (27%) and increased energy costs (31%).
• other issues such as the NHS crisis (18%), strike action (17%), climate change (20%) and the war in Ukraine (20%). 

5. Very worryingly, mental health is considered less of a priority for agencies at an overall level. 

• Almost a quarter of people (22%) felt ‘their agency does very little to demonstrate interest in this area’.
• There was a startling drop in people believing ‘my organisation has made great strides in implanting plans that promote mental wellbeing’ down to 20% versus 51% in 2021 and 31% last year.  

6. Then when considering protection of mental health at a new business level, for the majority, new business is an extra burden on their day job, where personal commitments must fall by the wayside and a ‘thank you’ is the most likely way an agency is respectful of mental health. 

• Whilst 42% say their ‘existing workload being taken into consideration/rebalanced’, by implication that means for the majority 58% their existing workload is not taken into consideration when being asked to work on new business.
• Similarly, whilst 43% say their agency is ‘respectful of personal commitments’ by implication that means that 57% believe their agency is not respectful.
• And that a thank you is the biggest way agencies people feel their agency is respecting mental wellbeing (‘respectful means of communicating e.g., saying thank you’ 44%)

7. There is a glimmer of hope that working practices may well be changing. A third reported that enforced ways of working are now the norm at some agencies. 

• ‘Enforced ways of working such no emails at weekends’ at 33% is up 24 percentage points from last year (9%) and up 16 percentage points versus 2021 (16%)

8. When it comes to diversity, It’s a mixed picture.  On the one hand, almost all people are aware that their agency has championed diversity in some way, however agencies are struggling to field diverse teams. Worse than that, most believe this representation is often tokenist in nature. 

• A significant reduction in the people ‘not being aware of ways your organisation has championed diversity when it comes to new business opportunities’, with just 3% being unaware down from 29% in (2021) and 37% in 2022.  
• ‘Diverse representation in pitch teams (62%) up from previous years (46% in 2021 and 38% last year).
• ‘Does your agency ever struggle to field diverse team members on pitch teams?’, 79% said yes. (Source: Q12)
• ‘Do you ever feel people are put in the pitch room in a tokenist way, 66% agreed.

9. The ‘Pitch Positive Pledge from IPA and ISBA’ is gaining awareness although there is still some way to go. 

• 43% ‘had heard something but not sure where/when’, 39% were ’fully aware and our agency has signed’, and just 16% had never heard of it.

10) When asked “if there was one thing you could change about business development’, respondents replied most about the following topics:

• The treatment and role of the Business Development: “A thank you once in a while.”
• The pitch process itself: “Creating pointlessly long RFP documents that nobody reads or comments on”.
• The work-life imbalance: “I hope I can protect my own health.”
• The cost-of-living crisis: “I don’t know, I just want more money”. 
• Changes on the client side: “Clients ghosting you and lack of transparency around budgets.

The Great Pitch Poll was started by Marcus Brown, founder and CEO of The Great Pitch Company, an international business development company. Marcus realized that ‘if you don’t measure it, you can’t change it’, so in 2021 he launched the industry survey, and the number of respondents takin part have grown exponentially each year. This year the sample due was 50% larger than each of the previous years.  In many cases, the questions asked this year were the same of the past two years, making it possible to compare year on year results.

Commenting on the results of this year’s poll Marcus said: “The Great Pitch Poll, once again paints a picture of an industry that has yet to face facts when it comes to the pursuit of new business. 

  Marcus Brown, The Great Pitch Company