Interviewed by: Carol Mason
Nicky Bullard is the UK’s only creatively led consultant. The former Group Chief Creative Officer at MullenLowe Group UK and Chairwoman at MRM Europe is bringing a fresh approach to agency search with her new consultancy, Elevator. Focusing exclusively on project work and promising an updated, and future-fit process, Nicky is rewriting the playbook on finding a creative agency at speed and on-point.
Congrats on establishing Elevator! How did you land on Elevator as your brand identity?
Thank you so much! So, the name. It started with the simple premise that pitches are way too slow. This is killing margins and damaging people and, in my opinion, is totally unnecessary for project pitches. So Elevator, as in The Elevator Pitch, seemed perfectly apt. I then dug into the term’s origins and discovered it hadn’t derived from Hollywood (pitching your idea in the time it takes to travel in a lift), or from a business textbook. The phrase was actually coined after a stunt performed by Elisha Otis in 1853 to prove his invention – a mechanism that stops elevators crashing to the ground. He hired a massive hall in NYC, built a platform three stories high, got his assistant to dramatically cut a rope in front of investors and press, and the platform fell. And he didn’t crash to the floor. And in the same way, I believe agencies can prove a point to brands without killing themselves. So Elevator is the brand name, and The Elevator Pitch, which I have trademarked, is the process.
Nicky has been involved in countless pitches. We wanted to understand the pain points in the current process from all sides and, importantly, the feedback she’s getting now from conversations with brand leaders, from the consultant side of the table.
I have to say I am looking at this from a UK perspective and having just had 60+ face-to -face agency meetings, I have heard, seen and felt the pain.
It’s way too slow generally, but certainly for project pitches.This is bad for agency margins, bad for their best people but also not great for brands who may have an urgent deadline.
The fee structures really aren’t loved. So there’s the subscription model – which is a worry for some brands who may see this as agencies paying to play. Or year-one agency kickbacks – which feels like the intermediary can’t lose. Especially if they have already charged the brand a fee for the process.
Poor curation. I spoke to a CMO who said he was sent 20 RFIs by the intermediary. 20! His already overstretched team had to whittle those down to six. Where is the curation? And cynically, the intermediary can now tell 20 subscribing agencies they were given that as an ‘opportunity’.
Outdated RFIs. That 30+ page document may contain work made up to three years ago. The people who made the work probably aren’t even in the agency anymore.
Lack of recent agency or creative leadership experience. This is a biggie. Two UK intermediaries conducted significant CMO surveys in the last 12 months. And two findings stood out to me.
1. The top reason for CMOs going to pitch was a cultural misfit with the agency.
2. The top reason for appointing an agency was creative ability. Yet, of the UK intermediaries who do have agency experience, not much of it is recent. And not one seems to have a significant creative leader on their team. So I asked myself, how are they judging the agencies on culture and creativity?
Poor briefs. Pitch briefs can either be too loose. Or packed with too much information and ambiguity. This means there can be an awful lot of guesswork which quite frankly is a waste of everybody’s time.
Poor feedback. Agencies want to know why they have lost a pitch. But importantly, they want to be given feedback during the process so they are given the best chance to have a brilliant final meeting.
Poor outcomes. There are the ‘ghost’ pitches, where it feels like an exercise, and then there are the inflated pitches, where the winning agency discovers the true budget, and questions having just invested so much time and money in the process.
Agencies are eating each other alive. Some are over-delivering in ways others in the same process can’t compete. Or those others are playing by the rules and losing because of it. It’s also not necessarily a reason to appoint an agency partner – they are over-delivering but over-delivering what?
Taking the points above to account and alongside the growing project work economy, how is Elevator demonstrably different to current search practice?
The Elevator Pitch process is fast. Two weeks spent with the brand up front, defining the project brief, plus my curation and presentation of the agency shortlist. Then four weeks from agency briefings to tissue sessions to final pitch meetings.
The shortlist is short. Just three agencies.
The curation is creative and robust. I have curated a list of 30 of the UK’s hottest agencies, creative companies and creative studios. This is called The Golden List. These are the ‘agencies’ doing the best work right now. The list is based on latest work not legacy work, which is massively important for brands who have a project that needs delivering soon.
The Golden List is constantly updated. I have a system which alerts me to new work, and those agencies go on my list of 20 face-to-face visits I will do every month; meeting’s that help define who stays on and who gets onto the list. I am also sitting in agencies, feeling the culture and seeing work in the making, not just when it’s made (along with the rest of the world).
No lengthy RFIs. By that I mean the massive document (of course there will be procurement Qs). My robust curation means I will present a rationale to brands on which three agencies I believe are the best in the UK to deliver their project.
Current industry experience and a creative eye throughout
I have spent thirty years living agency culture and am still creating and writing as well as judging awards. So I have an ‘inside’ perspective. I will also provide brands with a creative point of view through the process – less marking the agencies’ homework, more crafting the brief, crafting the feedback and helping all three agencies deliver a cracking pitch.
The 10% brief
It’s always seemed nuts to me that agencies are often asked to present back the whole answer, especially when they may not have the data, the relationship, or sight of the brand’s future plans. This is even more nuts on a project pitch. The Elevator Pitch cuts out the guesswork.
So I will sit with the brand team, define the project, chunk it up against an agreed budget (this is important, as it’s up front and committed then) and then find the 10% that will kick off the project. That’s the pitch brief. So there’s no guesswork. It’s a level playing field and easier to judge. It also means that at the end of the process, the client has kicked off 10% of the project and is 10% closer to delivering against their deadline.
Agencies have to play by the rules.
This is counter to any pitch process I have ever been in, but on my watch you cannot over-deliver. Go beyond the 10% and I will sin bin you from The Golden List for 6 months. If you can’t play by the rules, I will also question whether you are the right partner on a tight brief, that has a hard delivery date.
A key question we have is whether clients are sufficiently geared for fast-tracked pitches. The answer is yes, with a sprinkling of recalibration required also on their side.
It won’t work if you just try to do everything quickly. Be prepared to curate your agency pitch list expertly, clearly define a tight brief, feedback fairly and then I believe you can shorten the timelines.
Is there a singular piece of guidance you’d like to share, for a brand looking for an agency partner?
If you have a looming deadline and are under pressure to find an agency partner, it can be very tempting to fall back onto a creative partner you have used before.Or ask your CMO network to recommend.That’s not a bad strategy. You’ll have the confidence that ‘at least they won’t f**k it up’. But you won’t know if they really are the best possible creative partner for your project. That is all in the expert curation. Ahem.
