4 minute read

Here’s a cruel truth that many of us have learned the hard way: your big idea is only as good as your ability to pitch it.

I’ve just spent a week working at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, where I MCed the Debussy stage. I hosted 26 talks over four days, with more than 100 seasoned creative leaders and many celebrities taking to the stage.

They talked about all aspects of creativity, and I watched every single speaker – including:

• The line-up from the United Nations Development Agency
• Ogilvy’s Chief Creative Officer Liz Taylor
• Vaynerchuck Founder Gary Vee
• Actress Issa Rae
• Pepsi marketer Todd Kaplan
• Megan Thee Stallion
• Activist Munroe Bergdorf
• Paris Hilton
• Patrick Stewart

I watched them all with barely suppressed glee (most of the time!). And I learned a lot.

My day job here at Now Go Create is to help people develop their creative skills, so it was fascinating to see how these big-name speakers and marketing pros put across their own ideas about creativity. It was also interesting to observe the methods they used to nail their talks.

Once back home, I set about working out how the rest of us could learn from what I’d seen.

The fact is, public speaking is something that most of us want to be better at. It’s widely known that a fear of public speaking can paralyse even the seemingly most confident of people. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, a fear of public speaking is the most common phobia – ahead of death, spiders and heights – and it affects about 73% of the population.

We fear being judged, being visibly nervous, being evaluated and being looked at closely by others.

I’ll never really know to what extent the various guests I met were on edge when they stepped out pitching ideas to the audience at the world-famous Palais des Festivals in Cannes.

But it’s no mean feat to capture the attention of 1,000 people waiting to hear their talks. So here are my top six takeaways – along with some tips to help us mere mortals put these key learnings into action.

1. Go ‘inside’ before you step outside

Everyone has nerves to some degree before they head out pitching ideas they are passionate about. it’s completely normal. I love the quote: “There is nothing wrong with stomach butterflies. You just have to get them to fly in formation!” – anon.

Nervousness is due to chemical processes in the body and the fight or flight hormone adrenaline which causes the sweaty palms, racing heartbeat and anxiety that are agonisingly familiar to so many.

So, what did the pros do differently?

Tellingly, I saw many of them take a quiet moment before going onstage to just connect with themselves, gather their thoughts and ground themselves in the moment. It seemed like they went ‘inside’ before they went outside.

If you want to see what this looks like in action watch this short film of J. Lo getting mentally prepared for the biggest gig of her life – the half time performance at the 2022 Superbowl.

In Cannes, actor and filmmaker David Bianchi took to the stage to perform spoken word poetry. His performance was electrifying and powerful, and energetically a stark contrast to his moment of quiet just before he stepped out onto the stage.

My top tip for beating the nerves when pitching ideas: Take five minutes on your own immediately before starting your speech. If this means that you have to excuse yourself to ‘nip to the bathroom’, then do it.

Breathe naturally but deeply, and ask yourself what impression you want to convey in the room – friendliness? Authority? Energy? Meditation apps like Calm have breathing bubbles (a slowly expanding and retracting bubble on the screen) that you can follow.

Bonus tip!: Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Practice until it becomes muscle memory.

One hack for doing this is to record yourself on your phone and listen back. This helps make it conversational, and when it’s as good as it can be you can listen to it whilst you potter about at home. Do this before you video yourself, which is the next stage – it’s a lot less distracting. Thanks to Caroline Goyder’s book Gravitas, for this tip.

2. Harness the energy of the crowd

In the world of on-demand and ‘skip ads’, I think any speaker’s job has become harder in terms of maintaining attention for 30 mins. So get the audience on-board early. Whenever the presenters did this, it paid off.

My top tip for including the audience: Use the Slido app (or similar) to poll the crowd about your topic and submit questions. That way you can really speak to the interest in the room and make it feel personal. This tip will serve you well in smaller groups, too, and even a simple audience check-in such as “Are you following me so far?” can work wonders.

This ties directly into tip 3.

Bonus tip! Sounds weird, but try and look beyond the crowd and focus on the far corners of the room. By tapping into your peripheral vision, you can actually help to reduce anxiety – which is linked to tunnel vision. It basically gives you a wide-angle lens that helps you to see the broader picture.

I find that by focusing my energy outwards like this I become more aware of what’s going on in a room – whether that’s with a training group or on the Debussy stage. It’s as though you can see individual movements and faces amongst the crowd, whilst still seeing the whole. Try picturing a spot on the back wall of where you are working and then ‘opening your vision out’.

3. Think about your props when pitching ideas

I can’t ask this loudly enough:

“Do you really need PowerPoint?”

One of the standouts talks for me was with the force of nature that is Bozoma Saint John, former marketing ace at Netflix and Uber, among others.

Many of the speakers had big entourages helping to either calm their nerves or hype them up. Boz by name (boss by nature) arrived with just one other person. Cool as a cucumber, dressed to kill, she had a one-slide talk defending anyone’s right to ‘job hop’ if their role isn’t working for them, and to live life urgently.

I watched her from the wings in awe as she gave a one-woman presenting masterclass.

She invited the audience to get involved – telling us (I’m paraphrasing here): “I’m a PK – a preacher’s kid – and in church when we are feeling it, we say ‘preach’ to show our support.”

Let’s just say I had some intense hard relate moments and was shouting from the wings. Bozoma introduced the three things she wanted to share, providing anticipation and structure at the same time. Along with the whole audience, I left the room absolutely buzzed – no mean feat as it was the last talk of the day.

My top prop tip: One of the questions you must ask as a presenter is what the audience needs. It’s what I call ‘WIFM?’ (what’s in it for me?).

Think about what they might need to make the speech really engaging. Don’t expect them to just sit and listen to exactly what you want to tell them. If you’re talking about a soft drink, why not do an Oprah and give one to each member of the audience?

Bonus tip! Don’t overdo it. What you say, do and urge with your content is more important than a fancy deck – all of the things that Saint John said were relatable, actionable and from the heart. I’m still fangirling over her talk (her everything, actually).

4. Stories = emotional engagement

In the book Talk Like Ted, Carmine Gallo reveals that the most popular TED talks lead with emotional, then rational messaging – without fail. As you might expect from one of the world’s most seasoned actors, Patrick Stewart was super-comfortable on stage and clearly very much enjoyed his chat about ‘Building fandoms with the Star Trek franchise’.

Leaning on his relaxed, conversational style, he told a story that moved the audience in a way you could feel throughout the room.

He said:

“There’s one letter I received that meant so much to me.

It was from an LAPD sergeant, and his letter began by writing about how much he’d always wanted to be a policeman, how he loved the job, he was so proud to be a sergeant in the LAPD, but there were days, he said, when I go home and what I have seen and experienced and witnessed in the world out there has been so discouraging and shocking and depressing.

When that happens, I go home, and I put on an episode of Star Trek, and I begin to believe in people again.”

My top story tip: Make us feel something. Become a story-hunter – search hard for the perfect anecdote about yourself, the brand or the topic that will make the audience feel the way you want them to. When you feel it, the audience feels it too – it’s infectious.

As writer and civil rights activist Maya Angelou famously once said: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Check out our storytelling masterclass here. 

5. Be yourself

The incredible talk about Me Too in 2022, by the movement’s founder Tarana Burke and FCB Global’s Susan Credle felt like an intimate conversation between two friends that we just happened to be sitting in on.

Being comfortable and honest signals confidence to the audience. This can be a quiet integrity, which can be incredibly powerful. It doesn’t have to all be jazz hands and ‘volume up’ if that’s not you.

Paris Hilton surprised some commentators by appearing on the bill with Gary Vaynerchuck to talk about the Metaverse and NFT’s, something she was eloquent and super-knowledgeable about. But she seemed most in her element when the crowd begged her for selfies at the end of the talk.

My top ‘you do you’ tip:

It can be helpful to remember that it’s not all about you – this is directly linked to tip 2. It’s about the people in the room. What information can you give them that no one else can?

As presentation expert Nancy Duarte writes:

“We should be bringing something of important value to our audience, they should not leave empty handed. There should be something useful and somewhat life-altering that we give them.”

6. Be memorable when pitching ideas

Booming thunder and lightning, smoke filling the auditorium, total darkness, booming bass. No, this wasn’t the start of a Metallica gig – it was the opening of the United Nation Development Agency and SAWA’s talk, ‘We had an asteroid, what’s your excuse?’.

The title was intriguing from the off. What then followed was an appearance of a 9ft velociraptor – Frankie the Dino – to talk about climate change. It was an unexpected and brilliantly creative way to engage in this hot (sorry!) topic.

Another unforgettable moment was the build-up to Megan Thee Stallion’s appearance – the audience were hyped up even before she stepped a stilettoed foot on the stage by playing her hits loud enough to boom boom, shake shake the room.

Co-conspirators Pepsi marketer Todd Kaplan and Luis Miguel Messianu, Alma DDB chairman, were also memorable for their ‘tango’ off-stage together to demonstrate the joy of a creative partnership done right!

Showtime tip: Being memorable starts before you speak – how are you going to set the tone in the room? I’ve been in meeting rooms with no natural light, peeling paint, ivy growing over the windows and broken furniture. It makes for a pretty terrible start.

Try and make your setting communicate to your audience: “You matter.”

Summing up

Cannes Lions 2022 was definitely a career high for me, but what I’ll never forget is feasting my eyes on all of the above-named speakers – plus Munroe Bergdorf, June Sarpong, Gary Vaynerchuk and a whole host of others – as they walked out into a packed theatre of complete strangers… and owned the room.

And this brings me back to the question at the start. What Patrick Stewart and Megan Thee Stallion (plus Paris Hilton and the rest of them) had in common on that stage was a perfect blend of:

1. Knowing their subject inside out.
2. Giving the audience a good dose of what they wanted (selfies, Star Trek and stories, and swagger).
3. And being themselves.

Quick note: if your fear of public speaking is debilitating and you feel that you need more support (it can tip into social anxiety and phobia territory) then there is help. James Mallinson, Founder of Fix My Mind hypnotherapy has worked with thousands of people over the past decade on this exact topic, including CEO’s, musicians and actors. He says:

“Everyone talks to themselves in their own head, all the time, and how people talk to themselves can and will have a profound effect on any performance.

Studies with athletes show those that talk negatively e.g. ‘I’m going to be rubbish’ can make that person very vulnerable and reduce performance. However, those who talk to themselves kindly, in the first person, with a simple, goal-orientated statement, such as ‘I’m in control and know what I’m talking about’, are far more likely to make themselves feel more resilient and  have a better outcome.

And making that newer voice sound confident, warm, and encouraging can shift your inner coach into action. Practicing this can have a significant impact on how you present and are perceived in meetings.”

Which brings us back to where we started – namely that your big idea will never get anywhere unless you’re able to present it. To sell it. To make others believe in your vision. I’ll leave the last word to Nancy Duarte, who sums up the importance of getting your idea ‘out there’:

“Deep inside of you,” she said, “every single one of you has the most powerful device known to man. And that’s an idea. So, a single idea, from the human mind, it could start a groundswell, it could be a flash point for a movement, and it can actually rewrite our future.

But an idea is powerless if it stays inside of you. If you never pull that idea out for others to contend with, it will die with you.”

Claire Bridges is Founder of creative training consultancy Now Go Create. As a Creative Director and educator, Claire is passionate about how creativity and innovation can mean the difference between a business thriving or stagnating. Claire hosted the Debussy Stage at Cannes Lions 2022. Find out more about how pitching ideas, storytelling and content development by checking out our How To Be A Pitch Ninja courses.

Copyright © ClaireBridges2022

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I’m writing this blog as last week I read about running virtual pitches (and some of my friends in agency-land are taking part in). I thought, what fresh hell is this? As if the pitch scenario is not tough enough under normal circumstances, this is a whole other level. It’s so impersonal and I imagine requires a whole new playbook that probably hasn’t been written yet.

I’ve been researching for a new online course I’m writing and stumbled across this great website from the IPA/ISBA from a few years ago now. It’s called the Good Pitch, and is a dedicated resource to the pitching process. It’s not clear when it was last updated, but it strikes me in these tough times that the advice there is as good today as any other time.

One of the alternative ways to pitch they suggest is the No Pitch, Pitch. In a nutshell this is a good option if the client believes that their incumbent agency has just ‘gone off the boil’ with their ideas and working practices but there isn’t a fundamental breakdown in the relationship. If there was an all-out pitch the incumbent would definitely be the front runner. They say:

“In a No Pitch Pitch only the incumbent agency is asked to re-pitch for the business, as if it was a brand new potential client.”

“Running the pitch this way allows the client to deliver a fresh brief to the incumbent agency as if it were a new agency relationship, and allows the agency to pitch as though the existing client was a brand new prospect. The agency has the chance to fully change the existing team, showcase new skills and ideas and deliver a new strategic direction or creative approach. This option gives you the opportunity to potentially avoid a full competitive tender or pitch dramatically reducing the time, cost and resource required for a full pitch.”

The IPA suggest that the process for a No Pitch, Pitch goes something like this:

Run a chemistry session with your agency as if they were a new company. Issue the brief, decide on the pitch evaluation criteria, assemble your own in-house team of decision-makers. This allows the agency to showcase other client work, their full capabilities and (which you may not know about or use), change the team completely and demonstrate how the agency has developed over time. Offer a chemistry or check-in session pre-pitch just as you would with a new partner.

They also suggest that the Pitch in a Day (PIAD) method can work really well in this situation as it allows the client to actively participate in the strategic and creative development and really see their agency at work. I know that this is increasing in popularity and I think is a great way to see your agency minds in action. This route sees the client set a typical scenario for the agency – whether it’s a crisis to respond to or a news piggy-backing scenario – and asks the agency to respond in real-time. PIAD can also be run for competitive pitches and can condense the timeframe considerably from the usual pitching scenario.

I don’t know about you but I have been in the ‘gone off the boil’ scenario many times in my previous agency life and am sure I would have appreciated being able to showcase our thinking, and embrace the second chance if it was real (sometimes you know you’re a goner, deservedly or not). I think it’s pretty low risk as if the agency doesn’t rise to the challenge then the client can take any learnings and develop a full pitch list anyway. This way it saves time and resources all round and if the client-agency relationship is already good, then this will no doubt improve it.

The drawn-out, stressful process of pitching on top of the day-to-day client work can sour the relationship as its happening and I think impact the result. None of this takes away from the fact that sometimes of course we can get complacent and need to up our game, but the no pitch, pitch seems a good first-line, creative approach to pitching if you want to save everyone a lot of additional work and stress at this already difficult time. Of course there’s still the virtual element to grapple with but it’s got to be worth a try!

We have loads more ideas that can help with strategy and pitching, as well as a multitude of courses to suit creatives at any level. Please drop us a line at claire@nowgocreate.co.uk for details of our creativity training.

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The inimitable Wendy Clark is Chief Executive Officer DDB North America – if you’re not familiar with the advertising agency’s name you’ll no doubt know their work for brands including IKEA, McDonald’s, Skittles and John Lewis amongst many others. An accomplished public speaker herself, Wendy has seen hundreds of presentations over the course of her stellar career including 12 years working in marketing client-side at Coca-Cola and AT&T.

I was lucky enough to meet Wendy at The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2016 and have since become a serious fangirl! I interviewed Wendy for my book about her vast experience as someone of the receiving end of pitches and so here are her 11 tips on how to persuade, influence and sell your ideas to your audience:

1. If you’re doing more ‘sell’ than ‘great work,’ take note. Great work, the right work and solution, should not require Herculean effort to sell-in.
2. Know the business case. Current performance, desired performance, business challenge and opportunity are all your responsibility to understand. After all, if you don’t know the business, how can you possibly offer creative solutions that will work to change it?
3. Plan well, timing can be everything. Do everything in your power to schedule meetings outside of distracting or challenging timeframes – e.g. quarterly earnings reports.
4. Prepare a tight, cogent rationale. Make sure it’s really good. Again, if you cannot express in a compelling, articulate manner why your idea and work are right, why would your audience be able to?
5. Be realistic. Often our brilliant ideas simply challenge some core fundamental to what’s possible either through timing, budget, legalities, etc. It’s always worth sharing all on-strategy ideas, but don’t be crestfallen if a magical idea, which presses against a fundamental, doesn’t get sold in.
6. Be passionate.

“Some of the most powerful presenters I’ve seen have literally levitated me out of my chair with their passion. To sell an idea you need to show your belief in it,” says Wendy.

7. Consider your non-verbals, everything communicates. This includes things like looking at your phone during the presentation, other open windows on your computer as you present and appropriate attire for their meeting environment.

8. If you use them, make great visuals and support materials.

“The best creative presenters I’ve seen require no visuals and simply use the imagery in your mind,” says Wendy.

9. Rehearse. Rehearse. While they make it look effortless, the best presenters in the world rehearse aggressively. Nothing in your presentation should surprise you. Make it a point to never say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that slide was next.’

10. Have empathy. Wendy believes the ability to empathise is perhaps the most underleveraged skill in helping to sell great work. Letting your audience know your understanding of their situation, their needs, their challenge and your matched excitement/concern/optimism, etc., for their situation is one of the most powerful connections you can make. Check out our free ready-to-use empathy map template.

11. Be resilient. “In our business, you have to believe that a ‘no’ is just a ‘yes’ waiting to happen. If I don’t succeed this time, what can I do differently or better to convince you this is the right path? You have to be relentless in this belief”. Wendy believes that to be resilient you also need to stand up to your inner critic – the voice in your head that makes you question yourself – often called ‘imposter syndrome’. Her advice: “you have to shut that bitch up! Have confidence that you’ve prepared, in every sense, for success in this moment”

• Our presentation skills training covers everything from the content preparation to the pitch. Find out more about our approach with interviews with some of our team – Storytelling Coach Max Dickins and James Mallinson, Mindset coach. Contact lucy@nowgocreate.co.uk for more information.

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For some people a fear of public speaking is up there with death. It can range from sweaty palms to paralysing nerves. But if you can’t sell your ideas then they will never see the light of day. Our mindset coach James Mallinson runs his ‘meet your inner coach session’ as part of our presentation and pitch skills training as if you allow your inner gremlins to rule the roost you’ll never be at your best.

Recently Women’s Health writer Nikki Osman worked with James to find out if he can turn her into a TED-talker ready for a big public speaking event. Here are some of the highlights:

“We spend the first 10 minutes of the session talking about my beliefs, then we begin to change them. We start with a technique called havening – a psychosensory therapy in which you stroke your own arms – before moving on to some traditional hypnosis and visualisations. In total, we do nine different techniques.

The two hour-long sessions left me feeling buoyed. And when the day of the event arrived, I felt nervous, but no unreasonably so. I felt convinced that the hypnosis had worked. But I also left Mallinson’s office armed with coping strategies to help me in the moment.

I’m due to host five talks, and every one I make it through provides my unconscious mind with further proof that my public speaking career didn’t peak as a pre-teen.

The experience has taught me that the mind is a powerful thing – believe something will work you, and it just might.”

You can read the full article here and find out more how James works with teams in a more corporate setting with pitch skills training by contacting Lucy@nowgocreate.co.uk

• We also offer creative coaching with Matthew Burgess and creativity training in London and well beyond! Our next open training session focusses on creativity skills – get in touch for details!

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Following five days of being briefed, mentally-prodded, inspired, mentored and generally filled with advice and wise words from the great and the good of the communications industry, our Masters of Creativity-in-the-making presented their final solutions for the Oreo brand to the Dean of the programme Keith Reinhard, the Mondelez client, the Martin Agency, Alan Shulman, Deloitte and Sarah Watson, Chief Strategy Officer at BBH. In just 10 minutes – a daunting task! A challenge they certainly rose to, producing four excellent presentations that made judging far from easy.

In a nutshell the brief was to make Oreo cookies relevant to an adult European audience who had not grown up with the product or the culture of twist, lick, dunk.

In the week leading up to pitch day, a vast amount of information was absorbed and an impressive amount of work was done by the multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural teams, who had only just met at the client briefing. Two, hour-long master classes provide much food for thought each day, that was clearly applied to the final presentations in varying degrees, from insights to process and even team names! So without further ado, in order of pitches, here is a roundup:

The Shatterers – Fills Like Home

This slick, well-rehearsed presentation was timed to perfection and exemplified solid teamwork. They had clearly spent time getting to know each other, the brief and their presentation. However this was not always a smooth journey as there were differences of opinion, as well as language and cultural barriers that they overcame through lively discussion. By the time they were presenting their thinking it came across that they were all onboard. The Shatterers made good use of the mentors on hand, using them as sounding boards and fresh pairs of eyes. All this helped them have a clear, focused argument and to deliver it with chemistry and insight – which they had gathered through consumer research (on the Croisette). They were the only team to have actively sought their target audience for face-to-face interviews. Well, when in Cannes…

Their idea – ‘Fills Like Home’ was clear, interesting and memorable but the jury felt perhaps would have benefited from more worked-up, tangible delivery mechanics and thought-through cost implications. The Shatterers were the only group that attempted to ‘tighten-up’ the broad target audience, arriving on the interesting territory of the Erasmus exchange student programmes. However this is a relatively small group of 1 million students and their families, which did not feel big enough or scalable to the judges.

The idea was reliant on the individual ‘Fills Like Home’ packages to be ‘Wonderfilled’ by the families, who may not understand the cheeky, playful, fun nature of Oreos and the judges queried whether the Oreo message might be lost in wide range of contents in the box.

Cookie Monsters – If you do this, we’ll give you a Cookie

The winning team! The Cookie Monsters told a simple story that captured the playful, cheeky essence of the brand beautifully, but with a European sense of humor. Their insight was based on the universal truth that we all bribe our children with treats and that desire for simple sweet rewards does not diminish with age. Expressed with a cheeky, irreverent sense of humor, the judges felt that this territory was ownable for Oreos. With this universal truth, Cookie Monsters could keep the audience broad but the executions tactical, topical, scalable and playful. They hit the jackpot with a big idea that has scale but does not play to the lowest common denominator. The idea was bigger than its European brief.

The team appeared well-rehearsed, comfortable and unified behind the idea. They managed to bring the ideas to life with the same tone that the idea promised. The story was clear and not only reflected back the brief but also learnings from the week’s master classes.

However, their journey was not an easy one. There were strong personalities with equally strong ideas that needed to find their own unique place within the group. However they always met as a team and worked tirelessly together. They also had a number of differing routes that they were exploring and finding it hard to agree on. But they stuck with it, called in the mentors and spent time discussing the pros and cons to get to their final winning idea.

Triple-Double-Oreos –Together We are Delicious

This team had the creative idea: ‘Together we are delicious’ – using the insight into the target audience that ‘millennials believe they can make change and make a difference and that in their world, collaboration is the new currency and their best brand is their own.’ The idea of Oreos being able to bring people together is timely, and had great potential and would have benefited from being brought to life more in the pitch. This group had clearly been influenced by what they had seen and heard from the masters and played back ideas and techniques picked up from the master classes. This group took advantage of being on the ground in Cannes to present some hot off the presses data and insights they’d gleaned that week from around the festival.

Foxcatchers – Take you back (Unlock your Childhood), St.Oreos and Guilty Pleasure for Adults

Foxcatchers had a number of ideas that showed potential, but within the 10 minute timeframe it was difficult to do each of them justice. So they were not able to tell us the story of their journey and what insights had led to each creative concept. There was no single-minded truth and they would have benefited from picking a route and fully exploring, adapting and telling its story.

Every single team did a fantastic job with the brief, the limited timeframe and the fact that they were working in teams with people they didn’t know at the start of the week. In terms of the delegate’s experience all said they were extremely likely to recommend the course to others and most said that attending had a ‘significant impact’ on their ability to do their day-to-day job.

The winning team – the Cookie Monsters – had the unforgettable experience of getting up on stage on the Saturday night to collect their award from Keith Reinhard.

If you’re interested in pitch training contact us to find out about our How To Be A Pitch Ninja and storytelling courses.

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Over 6 years, in order to try and determine what made Hollywood executives say yes or no to a movie pitch, she set out to study their decision-making process. She wanted to know if quality of the story always at the heart of a successful pitch, or if there was more to it than that.

She found that the person on the receiving end of the pitch – she calls this person ‘the catcher’ – tends to gauge the pitcher’s creativity as well as the proposal itself. Elsbach concluded that a pitcher left an impression on the exec as to whether or not they were able to come up with workable ideas, and that this tended to “quickly and permanently overshadow” the catcher’s feelings about the idea’s worth. In other words, they weren’t just pitching their script, they were pitching themselves, too.

The author was keen to understand why great ideas in every field of business so often fall down when they are presented to senior management, so she took the findings she’d made in Hollywood to ‘the real world’. She attended product design, marketing and venture capital pitch sessions and conducted interviews with the decision makers.

The results were similar to what she’d found in the movies business. According to her report, what she discovered was that “catchers” subconsciously place successful pitchers into one of three distinct categories. They are:

• Show runners – people who are considered to be very smooth and professional.
• Artists – quirky types, who have a dash of the unpolished about them.
• Neophytes – people who came across as inexperienced and perhaps a little naïve.

All three groups were successful pitchers, don’t forget – they all proved a hit with the decision makers. Which is, perhaps, a bit of a surprise. We all know that show runners tend to do very well when pitching, but evidently eccentric artists and enthusiastic newbies have a decent chance, too. And their chances of success rocket, Elsbach found, if they can make the catcher feel as if he/she is participating in the idea’s development, too.

To become a successful pitcher, then, the author concluded that you need to portray yourself as one of the three creative types as explained above, and to ensure that the catcher feels like they are part of the process. This, she says, will make you a “likeable collaborator” and works because the decision-maker is able to feel some of the love for the development of the idea, too.

But what if you’re not one of these three creative types? What if you’re “the pushover”, “the robot”, “the used car salesman” or “the charity case” – all pretty self-explanatory and all the types of people who see their ideas fall with alarming regularity into the “no” pile?

The answer – and it’s the only answer, really – is to work on your pitching, to rethink your style. The good news is that the most successful of all three pitching styles was the show runner, and that’s something you can practise at being better at. You can’t really fake or practise at being more intrinsically arty or being “new”, but you can improve on how you project yourself, how you speak; you can work on your body language and how you engage the audience.

So if you’re wondering why even your best ideas aren’t getting a fair shot, don’t give up. Think about how you can bring the person you’re pitching to ‘the catcher’ along with you and remember that decision-makers tend to say yes to people with charisma and whose ideas they think they can add to and enjoy being part of. You can read the full HBR article here.

We help people improve their pitch skills – see our course here. 

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