The Mediaweek Academy held its sixth session at Nova’s office in Pyrmont on Wednesday, July 26.
Attendees returned to the session focused on pitching to win, led by facilitator Greg ‘Sparrow’ Graham, Mediaweek’s contributing editor and MFA Hall of Famer.
Accompanying Sparrow on the panel was Legend Graham Webster from Enth Degree and Superstar Half Dome co-founder Joe Frazer.
See also: Mediaweek Academy Superstar Joe Frazer on why embracing your ‘weird’ is important in winning a pitch
See also: Mediaweek Academy Legend Graham Webster reveals the key on pitching to win
The session focussed on pitching to win with both Legend and Superstar, giving effective tips on how to maximise a good pitch and how to turn nerves into confident excitement.
Graham Webster commented on the fact that during a pitch from a media salesperson, he wants to hear something he doesn’t know.
“I’ve seen a lot of media salespeople over the years and those that come in to tell me about the latest radio survey and just read through a bunch of numbers, I just think, ‘I’ve already read those.’ Read the numbers, analyse them and tell me something I don’t know about your station and give me an insight into your audience,” he said.
“Give me something to make your time valuable and my time worth it. You always remember the good ones.”
Other discussion points during the session included how to bring an energy that excites the room and inspires innovation, how not to regurgitate the brief and knowing what your client/agency wants with the driving message of the whole seminar being:
‘Get straight to the point’
Frazer gave some tips on how not to pitch stating that the worst pitches are the ones that are very content-heavy and not brief-specific.
He also said that one of the keys to a successful pitch is when there is a relatively short turnaround on output, even if it’s a longer pitch process.
Matt Baker, Sparrow and Olivia Scott
Matt Baker, performance director from Atomic 212º said that today’s session brought him new perspectives he hadn’t heard before.
“One thing that stood out to me was less focus on the tools and more focus on individual capabilities and that was really insightful for me when thinking about a pitch. Also, having a project manager across the whole pitch process and making sure that’s a main part of it is another thing I plan to implement into my work,” he said.
“Having an objective voice in the room is something during one of our recent pitches that we didn’t have there at the end. So we went in a bit too confident in the last stage of the pitch and that’s when we realised that we drifted away from the vision in the final stage. So having an objective voice is something I plan to implement also.”
Associate director from Kaimera, Olivia Scott said she enjoyed today’s session and took in a lot of tangible tips to improve the way she works.
“Something that resonated with me from today’s session was the idea of not separating independent and big-name agencies in the pitch process. I learnt today that the mindset should be ‘just let the best agency win’ and I think that’s really important for me coming from an indie agency,” she said.
“I also learnt that sometimes during a pitch, you have to scrap some of the nice talk in order to get more to the point which is hard in a relationship-driven industry.”
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Top image: Graham Webster, Joe Frazer and Greg ‘Sparrow’ Graham
