Payment-for-pitching is back on the agenda in the PR industry after PR Week reported last week that Confused.com offered to pay agencies for their ideas post pitch.

Mark Pinsent has done a great job of capturing the debate.

[…] the novelty of Confused.com’s action serves to highlight how happy the PR industry still is to give away what should be its most valuable assets: creative and strategic thinking. It really should stop, but when even the biggest, most successful firms haven’t got the bollocks to change things, it won’t.

Loewy Pitch Masterclass

By coincidence I was in the audience of Loewy agencies yesterday afternoon for a Pitch Masterclass at the Wellcome Institute in London.

We heard from a mix of agency and client speakers from inside and outside Loewy, including Branded, EMI Music, Seymourpowell, The Team and Wieden + Kennedy.

Payment-for-pitching

Richard Williams, founder of design agency Williams Murray Hamm said that his agency rarely pitches for work and only under well defined circumstances. When it does pitch, it charges for creative work.

It’s a bold approach. But as a result WMH has developed a phenomenal reputation and is a highly profitable business.

Dick Powell, founder of design and innovation company Seymourpowell said that his agency always charged for pitching.

Pitch porn

At the opposite end of the spectrum Neil Christie, managing director of independent ad agency Wieden & Kennedy shared some of his agency’s pitches for multi-million international accounts.

Like its contemporaries in the ad industry Wieden & Kennedy doesn’t charge for pitches but does have a rigorous selection criteria and process for work that it chases. As a result it has won four out five pieces of work that it has pitched this year.

Update: Wieden & Kennedy’s Neil Christie has blogged about the Pitch Masterclass.