What did the Belgian pitch strike achieve?

Last week, over twenty advertising agencies in Brussels, including big names like JWT, Ogilvy, and Saatchi & Saatchi, joined forces and went on strike.

Kind of.

They didn’t exactly down tools and stop working.

Instead they engaged in a virtual strike where all of them sacrificed their own corporate websites for a week to convey a message about the state of pitching in the industry.

The message was about reducing the number of agencies invited to pitch and getting potential clients cough up a pitch fee to cover costs.

Their efforts are commendable.

Pitches with more than four agencies are massively inefficient, and very costly for the agencies.  The same is true for PR as in advertising.

Coordinating so many agencies for this campaign couldn’t have been easy.

But what did it actually achieve?

A lot of noise was made.

Industry people twittered, trade mags talked and everyone got excited.

A new way of pitching was surely on the horizon…?

Err, no.

The reality will probably be a little different.

What our Belgian colleagues seem to have forgotten is that agencies don’t get to call the shots. 

The clients do. 

And always will. 

Because clients write the cheques.

Regardless how big the agencies are - they are merely suppliers.

And always will be.

 And the only way to keep paying the bills is to win more pitches.

No one is forcing agencies to take part in a pitch process. 

But they need to.

And the clients know that.

An agency can opt out if they choose to focus on pitches where the odds are more favorable.

But participation is the only choice an agency makes when it comes to a pitch process.

And no amount of striking will change that.