A number of people have said it would be a good idea to start gathering and posting the truly memorable pitch stories. Brilliant insights, bizarre mistakes, bravura performances, brazen bullshit, bright ideas, bloody foolishness and any other that come to mind.

Mine, surprise, surprise, will be drawn from experience at Saatchi but every sector of business, politics, law,  media, sport, entertainment, you name it, has great stories to be told.

What are your favourites? Let’s have them please, in about  one to two hundred words.  To send them you can register and comment, or email me whichever is easiest. They will be posted under the Pitches and Troughs category.

A distinguished panel, yet to be announced, will rank contributions by story interest and intrigue, rather than pitch success, giving us The 100 Best Pitch Stories-EVER!

To give you a taster of stories over next few days, Camelot playing to the Government’s fear of failure, London 2012 making the emotional connection and, as we saw last week, Labour blowing it in Crewe with the “toff” stunt.

Let the storytelling begin……………………

As expected the Conservatives won, things are not going too well for the beleaguered Gordon Brown, but the margin of victory was surprising.  Much of this was down to the success of the pitch at the local level.  Some lessons can be drawn.

The importance of leadership, in this case the candidates. Tory, Edward Timpson, bright, positive,optimistic contrasting with the reluctant Tamsin Dunwoody.  Her selection a misguided attempt to gain the sympathy vote, since her mother had been a huge presence in the constituency, Tamsin suffered by comparison.   Her body language signalled that she would really rather be somewhere else.

The value of a positive strategy, in tone and content. The Tory campaign hitting the different target audiences, their loyalists, Labour and LibDems  with different but simple, positive messages.  Contrast this with Labours ”inept, negative and poisonous”campaign ( Labour MPs’ own Compass group).

Finally. the energy factor.  In any pitch, business or political, the emotional impact of unbridled energy and exuberance can carry the day. The Tories have this, Labour don’t. 

My last post, the Post Match Interview, set the scene for reviewing the performances of Ferguson and Grant after last night’s final in Moscow. In the event, during four hours of ITV coverage, the state of the actual pitch got more airtime than either manager.

The pulsating game overcame the bland cliche-ridden commentary and the experts’ platitudes.The lottery shoot-out robbed Chelsea, in my inexpert opinion, of  a deserved victory. It also denied Avram Grant some well deserved  recognition.

His has been a tough path ( setting aside any fortune being paid) with the media and fans resentful that a nobody from Israel, not a mighty footballing nation, should be allowed to manage alongside  the likes of Fergie, Wenger and our ‘Arry.

To put him in his place, much of the media say the team is effectively being run by the senior players, luminaries like Lampard and Terry. The alternative view is that his utterances are those of PR experts, with Matthew Freud’s name in the frame.

I don’t agree. Someone gave Chelsea one hell of a half-time talk and it wasn’t Freud.

Grant is a good example of someone who understands and plays to his strengths, not protesting too much. His quiet confidence as a communicator must, surely, be driving the team’s performance.

For me, one of the intriguing aspects of television coverage of football is the post-match interview. Obligatory, to ensure exposure of sponsor identities, they give us an opportunity to witness the art, or not, of pitching under pressure particularly by the losing managers.

They have at least three tough audiences. First, there is the owner, as often as not obscenely wealthy and wildly capricious, who must be persuaded to keep on employing them. Sven, seemingly despite Man City’s good performance, did not come across in a manner that reflects the self-image of a former Prime Minister of Thailand!

Secondly, the players who, I assume, watch highlights like the rest of us. The way the manager defends even the most indefensible, must be a critical first step towards rebuilding confidence. Blaming the ref for everything is the unsurprising solution.

Finally the supporters, “keep forking out for the high price tickets, we will be worth it next time”.

It may be pitchcoach bias on my part, but it seems to me the top eight or so Premiership managers, win or lose, give stronger, more charismatic interviews than the rest. Does this, in part at any rate explain their success?

The “three tenors” were Ferguson, Wenger and the “special one”, Mourinho. With Jose’s departure, it seemed at first that the self-styled “ordinary one”, Grant, would be blown away in the interview stakes. He has found his own quietly impressive voice. Let’s see who performs best in Moscow, winner or loser.

We all know the old adage ” a picture is worth a thousand words” and yet when it comes to preparing presentations it’s too often a case of words, words, words with the occasional visual as an afterthought. They  can either take the form of endless points crowded on one chart or an endless number of uninspiring charts with a few ‘bullet’ points.

Both approaches can be pretty soulless. They are sometimes the result of laziness where a narrative document has been condensed into powerpoint format. Or, they act as a security blanket for the nervous or unprepared presenter. Some may read the charts word for word, (with the audience almost certainly reading ahead). Others, even tougher to follow,  go off chart to be ‘interesting’  and lose the audience altogether.

A handful of imaginative visuals, with a few words, can turn dullsville into communication.

Two arresting front covers this week sparked off this observation. The Spectator has a cartoon-style illustration of Boris Johnson careering along on his bike, with passenger  David Cameron hanging on for dear life. The words, scarcely needed, “full speed ahead to number 10″. But who will get there first?

The other is a classic Private Eye. A picture of Cherie Blair, flanked by Richard and Judy, all three with the trademark Cherie grin and the speech bubble “I stabbed Gordon in the book”. Brilliant.

Most pitches call for a response to a brief in the form of a written proposal, followed by a presententation to the key decision takers. Typically, the proposal is developed by the appropriate experts and specialists  working night and day to deliver a great result.

So far so good. The common error, however,  when it comes to deciding who will present  in the final  shoot out, is to assume these same people should, and/or deserve  to present . Not so.

What matters is not the input of these people but what the audience ‘takes out’, what is their emotional response, on the day, to the presenters as individuals and as a team.  The casting decision must be lead by   understanding of the audience dynamics and the  need to be ruthless in casting the team that will perform best on the day.

Some ‘rules’.  Don’t outnumber the client by more than one;  your leader must be seen to lead; the team  should be  a balance of interesting, contrasting individuals rather than  a collection of experts.  You are seeking the reaction that ‘ we would enjoy, and be stimulated, working with these people and they clearly get on with each other’.

 The London 2012 Bid team cast for impact when they included  thirty youngsters in place of VIPs;   ex-prison officer Ray Lewis is interesting  casting by Boris that suggests he will  not be afraid to surround himself with personalities.  Could Obama, if he wins, select Clinton as running mate? That would be interesting casting.

The London pitch is resolved.  Boris won and Ken lost, the situation that anyone who pitches will find themselves in more often than not. After all, if any company won , consistently over time, the majority of competitive pitches they would become a virtual monopoly.

So, how should we make the best out of losing?

Immediately, in the aftermath, sulk, cry, moan ‘not fair ref’, drink,  rationalise ‘ they were not our kind of people’, whatever, then get over it ,fast. Next get positive.

Review as a team, not a ‘mea culpa’ what we did wrong session but one of  positive learning, what we will do better next time. Get better insight to the decision takers, manage time more effectively, answer the brief,  review casting and chemistry, improve the theatre and so on. Every pitch is unique so you can always learn.

Then follow up with the rejecting client. Usually they cannot give you useful criticism, partly because they don’t want to offend , partly because they don’t want to say that your faces didn’t fit. Your real purpose should be one of making certain that you are the first company called on for the next oppportunity . Sometimes this can be sooner than expected if the winner screws up!

Ken, I feel is giving an object lesson in turning defeat to advantage . Handling interviews with grace, a good loser, he is aready paving the way to his next career, wooing us as readers of the book and as viewers of his inevitable television apperarances.

Years ago, Iain  Johnstone, writer, broadcaster, filmmaker, was being attacked in a radio interview over his latest film, subject of bad reviews. Rather than get defensive, Iain gave a classic reponse on the lines of ” in Chinese the word for crisis and opportunity are  one and the same”

Most pitches are, by definition, competitive and most will call for a response to a brief.  To compete we must, and do, rise to the challenge set focussing our efforts on developing substantial proposals- strategic, technical, creative- that we believe will be better than those of our competitors.

They may be ‘better’  but  judging on ‘technical’ merit will be almost impossible unless you come up with an unbelievably better or cheaper solution. Given that your competition will have been chosen because they have similiar track records this is pretty unlikely. In practice, the people on the receiving end will attempt to evaluate on  rational grounds  but will usually end up with two or three  candidates  where their  judgment, however later justified, is based on style.

Despite knowing this, and we do, learning from our first nervous interview, we still spend disproportionate amount of  the available time, effort and resource, on the substance of our pitch, often at the expense of style. Typically grinding out a, hopefully improved, solution right up to the last minute, before thinking about what really matters, how the pitch will resonate. how it will be received.

The solution to this pit(ch)fall is simple. Recognise it.

Recent and current examples include Paris, whose 2012 bid was substantially the best but ‘le style’ , arrogant and lacking empathy, lost it for them.  Gordon Brown, undeniably a man of substance but weakened by his style.  Ken and Boris,  both with individual flair but one the fresher and hungrier. and boiling up in USA,  Obama the one with style but losing it and Clinton, the one with substance, but finishing with style.