I watch a lot of reality TV. Hey, it’s a guilty pleasure that most of us willingly admit to. We like to see others embarrass themselves, overshare, over expose, roll over and let the world see their unkempt underbelly. We like it raw. So how well would a serious reality series do in your mind?
AMC, the network with highly lauded shows like Mad Men, is shopping big boy agencies such as DDB, Draft FCB, Mother, Leo Burnett, Mullen, and BBDO to participate in its brainchild neo-reality-documentary-expose called “The Pitch.”
Ad people have a lot of secrets to their genius brainpower. One of those is the “secret sauce” that goes into how you pitch to a new client. You know, bunnies jumping out of your PowerPoint slides or having your creatives assemble into a pyramid of power. These tricks of the trade are a signature to gaining new clients and essentially serve as the lifeblood of an agency. So why would any of the bigs want to share their golden fleece of insight and information?
With very few of the larger agencies actually “considering” joining the production, even with client prospects like Kodak and Yahoo, it’s questionable why the show didn’t consider going after smaller shops who had more to gain via the publicity and potential of gaining these blue chip clients.
On another note, will viewers really be that interested in how agencies ideate and strategize? The inherent drama necessary to substantiate a reality show is not something that always comes with the creative process, which I can see as being a major factor in the turn off for bigger agencies who have a brand of their own to uphold in the ad community.
Why...
