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 not let the little guy in for a bite of the big money? It’s practically the standard for reality television. Let’s see:

• Relatively unknown property is introduced to a massive swell of publicity
• Unknown property goes through various experiences and dramatizations to “grow”
• New content is created through this “butterfly” phase
• The viewer gleans the perception of growing alongside said unknown property
• Fanbases are born
• Unknown property goes from the little guy to a slightly larger blip on the radar
• Repeat as needed

The big man on campus has nothing to prove, and without that there will be no squabbles, no spitting, no hair pulling and certainly no pooping on the carpet. We are accustomed to immature reactions from reality TV, and as serious as AMC is as a network, I’m just not sure anyone will care about a deck presentation, no matter how many frills and tassels they glue to it.

via AdAge: Why Some Advertising Agencies Aren't Buying "The Pitch"