In line with the theme for Campaign Middle East’s latest edition, this month’s industry forum involves one of the most spoken-about topics in the media, marketing, advertising and communications industry: pitching. While not about the topic itself, the question for this month inspects if the pitching process really reflects the client-agency relationships afterwards.
We posed the following question to industry experts: Is the current pitching process within the Middle East brand and marketing landscape a fair reflection of the client-agency working relationship that follows?
And here’s what they all had to say. (Hint. Most of them lean towards one way over the other).
Joanna Agnew
Managing Director, Tales & Heads
NO
In many cases, the pitch process is heavily driven by procurement as opposed to the actual client, with cost outweighing value and long-term impact. Communications isn’t always easy to quantify on a spreadsheet, and when the process – led by someone who isn’t a comms professional – focuses too much on price comparison, it can be harder to properly assess the thinking, creativity and partnership an agency will actually bring. That dynamic doesn’t always set the right tone for what’s meant to be a collaborative relationship. That said, pitches are an important part of how clients assess capability and chemistry. The most successful partnerships come from processes that feel more like a dialogue than a transaction – with clear objectives, open conversations around budget and scope, and mutual respect on both sides from the outset.
Joann Correia
Account Director, MCH Global
NO
The pitch process, at its best, can be a genuine preview of a great working relationship. To be fair, there are clients in this market who do it beautifully; well written briefs, engaging openly and treating the process as a two-way conversation. Those partnerships tend to flourish. However, too often the process is marked by multiple rounds of unpaid creative iterations, lack of clarity on the ‘definition of success’, unstructured feedback, and a dynamic that feels more transactional than collaborative.
A pitch should be the opening chapter of a co-creation story, built on transparency, clear goals, and open dialogue. When it is, everyone wins.
Curtis Schmidt
CEO, RAPP MENA
NO
To sum it up, there are transparency issues before and after the pitch. Often, what I’ve witnessed is the brand team reviewing the technical proposal has a significant disconnect from the procurement team reviewing commercials. That’s issue one. Issue two: The strongest technical proposal is often not the cheapest, and if it is, components of the statement of work could be negotiated out or deprioritised behind closed doors. Once awarded, the brand is often left frustrated – what they’ve ‘bought’ will not deliver the objectives due to commercial constraint or other reasons. This will immediately put a strain on the newly established working relationship. In a nutshell, brands want more for less and then, with less, expect more – often at the expense of the people trying to build a lasting partnership.
Jad Rabahi
Managing Director, IMPACT BBDO
NO
This isn’t always the case, but it is a pattern prevalent enough to warrant an honest conversation. Pitching in the region has gradually shifted toward a procurement-driven model, one that prioritises cost efficiency over strategic fit. The challenge isn’t procurement’s involvement per se, but the internal misalignment it creates. Marketing teams often step back during commercial negotiations, only to re-engage post-appointment with ambitions that far exceed what procurement agreed to. The agency is caught in the middle, contracted for a
fraction of the original brief yet expected to deliver the whole. That’s not a foundation for a fair or productive partnership.
Mohamed El-Daly
Managing Partner, Digital Champions
MAYBE
But in many cases, no. Pitching often starts with either open briefs that lack a clear scope or budget, or defined templates for the agencies to fill that treat strategic work like a commodity bought by the kilo. Procurement teams are often negotiating scopes without fully understanding their technical aspects, pushing discounts on strategy, content, or community management without visibility into the expertise required. The best relationships happen when business owners stay involved in both technical and commercial discussions, evaluating fit, trust, and partnership potential rather than who can absorb the most unpaid work or offer the lowest number. A healthier model: pay for pitch work, limit lists to three agencies, and assess strategic thinking over speculative decks.
Khaldoun Zaghir
General Manager, 5th Element
YES
But with important caveats. The pitching process, when run well, does reflect the reality of client-agency relationships: clients need accountability, strategic fit and value for investment, and a competitive pitch tests all three. In the Middle East, specifically, the process has matured considerably, with more sophisticated briefs and structured evaluation frameworks becoming common. That said, ‘fair’ doesn’t mean ‘perfect’. Agencies that engage transparently, ask the right questions early, and push back on unreasonable conditions tend to find the process a genuine preview of how the client operates.
Claire Romano
CEO and Co-founder, Melt Media
NO
Too often, the pitching process misses some of the fundamentals you need for a strong working relationship. From a performance perspective, that starts with clarity – on clear objectives, KPIs and budget. Without that, it’s difficult to build meaningful strategy or forecast outcomes with confidence.
We still see briefs with gaps, or a reluctance to share budget in the name of ‘not limiting’ the agency, when in reality, it limits effectiveness. Strong performance marketing is about working within clear parameters to deliver measurable results.
Procurement-led processes can also remove direct access to key stakeholders, which makes it harder to align early and set the right expectations. When transparency, access and accountability aren’t there from the start, the pitch stops reflecting the partnership that follows.
Mazen Jawad
CEO, Horizon Holdings
NO
While there are occasional instances where the dynamics established during a pitch carry through into the working partnership, these are more the exception than the rule. More often, the pitch process is intense, compressed, and demanding, characterised by high pressure, speculative work, and elevated expectations on both sides. This creates a somewhat artificial environment that doesn’t mirror the day-to-day reality of collaboration once the partnership is formalised.
Furthermore, when key client stakeholders change, agencies may find themselves re-navigating expectations and, in some cases, “re-pitching”.
Ultimately, while the pitch is intended to simulate a future partnership, it more accurately represents a stress test than a true preview of the collaborative reality that follows.
Ghida Ismail
Business Director, Fusion5
NO
We are seeing encouraging signs of change, yet the pitch process still largely tests one factor while the relationship demands another. The conversation remains largely led by procurement departments and hence focuses more on rate cards than on a defined business problem. This lens is commercial as opposed to category-specific, which can skew decisions away from what drives growth, and the instinct becomes “go lowest to win”. However, what is shifting is that certain categories have begun to look to technology, strategy and KPIs to steer the brief, and it is these clients recognising that cost savings at the start and business outcomes at the end are a contradiction worth solving.
Kinloch Magowan
Managing Partner, Assembly MENA
NO
At the start of any relationship, it’s important to set clear expectations around scope and compensation. That said, it’s a fact of life that situations and circumstances change. The pitching process doesn’t always reflect the reality of a long-term working relationship – some clients adapt fairly as things evolve, others less so, which can impact agencies.
The key is to anticipate this by building flexibility into both scope and commercial agreements from the outset.
