Carlos Nadal, Managing Director, HAVAS Creative UAEThe pitch process is broken. There, I said it. I started as a client lead: managing accounts, holding the relationship and living with the consequences of how a pitch was run. Then, I moved into managing growth, pitching and chasing new business, learning how the system works from the inside. Now, I run an agency. Three different seats at the same table. And the view from all three vantage points show the same thing: the way we run pitches in this region is not serving anyone as well as it should.
What was built to find the right partner has slowly become something else: a cost exercise with a pitch attached.
Here is what actually happens when a pitch is won on a model that was never quite right: The agency does not walk away. Instead, it delivers, but by absorbing the gap, investing more than was priced, compressing margins and putting senior people on work not budgeted at that level because the commitment matters more than the number.
The client eventually feels it, as well, in a team stretched too thin and struggling to keep to standards that should have been easier to maintain. The problem is not the agency’s willingness. The problem is a process that starts at the wrong point.
And, yet, it keeps happening.
Here is the real issue: procurement has become the dominant force in most pitch processes and in principle. That, in itself, is not wrong. Structure, discipline and accountability are all necessary in a region where marketing spend continues to grow.
And I want to be clear: I have worked with procurement leads who genuinely get it, who treat procurement as partner selection and invest in relationships that last. But when the mandate from leadership reframes new business as a cost-cutting exercise, procurement leads find that their hands are tied, too. The process reflects the brief it is given. And if that brief is about driving cost down, that is exactly what it will produce.
Behind every proposal is not just a number; it is a model, how a team is built, how work moves, how thinking becomes output and how quality holds over time. A scope that looks clean in a spreadsheet falls apart fast when it meets this market – always-on, high volume and rising expectations.
“Treating agencies transactionally – as if brands are buying fixed deliverables – is not realistic.”
So what needs to change?
First, marketing and procurement need to align before the pitch starts – not only on category and budget but also on the real problem and the type of partner that can solve it. Because, too often, the process involves more agencies than anyone can genuinely evaluate, timelines that make meaningful work impossible and, if we are being honest, decisions that were half-made before the first brief was sent. What we need in the process is: fewer agencies, deeper conversations and clearer intent.
Second, agencies need to simplify. For years, this industry has leaned on complexity, layers of roles, structures that make sense internally but confuse everyone outside. Procurement pushing back on that is fair. The agencies that deserve to win show up clearly, with fewer layers, senior people doing the work and teams built around what the client needs rather than what the organisational chart allows.
Third – and this is where I will be straight – the brief needs to be better. A brief is not a fishing trip. A proper brief shares the real challenge, the actual constraints and the budget. Agencies cannot build anything meaningful without knowing the financial reality. And here is what nobody says out loud: a transparent brief also lets agencies decide if this is the right client for them. The default is to say yes to everything. I’ve done it, and most people still do because we rarely have enough information to make a smarter call. Give agencies the full picture and you get a shortlist that actually wants to be there.
Transparency has to go both ways. If we are asking agencies to open up their models, clients need to come in with the same honesty about budget, volume and what success actually looks like. When that happens, the difference is clear. The relationship starts with shared understanding rather than a gap to manage. The team that pitched is the team that shows up. And the investment goes into the work, not into covering the difference between what was priced and what delivery costs.
The future of pitching in this region is not about taking procurement out of the room; it is about giving procurement the mandate to do what the best ones already do. This means not only controlling cost, but also shaping the partnership – from comparison to conviction, and from process to outcome.
Get that right and pitching becomes what it was always meant to be: not an endurance test, but the start of something real. The measure of a pitch is not what it wins on day one; it is what it holds over time.
I have seen what that looks like when it works. And I have seen – from several different seats at the table – what it costs when it doesn’t.
By Carlos Nadal, Managing Director, HAVAS Creative UAE
