Realism

I was chatting to someone this morning, and they were talking about how they won a major head to head strategy pitch based on one thing: proof. Specifically the client liked the fact that their strategies were well grounded and their ideas were achievable. They were up against another agency, a boutique strategy agency, and the client apparently asked agency 2 to actually go and cost their idea. They came back with tail between their legs saying they couldn't actually achieve half of it on budget. Pitch over.

This reminded me of a project I know of where the comms strategy agency came up with the idea of having helicopters drop people into the CBD. This was approved as a strategy by the client and then given to the implementation agency to organise. Except that you can't get helicopters to fly over George St. Full Stop.

So, I think there is a lot to be said for checking that ideas are well grounded, measurable and achievable. Next time someone says to me they are going to get their clients logo on the Harbour Bridge (and this actually happened this year and was presented to the client), I will be pushing back on them to take the essence of the idea and try and achieve it another more realistic way.

It's definitely not to say we should push ourselves and try and overcome barriers and try stuff that's never been tried before, but if an idea is strategically sound there should be different ways of achieving it that don't rely 100% on projecting a logo onto the moon.