Pitching: A barrier to good practice in consulting in public relations?

It is a source of constant surprise to see how established practices in public relations may hold back practice development. 

Pitching is a good example. A study published last year by Public Relations and Communication Association (PRCA), Pitch Forward, set out the challenges and the opportunities in the public relations pitching process. 

An ambitious study, it sets out to find a better process for pitching for the comms industry. Seeing public relations as the comms industry is another barrier to progress for practice, but that is an argument for another time. 

There is no denying the importance of pitching in current commercial practice. The report suggests that the frequency of pitching by agencies “speaks to the ongoing competitive nature of the public relations sector” – 16% of agencies pitch on a weekly basis, 50% monthly and 27% quarterly. 

Agencies surveyed for the report averaged 14.4 pitch opportunities in the year up to the report survey at an average cost of pitch preparation of £7165. Agencies are winning just under a third of the pitches participated in. An interesting statistic to have, but not available in the report, would be a calculation of the value of business won against investments in pitch presentation. 

The pitch process, as will be well known and is confirmed in the PRCA report, is beset with difficulties – unclear and unrealistic expectations from clients, lack of budget transparency and failure to follow up pitch presentations, even when they may be accepted.  

Even worse is the experience of half of agencies who see their ideas appropriated after a pitch in what amounts to a theft of intellectual property. In this, their ideas are used by clients without the awarding of a contract. 

Fundamentally, the pitch process in public relations consultancy is an artificial injection into consultancy practice. It works against good consultancy practice, and it devalues public relations’ contribution. 

Pitching vs consulting 

Pitching itself is a part of social life – the putting forward of ideas with the hope they may be acted on. The idea of the ‘elevator pitch’ is a familiar one – someone with an idea has a few moments, even in an elevator ride, to present it to someone with the means to take the idea on.  

The pitch is a source of entertainment in television programmes such as Dragons’ Den in the UK or Shark Tank in the US, where entrepreneurs can present their business ideas to potential investors who might provide them with the resources to exploit their ideas. Entertaining this process might be potentially rewarding, but it is not a consulting process. 

The consulting process has been thoroughly studied and there are detailed recommendations on how intending consultants might be prepared for the demands of their role. 

Oddly, these details are not part of the discussion of consultancy practice in public relations. The PRCA’s own Consultancy Management Standards make no specific reference to the training of consultants for consultancy roles, and training programmes offered by the Association and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations do not include basic training in the consulting process and consulting skills. University level preparation for public relations may include these topics. 

Consultants in other areas have readily available guidance to practice. In management consulting, a comprehensive handbook has been available for many years from the International Labour Office, Milan Kubr’s Management Consultancy:  A Guide to the Profession.  This is recommended reading for anyone finding themselves in a consultant’s role, or who sees public relations consultancy as a specialisation within management consultancy. 

Consultancy is a professional relationship between client and consultant focused on solutions to client problems. These, in public relations, are often not well-defined, and a task in consultancy is to work with clients towards clearer understanding of problems in search of solutions. 

Presenting problems 

A common complaint in public relations consultancy practice, ahead of the preparation of pitches, is that clients fail to give clear briefs. According to a PR Week survey cited in the PRCA’s Pitch Forward Report, 17.4% of respondents rated these briefs as poor or very poor, particularly in defining the problems the pitches should address. 

This is to be expected in consultancy practice. Clients may bring a partial description of the problems they face to the client – consultant relationship and an early phase in consultancy is collaborating with the client to clarify the problems faced. 

Problems are not necessarily negative. They are situations, circumstances, in need of action, perhaps to take the best approach to capitalising an opportunity. 

It is a principle, in other forms of consulting, that the presenting problem is not the final problem that will be worked on. The presenting problem may be made of symptoms of deeper problems. An example might be of slipping competitive position as a presenting problem, where the underlying causes may be loss of drive on the part of people making up the organisation, itself brought on by poor management. A solution would need to be developed to deal with the underlying causes of the problem. 

Phases in the consulting process include: 

• Entry: How does the relationship between consultant and client begin? On the client’s or the consultant’s initiative? Where the client approaches the consultant, the consultant has the advantage that the client has opened the relationship in the hope that the consultant can help with whatever problem the client faces. 

• Contract: In this phase consultants and clients work through agreeing to work together, clarifying problems, potential solutions, commitments to the work involved and details of work to be done. 

• A work phase in which the work agreed upon is conducted – by the client with consultant oversight, or – as is often the case in public relations -- by the consultant with client oversight. 

• An exit phase, where work has been completed, conclusions drawn, results assessed, and the consultant leaves the relationship. 

In public relations practice, the process of pitching may open a relationship with the client. Clients approach pitches with an idea of the problem they face and look for specific services to be provided against their assessment of the problem. In the pitch, clients get a sense of whether they can work with the consultants they see, in a search for an elusive ‘chemistry’ which should really be developed in a relationship established in other ways. 

In some cases, a relationship with the client may not be possible at this stage if procurement departments or groups participate in making decisions on which pitches might be accepted. 

Establishing relationships 

Another difficulty for practice in the pitch process is that it pushes the practice towards service provision rather than true consultancy and the larger contribution it can make to business and organisational success. 

A 2024 German study of the evolution of strategic communication consultancy by Professor Ansgar Zerfass and associates at the University of Leipzig found moves in practice towards greater emphasis on communication consulting rather than service delivery.  The study also found increasing emphasis on the building of relationships as preliminary to the delivery of higher quality advice and service. 

It is clear, from earlier studies of the consulting process, that higher value services deal with, and help clients learn how to manage, more complex and strategic questions. 

The PRCA’s report makes a number of recommendations towards improving the pitch process. Clients would help make the process more satisfactory for themselves and agencies by clarifying budgets, to allow the generation of ideas that are financially viable. Objectives should be SMART and stated clearly. Key decision-makers whose involvement will be important to the achievement of results should be on-side before the pitch is made. Procurement processes should be made more efficient to save time and resources on both sides of the client-agency relationship.  

Added to these recommendations could be a drive towards better understanding of the consultancy process and encouragement of the development of relationships from which consultancy assignments will emerge. 

It is telling that a small percentage of agencies in the PRCA study pitch less than annually, yet – presumably – sustain their businesses without pitching frequently. A more productive but more time-consuming approach to building business might be to work on establishing relationships from which business opportunities will emerge. This would take public relations consultancy closer to established consultancy practice. 

Jon White is an independent consultant who specialises in management and organisation development, public relations, communications management and public affairs. Accredited by the CIPR, he is also a visiting professor at the University of Reading (Henley Business School) and honorary professor of journalism at Cardiff University.