Over the years I’ve heard lots of reasons for why we were not successful in winning work – yes, I know it’s hard to believe but we don’t actually win everything we go after.
Reasons are varied and mostly sympathetic – sometimes the chemistry isn’t right, sometimes we missed the bullseye and failed to nail the brief. But yesterday I heard a genuine first. We were blown off the shortlist for a bit of public sector work because, wait for it… our website made one of the panel puke. Yep, physically sick. Projectile vom. Ker-splat.
Bit of background: We are re-jigging our site at the mo, and so thought it would be a bit of fun to put a little ‘holding’ page up that played on the stock phrase of the ad-man; “it’s all about the sizzle, not the sausage”. So we have a solo sizzling sausage sat sizzling in a saucepan (try saying that after a few s-s-s-shandies).
A bit of harmless nonsense you’d think? Might intrigue you if you hadn’t heard the sizzle cliche before, and fairly obvious if you had. However…. one panelist at a pitch presentation earlier this week was angered and outraged because our sillyness had offended her vegan sensibilities, so much in fact that the sight of a fat pork banger cooking in its own juices had turned her stomach to the extent that she retched. And on that basis, all of our twenty year history, the creds of the firm, all the awards, the expensive talent at her disposal, and the acres of brilliant work we had prepared counted for nothing. Nil. Zilch. Nada.
In the ‘Dear John’ feedback email we got after the pitch, they said they had such severe reservations about our agency because we had made the veggie panelist sick, that we were off the list. Even though the key reason they put us on the list in the first place was the ‘reputation of the agency and the excellent examples of previous work we submitted’.
The sizzling web movie had been online before the pitch process started. Am I missing something here? Should I be asking for evidence that the cause of the vom was our sausage and not a bad bout of tofu and barley wine poisoning? I’d like to see her puke stained doc martins and dungerees before I conclude, although I am minded of the wise words of Derek Smalls – ‘you can’t dust for vomit’.
We will have our latest web offering up soon enough, so time is limited to tell me whether the site makes you ill or not. I’d like to know.
I’m not normally a fan of ‘agency’ sites. They are generally bonkers. This is bonkers as well but as it is a holding page I’m not getting frustrated trying to use it. Big difference. The sizzling sausage is fun and yes, I can imagine someone feeling a bit sick watching it, but I reckon the client is using this to batter you with and you should grow a thick skin.
Makes me hungry!
Sounds like you’ve lost yourself a client with nil sense of humour – does she have the same response to the M&S adverts with joints cooking and so on.
It’s odd Tony, really odd. Because of what our company does (we’re a new business agency) we look at a huge number of agency web sites. Often prospects like to see some previous work, but the key thing is more often the momentum that comes with being memorable. When we call back after emailing some info to a prospect, they rarely recall the web site straight away. I’m guessing they would yours.
If someone is silly enough to ignore your offering because of a sausage being fried (my wife insists on cooking them in the oven, which is apparently more healthy (but why have sausages if you’re trying to be healthy??)) then they aren’t likely to be open to the genuinely different. Our own site is a garish yellow and every Design Agency we’ve worked with wants to change it. We don’t want to, so we don’t change it (visually at least – we SEO the hell out of it – type “new business agency” into Google). I like the sausages, even though I can’t have them fried at home.
I had the same problem a couple of years ago when we were asked to promote deep fried Mars Bars on behalf of the Scottish Tourism Board. All I said to the client was that her product looked like “A cat has shat in an onion bhaji” and we were off the pitch list quicker than you could say “Projectile vomiting”.
Its amazing how many time the Drum website counter seems to get it wrong! 5 Responses?
Hands up those who DONT think The Drum is censoring the negative comments to save their ‘friends’ feelings?
No one? Thought not!