I Still Fondly Remember How We Slew a Goliath
Back in 2009, my agency Park&Co was pitching Arizona's foremost educational nonprofit, Expect More Arizona (EMA), now called Education Forward Arizona.
EMA had interviewed several agencies. It came down to two finalists.
Us against Lavidge, one of Phoenix's largest ad agencies.
We arrived 15 minutes before our presentation. As we walked into the lobby, I had my typical lump in my throat. That familiar cocktail of excitement about the opportunity mixed with trepidation about losing our pitch and bruising our collective egos.
Then I saw him.
Through a wall of glass, there was Bill Lavidge—an ad man I greatly admire—and his well-appointed team finishing their presentation in the conference room. They looked like what an ad agency should look like. Well-suited. Well-branded. Well... everything.
At the top of the hour, they finished. Filed out one by one. Awkwardly passing us in the lobby.
Bill nodded at me. Said nothing. But there was an air of confidence about them that I read clearly: "You guys haven't a chance."
"I wonder if we do?" I thought to myself.
But I took a chance with our presentation.
What I Didn't Do (And Why It Mattered)
I didn't talk about Park&Co's capabilities or fawn over our own brand story.
I didn't showcase our portfolio, explain our process, or demonstrate our credentials.
What I did was set the overarching narrative arc of our presentation, guided by my own experience with our three very different children going through the Arizona educational system, and how it supported and failed them.
I started with a family photo of them as youngsters. Each with their own abilities, successes, and failures in their education.
Our three kids, each five years apart, gave us a comprehensive education in how the Arizona school system serves different types of learners.
One thrived in traditional classroom structure. Followed the rules. Loved the system. The system loved her back.
One brought creative intensity to everything—academics, athletics, arts. Moved between public and private education smoothly. Found their own path through available opportunities.
One needed the system to flex. Required different approaches. Taught us how schools can adapt—or fail to adapt—when a young person learns differently. Needed advocates. Got them. Found success on their own terms.
Three kids. Three completely different educational journeys. All within the same Arizona system EMA was working to strengthen.
Between the pictures of them in middle school, high school, and finally graduating—showing the narrative arc—I shared what our family had learned about education in Arizona.
Not as critics. As parents who'd seen the system from every angle.
How EMA had, would, or could play a significant role not just in our children's education, but in every Arizona student's journey.
Our pitch wove together our family's experience and our agency's extensive market research, culminating in immediate recommendations for how we would strengthen EMA's position and impact.
I figured if we lost the business to Lavidge, at least we would have implanted branding and marketing concepts that would benefit the client and the communities they served.
Maybe they'd use them.
What Our Pitch Proved
I got the call from EMA the next morning.
We won.
They told me our presentation stood out because we proved our abilities to represent them through our personal storytelling, demonstrated market understanding, and sincere desire to help them succeed quickly.
I was pumped.
And especially proud of how we'd structured our presentation using the very storytelling frameworks we professed with our clients: The Story Cycle System™, the ABT narrative framework, all of it.
That pitch cost us around $25,000 in agency time and outside expenses.
Given that agencies win only about 20 percent of the clients they pitch on average, that was a big gamble for a small agency like ours.
But here's what I realized then that's even more relevant now, seventeen years later:
We didn't win by pitching. We won by proving.
The Inherent Gamble of Agency Pitching
The Real Cost of Traditional Pitching
Let's talk about what traditional agency pitching actually costs.
According to research from the ANA, 4A's, and Advertiser Perceptions, the average agency pitch costs $204,461.
That's not what you bill the client eventually. That's what you invest before you even know if you'll win the business.
Is that an investment or a high-stakes gamble?
The research breaks it down: staff time, external consultants, travel, research, free-of-charge ideas, staffing changes, and the disruptions and delays to your existing client work.
And here's the timeline reality: pitches typically consume 2-3 months of calendar time across both client and agency teams.
If you're following traditional methodology—capabilities presentations, portfolio showcases, process explanations, the whole dog-and-pony show—you're winning somewhere between 15-25% of those pitches according to IAPI's OUCH! Factor Report.
Do that math with me.
75-85% of your pitch investment vanishes.
The Painful Reality of Lost Pitches
You've sat through those pitch debriefs. The ones where the prospect chose another agency "because they just seemed to understand our business better."
God, I hated that explanation in my agency days.
I've seen competitors win with less impressive credentials. You probably have, too.
You've felt that sinking feeling when you realize you spent three weeks (if not months) building a beautiful presentation that never actually addressed what the prospect cared about.
Their business. Their challenges. Their opportunities. Their fears, frustrations, and aspirations.
Here's What Most Agency Principals Haven't Connected Yet
The Fundamental Flaw in Traditional Pitching
The pitch process itself is the problem.
I learned the hard way. Early in my agency life, I bought into the traditional pitch format that follows a predictable pattern. You walk into the room. Present credentials. Showcase portfolio. Explain process. Demonstrate capabilities. Answer questions. Wait.
And while you're doing all that, you're making a critical strategic error.
You're talking about yourself instead of demonstrating strategic thinking about their business.
Think about what's actually happening in that pitch meeting.
The prospect has a business challenge. They need strategic guidance. They're evaluating agencies to find a partner who can help them solve real problems and capture real opportunities.
What do they get instead?
A parade of agencies explaining why they're qualified to help—someday, maybe, if selected—while offering zero actual strategic value in the meeting itself.
It's upside down.
Why Smaller Agencies Win More Often
The IAPI research reveals something fascinating: Win rates actually decline as agency size increases.
Smaller agencies (1-19 staff) win 51% of pitches.
Mid-sized agencies (50-99 staff) win 32%.
Larger agencies (100-199 staff) win 55%, but often take 7-33 months to recover their pitch costs.
Why do smaller agencies punch above their weight?
Because they often can't afford the elaborate presentation. So they focus on demonstrating actual strategic thinking about the prospect's business instead of showcasing capabilities or just talking about themselves.
They're accidentally doing value-first pitching.
And it's working.
The Shift That's Transforming Agency Economics
From Pitching to Proving
Stop pitching what you might do.
Start proving what you can do by actually doing it.
I'm not talking about providing spec creative (that $h!t costs a lot), or strategy work you've taken your best guess at. That devalues your expertise.
I'm encouraging you, from one agency principal to another, to walk into every pitch meeting with a comprehensive brand assessment and initial brand narrative foundation that demonstrates your thinking about their specific business challenges.
I've seen the power dynamic flip immediately.
You're the strategic consultant who arrived with on-brand insights while everyone else stumbled in with questions.
The Objection I Always Hear
But you're thinking…
"That's impossible, Park. Developing custom brand strategy requires tens of thousands of dollars in internal resources and lots of time. We can't do that for every prospect. It's just too costly."
I get it. That's why we fixed it.
Because what I did manually in 2009 with our presentation narrative and weeks of market research, you can now do systematically in a day or two.
The Methodology That Makes Value-First Pitching Possible in 2026
Systematic Brand Storytelling Changes the Game
This is where systematic brand storytelling changes everything.
Not as marketing theory. As practical business methodology you can deploy tomorrow.
The StoryCycle Genie® platform – built by agency principals for agency professionals – enables you to conduct comprehensive brand analysis and develop complete initial narrative strategies in days instead of months.
All you do is have the Genie visit your prospect's website and in a couple of minutes it will provide you with a brand assessment. It's like a magic mirror: "Mirror, mirror on the wall, how is this brand showing up for all?"
Based on that assessment, the StoryCycle Genie™ will create an entire brand narrative strategy so that you know exactly how your prospect is showing up in the world.
Then you can summon the Brand Intelligence Genie, one of over three dozen experts that all work together inside the StoryCycle Genie®, to research their competitors, market conditions, etc. This may take you an hour, but certainly not three weeks like the old way.
We're talking about the same strategic depth you'd normally invest $50,000 and six weeks to create—delivered in the time between when you get the RFP and when you walk into the pitch meeting.
The Side-by-Side Comparison
Here's what that actually looks like:
Traditional Pitch Approach:
- Three weeks (if not months) of internal preparation
- Capabilities presentation with portfolio showcase
- Process explanation and team introductions
- Hope they choose you based on credentials and chemistry
- $204,461 average investment per ANA research
- Staff burnout and disruption to existing client work
- 15-25% win rate
Value-First Approach:
- Two days of brand analysis using systematic methodology
- Walk into meeting with comprehensive brand assessment
- Present a foundational and comprehensive brand narrative strategy specific to their business that you can build upon
- Demonstrate your thinking by showing actual strategic work
- Days of investment vs weeks (not burning out your team and burning through your finances)
- 51% win rate for smaller agencies using value-first methodology per IAPI data
Why This Approach Works
The difference in prospect response is dramatic.
Because you're not asking them to imagine what you might do.
You're showing them what you've already done.
And here's the beautiful part that I learned back in 2009 with EMA:
Whether you win that specific pitch or not, you've just demonstrated strategic value that builds your reputation.
The prospect tells other prospects about the agency that showed up with insights. With an immediate plan of action (picture your speed to market with your new client).
Your competitive positioning strengthens.
Your pipeline improves.
Your win rates climb.
Your Three-Day Value-First Pitch Framework
Day 1 - Strategic Foundation Analysis:
Use the Brand Story Genie™ to create a brand assessment that analyzes their current positioning, competitive landscape, audience alignment, and other critical brand storytelling elements.
This comprehensive brand assessment would traditionally require weeks of research and analysis, and some second-guessing in hopes you're right. The Genie removes the guesswork because it examines exactly how effective their current brand strategy is, and it does this in just a few minutes.
Think of it like the market research we did for EMA, but compressed from weeks into a day or two through proven brand storytelling frameworks. How do I know they're proven? Because I've been developing brands for more than 40 years.
Day 2 - Initial Strategy Development:
Collaborating with the amplified intelligence of the StoryCycle Genie®, you'll create a multi-point brand storytelling foundation to impress your prospect. This includes:
- Prioritization of your prospect's top three audiences triggering a conversation around their #1 audience, which typically accounts for 80% of their revenue (The Pareto Principle).
- Identification of each audience's emotional triggers – their challenges, fears, frustrations and aspirations – which demonstrates your deep understanding of what motivates their customers.
- Crafting foundational ABT (And, But, Therefore) narratives for each audience. This provides the opportunity to educate your prospect about the importance of this story structure of agreement, contradiction and consequence and how it speaks to the primal buying limbic brain. (Do you see the value you are already delivering with this approach?)
- Developing a position statement for their consideration. This is another place to discuss the importance of articulating a clear and compelling position for the brand.
- Creating a unique value proposition as a thought-starter to focus a larger campaign. This is where you can get them excited about what's possible by working with you.
- Revealing the brand character traits by sharing nine one-word descriptors that become story themes for your content marketing. This is an excellent place to pull them into the conversation, getting their take on the descriptors the Genie has created for them, and talking about stories they already have but probably aren't yet using.
- Specifying the brand archetypes for consistent communication of the brand's personality, including a primary archetype and two secondary archetypes. You know how fun it is to talk about yourself. Well, this is where you get the owners of the brand to talk about themselves.
- Declaring the brand's purpose statement: why it exists beyond making money to elevate their colleagues, customers, and the communities they serve.
- Presenting the overall brand story based on the above items. Like magic, you are manifesting their potential brand story before their eyes.
- Providing the competitor intelligence you developed with the Brand Intelligence Genie™ to support the thinking in your brand narrative strategy.
You've just transformed your pitch into a value-rich working session that demonstrates your capabilities, smarts, personal investment in their brand story. And you don't even have the biz yet.
Day 3 - Turn Your Pitch Into a "Pull":
The very term "pitch" means you're pushing your agency on your prospect.
Who likes to be pushed?
Instead, pull them in by walking through their brand assessment and narrative strategy.
You are proving your worth by walking into the presentation with something no other agency has... actual strategic brand storytelling insights.
Not hypothetical. Not Generic. Not "here's what we might do."
Real analysis. Real recommendations. Real value.
Confidence!
The conversation shifts from "Why should we choose you?" to "How do we implement these strategic brand recommendations together?"
Just like it did when EMA saw we'd already done the strategic thinking amplified by our lived experience about their educational impact and what could be.
What This Means for Your Agency in 2026
The Great Divide in Agency Pitching
The agency landscape is dividing. Fast.
On one side: Agencies still doing capabilities presentations. Competing on credentials and chemistry. Winning 15-25% of pitches. Spending $200K+ per new client acquisition.
On the other side: Agencies delivering immediate strategic value. Competing on demonstrated expertise. Winning significantly more pitches. Investing days instead of weeks per opportunity.
Which side builds sustainable competitive advantage?
The answer's obvious.
What You Don't Need to Do
But here's what's not obvious to most agency principals:
You don't need to become an AI expert.
You don't need to rebuild your entire business model.
You don't need to abandon everything that's made you successful.
You just need to stop costly pitching and start value-rich consulting.
Stop presenting capabilities and start demonstrating strategic value.
Stop hoping prospects choose you and start proving why they should.
What Would the Bill Lavidges of the Agency World Do Today?
Learning From the Competition
I have no idea if Lavidge took a standard approach to pitching the EMA business back in 2009.
Promoting the agency's capabilities. Telling the agency's own brand story. The things that worked for decades.
He didn't invite me into the room.
But I do know this:
What worked for us twenty years ago is more powerful today than ever.
Agencies win by providing immediate value to prospects, whether you win the business or not.
And here's the beautiful irony:
The methodology I used manually—weaving personal experience with market research into strategic recommendations—now scales through systematic frameworks.
What cost us $25,000 in 2009 and required weeks of preparation, you can deliver in days for a fraction of that investment using the StoryCycle Genie®, the only narrative-native platform that is guided by our proven Story Cycle System™ with the ABT narrative framework at its core.
The agencies you admire are already making this shift.
The competitors you're losing to are already using these methodologies.
The prospects you want to win are already experiencing what value-first pitching feels like.
Your Next Strategic Move
Calculate Your Real Pitch ROI
Start by calculating your actual pitch ROI.
Take your average pitch cost. Multiply by your win rate. Compare that to what value-first methodology could deliver.
The Questions That Matter
Then ask yourself this:
What would doubling your win rates while cutting your pitch costs by 96% do for your agency's growth trajectory?
What would it feel like to walk into your next pitch meeting with Bill Lavidge confidence—because you've already done the strategic work instead of just promising you can?
Because that's not hypothetical.
That's what systematic brand storytelling methodology delivers for agencies who make the shift from pitching to proving.
The value-first revolution isn't coming.
It's here.
The only question is whether you're leading it or being left behind by it.
Whether you're the David with the slingshot or the Goliath wondering what just happened.
I know which one I'd rather be.
Story on, my friend.
Ready to transform your agency's pitch approach from capabilities presentation to strategic consultation? Discover how the StoryCycle Genie® Wealth Creation Engine enables value-first pitching that wins at significantly higher rates (51% for agencies using this approach) instead of the traditional 15-25%.
Research Citations
- ANA, 4A's & Advertiser Perceptions (2023): The Cost of the Pitch - Average agency pitch cost: $204,461; Timeline: 2-3 months; Key impacts: staff burnout, disruption to existing client work
- IAPI (2022): The OUCH! Factor™ Report - Win rates by agency size: smaller agencies (1-19 staff) 51%, mid-sized (50-99 staff) 32%, larger (100-199 staff) 55%; Pitch cost recovery: 7-33 months depending on size
- EACA (2025): Cost of Pitching Report - Senior staff workload: 44 hours per pitch average for Account Directors; 20-35% adjust staffing after pitches
- Campaign UK (2025): Phantom Reviews and Unknown Media Spend - UK agencies report £50,057-£100,000 per pitch in soft costs
- Story Cycle System™: 20+ years proven brand storytelling frameworks developing brands across industries
About the Author
Park Howell pioneered the Business of Story methodology and created the Story Cycle System™ that's generated 600% growth for implementing brands. As a co-founder of StoryCycle Genie™, he transforms business intuition into systematic competitive advantage through proven narrative intelligence frameworks that target subconscious decision-making.
As host of the widely popular Business of Story podcast and author of "Brand Bewitchery," Park has established himself as a leading authority on systematic brand storytelling that places the customer as the hero while positioning brands as the trusted mentor who guides them to victory.
The StoryCycle Genie™ exists to enthrall people as they live into and prosper from their most powerful stories. Through our proprietary Cognitive Mesh Architecture and proven Story Cycle System™, we're pioneering the category of narrative intelligence—where human strategic thinking meets AI amplification to create systematic competitive advantage through authentic brand storytelling.