Media Forum: Is new business disappearing?

Are new-business pitches becoming an endangered species?

Forget all those dreaded hosepipe bans looming in the South-East this summer - media agencies are in the midst of a far more alarming drought.

Taking Carat out of the equation (it has picked up ten new accounts this year, representing a total of pounds 34.5 million in new billings), the other four agencies in the top five of Campaign's new-business league table have won a grand total of nine new accounts between them. There's hardly anything on the horizon either.

No wonder some new-business directors around town are looking down in the dumps. Their bosses can be excused for looking somewhat worried, too.

Yes, pitches can be a very expensive pain in the backside, with marketing and procurement people tying up truly breathtaking amounts of resource not just in the formal pitch process but in the seemingly endless months of clarification questions that accompany it. Especially when everyone in the agency knows that the account was stitched up weeks ago, because the client's marketing director used to work with a rival agency boss.

And that's before we get started on the whole business of online auctions.

But while everyone likes a good whinge about a pitch now and again, they also acknowledge that they're the lifeblood of the business. They keep everyone on their toes and, necessity being the desperate mother of invention, regularly provide the inspiration for the industry's best new ideas.