Close-Up: Live issue - Why pitching for clients is a never-ending story.(advertising agencies)

As companies seek greater accountability, agencies will have to accept increasingly protracted pitches.

As long and drawn-out pitches go, Yell.com definitely takes the biscuit. 'Shambolic' is how one agency chief succinctly describes the review of the pounds 20 million account.

Called in April, a long list of just about everyone was eventually whittled down to Mother and VCCP. In July, the pitch was thrown into confusion following the sudden exit of the chief marketing officer, Ann Francke.

Yell.com is not the only client guilty of dragging its feet. EasyJet, for instance, called off its creative pitch after six months in February, after shortlisting Ogilvy & Mather and Saatchi & Saatchi. The low-cost airline claimed it wanted to appoint a number of smaller creative shops, only to go on to award the pounds 50 million pan-European account to O&M in May after a final shoot-out against Delaney Lund Knox Warren & Partners.

One agency chief involved in the review says: 'The pitch took so long because the client was ambivalent about agencies themselves. They saw them as expensive and wasteful, and I don't think they were really convinced they needed one.'

Then there was the Government's anti-smoking pitch. COI took eight months to reach a decision on the pounds 12 million account.

'I don't think anyone ever really got to the bottom of why the pitch took so long,' one agency chief says. 'There definitely wasn't just one reason. It could have been because with the Government there are so many more stages of approval. The pitch also suffered from an NHS budget crisis.'