Why pitch process has become more complicated & costlier than ever

The pitch has always been part of the game. But somewhere between 2023 and now, the rules changed. What used to be a conversation about thinking and chemistry has turned into a full-blown project, unpaid and uncertain. Agencies are being asked to deliver near-production-ready campaigns, AI prototypes, multi-channel strategy, and multiple creative routes before a contract is even signed. The ask has expanded, but the respect for the process hasn't kept pace.

According to a 2024 report by the Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA), the average pitch cycle in India now involves 4.7 agencies and lasts for 8-12 weeks, up from 6 to 8 weeks just two years ago. The same report notes that over 60% of pitches now require some form of AI-led visualisation or prototype, a metric that was virtually non-existent in 2022. The volume is up, the effort is up, but the conversion rate? That's dropping. Agencies are pitching more than ever, winning less than ever, and the math is starting to hurt.

Kajol Bheda, Founder of Scribbld, doesn't mince words. "Pitch expectations have definitely expanded in the last few years," she says. "Brands sometimes expect near-finished campaigns, AI-led prototypes, very detailed strategy work, and multiple creative routes upfront. Agencies are adapting, but the pace and volume of asks have grown faster than the structure supporting them."

The concern, Bheda points out, isn't effort. The advertising industry has always thrived on craft and hustle. The problem is that many pitches today resemble full-fledged projects without clarity on timelines, commitment or scope. That creates a ripple effect across the ecosystem. Agency teams are stretched thin between pitch work and live client mandates. Senior talent gets diverted into ambitious pitch cycles. And the quality of ongoing work takes a hit when the focus shifts to unpaid speculation instead of paid delivery.

When the pitch becomes the product
The shift Bheda describes isn't just about more work, it's about a fundamental change in what a pitch is expected to be. A decade ago, a pitch was about demonstrating your understanding of the brand, your strategic sharpness, and the kind of thinking you could bring to the table. Today, it's about showing the finished goods. Brands want to see how the campaign will look, how it will behave across platforms, how AI can amplify it, and how quickly it can go live. In effect, the pitch has become the product.

Anadi Sah, National Creative Director, Chief Innovation Officer and Founding Partner at tgthr., has seen this evolution up close. "The pitch ask has gone from 'sell us your thinking' to 'show us the whole campaign, almost GTM ready, with AI prototypes and channel strategy built in,'" he says. "That shift, combined with a shrinking market and clients expecting more for less, has put teams under sustained pressure."

Sah is careful to acknowledge that brands aren't necessarily wrong to want to de-risk decisions by seeing how ideas behave closer to reality. The issue arises when every pitch is treated like an unpaid mini-launch. That creates massive creative wastage and very real burnout risk on the agency side. When tgthr. was set up, Sah and his co-founders anticipated this shift and made conscious decisions to protect their teams and their product from the worst of it. That meant being selective about which pitches to enter, insisting on clarity of scope, and being ready to walk away when expectations felt unreasonable. It also meant having uncomfortable conversations early, pushing for chemistry meetings, and aligning on what success looks like beyond the beauty parade.

Most importantly, it meant building an AI studio in-house that could deliver the high-fidelity prototypes clients now expect without burning out the core creative team. By keeping a tight grip on these levers, tgthr. has managed to show up to pitches sharper, fresher, and with a realistic understanding of what they can deliver if they actually win. But not every agency has that luxury. For smaller shops and independent setups, the pitch cycle is increasingly becoming a war of attrition.

Procurement takes the wheel
The other seismic shift in the pitch landscape is the role of procurement. Once a backend function focused on commercial clarity, procurement has now moved to the front seat in agency selection. And that's changed the criteria entirely. According to a 2024 report by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Deloitte on marketing procurement trends, 68% of brand marketers in India now involve procurement teams at the RFP stage itself, compared to 42% in 2020. The same report found that cost efficiency and delivery timelines are weighted nearly twice as heavily as creative quality or strategic depth in final selection scorecards.

Bheda sees this play out regularly. "Procurement plays a very essential role, especially for large, complex businesses where transparency and structure matter the most," she says. "But the centre of gravity has shifted. Today, the selection leans, if not 100%, then 99.9% on cost efficiency, timelines and deliverables rather than creative problem-solving."

The best outcomes, according to Bheda, come from a balanced process where thinking and capability are evaluated, leadership aligns with the agency on long-term vision, and procurement ensures commercial clarity and fairness. When any one of these three functions dominates, other parts of the process get overshadowed. "In recent years, creativity has sometimes taken a back seat simply because it's harder to quantify on a spreadsheet," she says. "As agencies, we understand the need for commercials to make sense. But creativity, insight and actual partnership with a brand are what move the needle. Finding that middle ground again will help both sides build more sustainable relationships."

Sah echoes that sentiment but with a sharper edge. "No marketer sets out thinking, 'Let me buy average work,'" he says. "The problem is that the market has become so commoditised and volatile that the final call rarely rests with one person anymore. What you get instead is a committee decision, heavily influenced by procurement, where creativity and partnership are just two cells in a much larger Excel sheet."

In parallel, many brands have built in-house teams and agency functions. That changes the brief they're actually buying from external partners. For a lot of them, the priority is hitting this quarter's targets and closing this year's gaps, rather than investing in a robust platform and a deep, long-term relationship with one agency. The evaluation model has tilted. The levers that are easiest to compare are rate cards, number of deliverables, speed, AI capability, as compared to originality, strategic challenge, consistency of brand stewardship or chemistry. The outcome is a bias towards quantity over depth, the lowest bid over the bravest solution, short-term optics over long-term brand value.

The optimist's take
Not everyone sees this moment as a crisis. Rosanlal Behera, Co-founder of Mashrise, a digital-first agency, views the shift as an opportunity. "At Mashrise, we see this as a chance to showcase our thinking more tangibly from the very first interaction," he says. "Advanced prototyping and detailed strategic direction help brands visualise the potential impact early on. It encourages our teams to stay sharper, more agile, and more collaborative across functions."

For Behera, the key is balancing speed with thoughtful insight, ensuring that the quality of final work continues to evolve through real data, audience learnings, and ongoing brand partnership. He believes the pitch landscape is certainly more structured today, but also more holistic. "Brands increasingly value clarity on deliverables, efficiency, and innovation while still seeking partners who understand long-term brand building," he says. "At Mashrise, we focus on demonstrating measurable value upfront without compromising on creativity or strategic depth. Strong partnerships continue to grow when both sides are aligned on outcomes, capabilities, and a shared vision for sustained success."

It's a refreshing counterpoint to the fatigue elsewhere in the industry. But even Behera's optimism is rooted in adaptation, not acceptance. Mashrise has leaned into AI, built agile processes, and structured their offering to meet the market where it is. That's survival instinct, not complacency.

What's at stake
The broader question isn't whether agencies can keep up with the new pitch demands, most are already doing that. The question is whether this model is sustainable, and whether it's producing better work or just more work. According to a 2024 study by the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI), nearly 54% of agency professionals reported increased stress and longer working hours compared to 2022, with pitch-related work cited as a primary driver. Turnover rates among mid-level creative and strategy talent have also climbed, with agencies reporting a 23% increase in exits between 2023 and 2024.

That's not just an HR problem. When senior talent is constantly diverted into speculative pitch work, the quality of retained client work suffers. When agencies are forced to say yes to every brief just to keep the lights on, they lose the ability to be selective, strategic, or brave. And when procurement-led decisions prioritise cost and speed over creativity and partnership, brands risk commoditizing the very thing that differentiates them in a crowded market.

The irony is that both sides want the same thing. Brands want breakthrough work that moves the business. Agencies want to deliver it. But the current pitch culture is creating a system where neither gets what they need. Brands get safe, spreadsheet-friendly solutions. Agencies get burned out, underpaid, and creatively frustrated. And the consumer, the person all this work is ultimately meant to reach, gets work that's good enough but rarely great.

There's no easy fix. Brands need to recognise that asking for near-finished campaigns without compensation or commitment isn't just unfair, it's short-sighted. Agencies need to find the courage to walk away from pitches that don't respect their value or protect their people. And the industry as a whole needs to have an honest conversation about what a pitch should be, how long it should take, and what both sides owe each other in the process.

Until then, 2025 will remain what many are already calling it, the toughest pitch year yet. And the agencies still standing by the end of it will be the ones who learned to say no as often as they said yes.