The Only Way to Win

By: Toby Barlow

“To be a liar, you've got to have a great memory, and I don't have a memory.” - Ozzy Osbourne

When I was in New York there was an agency that won all the big pharma pitches. All of them, every drug, every medicine, these guys just mopped them up. We didn’t understand their secret. Turns out, whenever they pitched for a new pharma assignment, the two leaders of the agency would look the prospective client straight in the eye and say, “Weird thing is, both of us had a parent who suffered from this disease.” 

It was bold, because either their parents were really freakishly sad physical specimens, or the guys were lying. And of course, the guys were lying. 

But, they were also winning. 

The lesson was simple: The world is full of bad people and bad people often win.

I remember my grandfather once saying “Goodness and justice didn’t beat Hitler, tanks did.”

So, how do you beat them? 

First of all, you don’t play their game because (a) it’s wrong and (b) they’re much better at it than you are.  

And you can’t be more charming than the liars. They are so very charming. 

Also, weirdly, you can’t even out think liars, because they are dealing in nonsense, which is, by definition, irrational. 

In the end, the only thing you can do is out sell them. 

Because when your client closes the books on their quarter, the cold truth is they don’t care which agency partner had the most integrity, or the prettiest creative, or even the smartest robots. What they care about are their numbers, their metrics, their dollars.  

So all you have to do is come up with work that sells. Document it, proclaim it, preach it. Obsess about the results, adapt, revise and finesse your work to make it stronger and more compelling. Be tasteful and brave, but not precious. Keep your standards up but also be pragmatic.

We impress clients because we show great work, of course, but we win clients by showing results. A 1300% increase in site visits, more interest from buyers, more browsing by shoppers, a double digit increase in sales.  

In the end, if you have ideas that sell - that actually move the product - then you don’t have to worry about all the pathological liars out there. You’ll just leave them, and their horribly sickly parents, in the rear view mirror.