How to really get ahead in marketing: Learn to say ‘no’

The state of the market. Chemistry. Internal resources. The right ‘shaped’ briefs. The right time. The list goes on and on and on and on.

The two words that fill every agency with dread

Now, at the risk of temporarily sounding a bit smug, at TMW Unlimited, we’re currently on a hot streak, winning every pitch that we were part of in 2023 and in the first part of 2024. I say that not to brag, but to make a point. Bear with me.

It hasn’t always been that straightforward; there are two words that keep every new-business person up at night: ‘close’ and ‘second’. For now, though, the new-business gods are smiling upon us, and we’re at the better end of those close calls, desperately trying to distill the secret ingredient.

It‘s a tough job at the best of times. I know lots of brilliant agencies with brilliant new-business teams that haven‘t found it so easy, especially given market conditions.

If I had to boil down our secret to winning more, it would be this: learning how to say no.

By understanding what you’re brilliant at, and being honest about what you’re not, you’ll know which opportunities are the right ones to pursue.

To find out who you are, work out who you aren't

Agencies spend hours, days, and years trying to articulate who they are. What they can offer brands, what about them that makes them unique, what might the perfect brief look like. They don’t spend nearly enough time thinking about who they’re not good at: what they’re just average at, and thus which briefs aren’t quite right.

Our best period ever has coincided with turning down three different opportunities to pitch for massive accounts. They were all household names, but just not quite the right fit.

We would have done okay at the first stage. We would have fared well at chemistry. But, in new business, second place is tied with last, and on each of these occasions, it just felt like an imperfect match.

To put it in 90s football terms (and why not?) imagine your agency is Gianfranco Zola. Brilliant. Extraordinary. One of a kind. If a club wants a player, why not pick him? Well, maybe they’re after a target man, or a center back. It doesn’t make you any worse, just not the right fit.

Jack of all trades, master of what?

There is a very common trap in our industry: saying that you can do everything, and it being interpreted as specializing in nothing. This was reflected in some of the briefs we were getting through: second- or third-tier opportunities that were suitable for some, but didn’t match our creative ambitions.

That was our wake-up call to focus on what we are masters of. The modern marketing landscape requires an agency that has the creativity of a brand advertising agency, and the interconnectivity of specialist channel agencies.

The Goldilocks Principle

And it’s not just based on technical questions. Lots of this isn’t something you can work out from a request-for-information (RFI) or a briefing document. The common theme with all our big wins this year is that they’ve felt just right. I call it the Goldilocks Principle. We’ve shared so much in common with every single client whose business we’ve won.

People buying people is the oldest (and most forgotten) cliché in the book – but it's also a two-way street. When there's a palpable sense of genuine chemistry and you want to work with a team, it makes the hard work a lot easier, and it creates an environment that’s impossible to fake. It’s only once you’ve started to say no that the yeses start to feel special.

Or, maybe, just maybe, it’s my lucky new socks.