I’ve been involved in agency reviews for most of my career, from building and leading pitch teams, to helping brands navigate agency reviews, to now leading growth at Generator.
That perspective has led me to a question I can’t seem to shake.
Has the agency pitch process become too good at measuring the wrong things?
Agency reviews have never been more sophisticated…
More deliverables. More scoring matrices. More stakeholders. More rounds.
The intention is understandable. Every client wants confidence they’re making the right decision.
But somewhere along the way, we’ve unintentionally started optimizing for the review process instead of the outcome.
Instead, we stopped asking, “Who gives us the greatest confidence they can help us achieve our ambition?” and started asking, “Who navigated our process best?”
Those aren’t always the same answer.
The best reviews I’ve experienced shared one characteristic: the client knew where they wanted to take the business. Agencies weren’t asked to invent the vision, they were challenged to present the strongest vision for how to bring it to life.
That’s where real differentiation happens.
Not in the longest deck.
Not in checking every box.
Not in the agency that’s become the best at pitching.
But in the agency that demonstrates the deepest understanding of the business, challenges conventional thinking, and presents the clearest path to growth.
Ironically, those are often the very qualities the most over-engineered review processes suppress.
I’m not arguing for less rigor.
I’m arguing that we should ask whether our rigor is measuring the things that actually matter.
Because the goal of an agency review isn’t to identify the team that performs best during the pitch.
It’s to identify the partner that gives you the greatest confidence they can help grow your business.
Those are very different objectives.
And they often produce very different outcomes.
