Two actually.

First one: my co-presenter approaches the podium and looks out over a crowd of 30 outlet mall managers (the parent company made us pitch all of them and allowed the managers to select whether or not they wanted to participate in our program), places both hands firmly on each side of the podium and with a perfect straight face begins….. “if elected I will ….” crowd erupts in laughter and then he went seamlessly into his part of the pitch.

Second one, just started at a new agency, was traveling with the President/owner of the shop (I'm all of 26 at the time) and it's a Monday morning and I have all of the creative materials. We are supposed to meet on at the airport. He gets on the plane. Looks around, doesn't see me. Asks the flight attendant to make an announcement. Will Mr. Martin please ring his call button so your boss can find you. The plane goes silent. She does it again. Still silence as the whole plan realizes, some poor soul is about to get fired. I had slept through my alarm and my new boss was now on his way to the east coast with nothing to show. Long story short – I wake up, call the prospect, arrange to present in a conf room in the airport (their CEO was flying out that day on vacation) and I find a non-stop to the destination. Somehow managed to get USAir to connect me to my boss' connection gate and as he steps off the plane in Charlotte there is a gate agent with a sign. He announces he's the guy whose name is on the sign and she hands him the phone. He's so impressed with that trick he actually doesn't fire me.

I join him in the prospect's home town airport, we present and head home. Sadly, we didn't get the project. Luckily, I didn't get fired and even went on to run the new biz program there. Looking back, funny as hell but man, thought I had just bought myself a ticket out of the ad game with that one.

My favorite pitch story is from one of my many mentors back in Norfolk, VA. As I recall, his shop was the only local smaller shop invited amongst the three finalists (out of over 450 RFPs sent out) to make a pitch for the Aviation Worlds Fair-part of the 100th celebration of the Wright Brothers first flight. He was up against two much bigger shops-one from Richmond, one from Washington, DC. The night before the big pitch he ran into the two Creative Directors from the other two shops in the hotel bar. They all ended up drinking quite a bit and the two CD's he was pitching against went on and on about their having pilot's licenses and flying their own planes and how they were both aviation nuts since they were kids. The next morning my friends small local shop was the first shop to pitch. He walked in and the first words out of his mouth were that he didn't own a plane, didn't have a pilot's license and never played with planes as a kid-and that's why they should hire his shop because the people that they needed to attract to this huge event to make it a success were just like him. He won that account in the first two minutes and no matter what the competition followed with, they were doomed before they even walked in the door. A great lesson to me that brilliant creative sometimes never has a chance against a brilliant strategist.

My second favorite pitch story was from a great old school CD I worked under at Bloom in Texas back in the mid-90's. He told me a story of pitching a huge account in the early 80's. Every time they would present to the CEO, the CEO would take their creative and leave the room. After a few minutes he would come back and shoot it down. This happened four times. The fifth time they presented, the CD stayed out of the room as he was curious as to where the CEO was going each time with the creative. Sure enough, during the fifth presentation, the CEO left the room, but this time the CD watched where he was going. Turns out he was taking the creative down the hall to the typesetting pool to get their opinion, which at the time was staffed by mostly Japanese women who spoke only passable English at best, and, due to the language barrier, didn't get any of the humor in the creative the CEO was showing them.

The next time the agency presented, the CD went down to the typesetting pool before the pitch and gave each of the women $20 and told them that when the CEO came down with the advertising ideas that day, to tell him they loved it.

And thats how they sold the campaign.

Love these stories.

We were pitching a client who we knew wanted to be wowed by a seamless “techy” presentation: no boards, no charts, wow them with great ideas delivered powerfully from our shiny metal boxes. We had developed remarkable work, assembled it in a wowee zowee keynote, complete with multimedia, etc. Rehearsed it, made sure it worked from a couple of our computers, doublechecked it thru a projection system we were bringing with us “just in case.”

Client is 2.5 hours away. We arrive and begin setting up in the room; the client (of probably 15 people) arrive and begin taking their seats—as I discover we forgot!!! the f&*$%ing!!! adaptor to connect our puter to the projector. (CLENCH) Oh, that little thing…

The short version is, we apologize, suggest they get out of their seats and stand, huddled together (with shorter people in front), and turn our little 17″ macbook pro toward them…and we go with it.

And? The next day, we got the news. We freakin won that account. And it remains one of our agency's most creatively rewarding ones today.

This was a few years ago. I was down in Durham, NC at McKinney for a pitch my agency was teaming up with them on. They have this awesome office — converted tobacco factory — with lots of open spaces and funky design elements. 30 minutes before the pitch is set to begin, I head out to the bathroom to take care of business. On my way back to the conference room, I fire off a few emails on my Blackberry and *wham* walk right into a steel beam. Split my lip and there's blood everywhere. I have the receptionist help me with some paper towels and ice. Then I ask her for a pen and paper. Walking back into the room, I hand the CEO of McKinney — Brad Brinegar, great guy — a note that says, “Walked into beam. Split lip. Can't talk. Don't worry, won't sue.” He laughs. I laugh. Sure enough, 30 minutes later, I was talking again and was able to do my part of the presentation. We didn't win the biz but I learned the important lesson of not blackberrying and walking at the same time — much less, chewing gum!

Pitching a C-store chain called Dairy Mart. Our founder Joe Hoke hated being hot so he turned down the heat to meat locker like in the conference room. Problem was it also controlled the temperature of the 78 year old head of Dairy Mart – we literally froze him out of his office. He was pissed. To add to our problems, we made a great pitch for a new sandwich called Macho Max – for contractor audiences. Their charge to us was how to sell deli meats. We didn't read the RFP carefully – it was referenced as “bulk deli meats.” The client looked at us like we had to three heads. We had to scramble and sell a strategy of selling lots of sandwiches to make up for the pounds of deli meats that we didn't have ideas for. Humma humma like Jackie Gleason on the Honeymooners. (Who buys deli meats at a C-store anyway) Needless to say we aren't in the sandwich business. Neither is Dairy Mart either.

Is this ethical?

We were pitching a prospect on a New Product/Dealer event who had devoted the afternoon to hearing the presentations from us and three competitors. We asked for the first slot and even offered to buy lunch for the committee.

As an aside, we always recommend that our clients avoid serving carb-heavy lunches at events since it really damages the audience's attention and focus during the afternoon sessions – it's hard to keep them awake. For our presentation, however, we took the opposite approach. We designed a high-energy presentation while the committee enjoyed a huge helpings of fettuccini alfredo, lasagna, and cheese bread.

We won the business and we'd like to think it was because of our superior creative. However, when we asked our clients about the other presentations, they couldn't quite remember them anywhere near as well as ours. Some of the committee were practically dozing. Imagine that.

We pitched Oakley last year and after our presentation we were changing into shorts and t shirts in their parking lot. Several of us were still in our underwear when their director of global marketing came out to his car, which was parked next to ours. Good times. We did not win.