The Pitch Season 2, Episode 5: Belittle Caesar’s

By / September 22, 2013 / Wow, anyone else getting tired of this dumb series yet? Or these dumb reviews for that matter? I tell you, this show is just how Bill Hick’s described Cops. “I’m like a guy with a sore tooth, I can’t stop touching it. Ow. Cops is on. Ow.” Same here with this sack of shit show. If anyone from AMC is reading this, here’s how you make the show better: You don’t need better clients. You need better agencies. Unfortunately, the kind of agencies willing to go through this crap to win an account are not the ones we need. We want to see how solid agencies with great reputations go about pitching. Imagine Weiden & Kennedy up against The Martin Agency. Or Hill Holiday knocking blows with Fallon. Christ, even smaller agencies with chops would be awesome. Our own TDA_Boulder in one corner, and Bailey Lauerman in the other. Instead, we really are dealing with some small potatoes agencies here. And this week, we see two Chicago agencies go head to head: CommonGround and Bee-Line Communications. CommonGround stand out immediately as an agency that embraces diversity. You can’t knock them, it really is an agency filled with mélange of different people. It was nice to see. And they look like they have their shit together. Bee-Line, different story. It’s another mom and pop shop, with mommy running the show. And it’s based in the suburbs of Chicago, in a house that they’ve turned into a working agency. When the queen bee said they are a “full service global strategic marketing communications company” I knew this was a sign of things to come. Big, lofty boasting, but it’s all empty puffery. I mean…global? The site shows US, UK, and ASIA under the logo. The implication…they have offices in the US, the UK, and Asia. Do they? Nope. Just the one little house in suburban Chicago. So, the client is another famous brand — Little Caesar’s pizza. I’ve eaten it. It’s kinda crap. Worth about $5, but not much more. It turns out that this bland pizza comes from really good quality ingredients, including awesome, freshly picked tomatoes that are never frozen, and high quality cheese. Not pizza cheese. They want what most clients seem to want these days. Something that will go viral. A 30-second web spot, and social ideas to back it up. They also say “we’ll be working with you guys tomorrow” which probably means a tissue session. They could not expect ideas in that short a timeframe. Unless they’re complete cocks. After the client visit, where everyone had to look excited about eating shitloads of Little Caesar’s pizza, the real work begins. The expected clichés come pouring out. It’s all about strategy first. Let’s do killer creative. You can’t put a price on quality. Bee-Line comes up with the “Pizza Revolution.” Could have legs, but seems like it’s been done before. Oh, yeah, it has…for another pizza place. Panic mode. They switch gears and the new line is #PQuality. It sounds like equality. The P stands for pizza. It means “fresh for all.” I’ve seen worse ideas, but not many. CommonGround create an employee who loves the pizza ingredients so much, he starts spamming everyone on Facebook and Twitter. He’s that douchebag everyone hates. Great idea. At the pitch, CommonGround goes first. They introduce their dickhead employee, Chuck Parry, who won’t shut the fuck up about cheese. They show the 250 tweets and Facebook posts in two days. Then, they bring out the ace up their sleeve. A customer service rep issuing an apology that they are not apologizing for Chuck. See, edgy. Honestly, I think people will be so turned off by this dick that when this finally does come out, they’ll have already blocked Little Caesar’s. Who wants 100 tweets a day from an ass clown? This is like Joy from Progressive on crack. And we all hate her. Bee-Line goes next. They bring out #PQuality and it’s some of the most poorly designed and art directed shit I have ever seen. Really awful, student-type work. It’s cheesy. Oh, hey, hang on…cheesy. Cheesy pizza. #PQuality…#Piece o shit. It all fits. They also consider themselves experts in consumer engagement, and bring out the street team — a guy on a Segway handing out free pizza. Where he stores all this piping hot pizza is anyone’s guess. He’s wearing a Little Caesar toga tee —the only thing in their whole presentation I could see catching on, if they gave them out free with every pizza. Overall, it was embarrassing. Again. The client does thier best to talk nicely about both, before offering the account to the only agency that made sense –— CommonGround. I mean, they had to. But once more, it was the lesser of two evils. Maybe CommonGround will come up with something better once they really start to work on it. One thing’s for sure. They’ll be doing it on stomachs full of cheap, cold pizza from Little Caesar’s. Poor bastards.