Nigeria’s advertising industry is taking a harder look at its long standing pitch culture as practitioners increasingly question the cost, fairness and value of competitive presentations that require agencies to invest substantial intellectual and creative resources before securing a client.

Across the industry, the debate is shifting from whether agencies should pitch to how pitches should be conducted, what clients should reasonably expect from participating agencies and whether the ideas, strategy and intellectual property developed during the process should come without compensation.

For industry veterans and agency leaders who spoke in separate interviews with MARKETING EDGE ONTV, the concern is not about eliminating pitches altogether, but about creating a system that recognises the professional value embedded in the work agencies put forward.

Former TBWA Concepts Unit CEO, Kelechi Nwosu, has been particularly critical of unpaid speculative pitches, arguing that agencies should not be expected to give away valuable intellectual property merely to remain in contention for business.

According to Nwosu, the conventional pitch system can place agencies under considerable pressure because they are required to commit time, talent and strategic thinking without any assurance that the work will translate into business.

He has also argued that agencies need to become more deliberate about protecting the intellectual property generated during pitches, rather than allowing valuable ideas to become part of an unsuccessful presentation and subsequently disappear into the client’s business.

That concern is echoed from another angle by Ayodeji Oyebajo, Chief Operating Officer of Soulcommunications Limited. who has called for a more disciplined approach to the pitch process, particularly around the expectations placed on agencies before they are selected.

The argument is that clients should be clearer about what they want from participating agencies and avoid turning a pitch into an opportunity to obtain several complete strategic and creative solutions at little or no cost.

For Anthony Onyemauwa, Vice President and Agency Lead, BEAN Creative IMC, pitching remains an important part of the agency business, but the process itself needs greater structure and transparency.

He recognises that pitching allows clients to assess competing agencies and determine which partner best understands their business. However, he believes the process should be designed in a way that reduces subjectivity and gives participating agencies a fair basis for competing.

Onyemauwa has advocated clearer pitch parameters, including transparency around the number of agencies invited, the criteria for evaluation and the threshold for selecting a winner. He also supports compensation for agencies that invest significant resources in a pitch but ultimately do not win the business.

That position introduces another dimension to the debate: if agencies are being asked to deploy senior talent, strategy, research and creative resources to solve a client’s business problem, should unsuccessful participants simply absorb the entire cost?

Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of TBWA\Concept Unit, George Isitua-Onukwu, brings another perspective to the conversation, particularly around the value agencies create before an account is won.

For Isitua-Onukwu, the issue goes beyond the mechanics of presenting a proposal. It touches on how agencies demonstrate their ability to understand a client’s business, identify the real problem and develop solutions capable of creating measurable value.

His broader philosophy of moving agencies from a vendor relationship into a partnership also has implications for pitching. Rather than treating the pitch as a contest for the most impressive presentation, the process should provide an opportunity for the agency and prospective client to establish whether they can work together as genuine growth partners.

That means the quality of the questions agencies ask, the depth of their diagnosis and their understanding of the client’s business should matter as much as the final creative presentation.

In that sense, a pitch should not simply be an agency’s opportunity to showcase how creatively it can respond to a brief. It should also allow the client to see how the agency thinks, challenges assumptions and translates business problems into workable communication solutions.

For Adekoyejo Abiola, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Imaginarium  Marketing Communications, and Vice President of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria, the economics of pitching remain one of the industry’s most pressing concerns.

Abiola argues that the industry has effectively allowed agencies to sell their most valuable asset, their ideas, at the price of their least valuable asset, their time.

He pointed  specifically to situations where agencies give away strategy during pitches, accept heavily negotiated fees and then wait extended periods for payment. In his view, this model weakens the industry’s ability to invest adequately in talent, craft and the time required to produce genuinely strong work.

The implication for pitching is clear: when agencies are repeatedly required to develop substantial strategic and creative solutions without compensation, the cost does not simply disappear. It eventually affects the quality of work, talent retention and the sustainability of the agencies producing that work.

Abiola’s position therefore pushes the conversation beyond whether a pitch is won or lost. It asks whether the process itself respects the economic value of professional thinking. At the heart of the debate is the distinction between demonstrating capability and giving away intellectual property.

The growing conversation around value and professional standards is also coming against the backdrop of efforts by the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria to strengthen recognition for excellence and compliance across the marketing communications industry.

In June 2026, ARCON inaugurated a Special Recognition Awards Committee to plan, coordinate and deliver the forthcoming ARCON Special Recognition and Advertising Standards Panel Awards Ceremony.

The initiative is designed to formally recognise advertisers, agencies and media organisations that demonstrate exemplary compliance with advertising regulations and best practices, while also honouring individuals and organisations whose leadership, innovation and ethical commitment contribute to the development of professional practice.

Some industry practitioners have applauded the move, particularly because it provides a formal platform for acknowledging organisations and individuals that uphold professional standards and contribute positively to the marketing communications ecosystem.

For the pitching debate, the development adds another important dimension, and that is, the industry is not only asking how agencies should compete for business, but also how professionalism, responsible practice, excellence and the value of ideas can be better recognised across the ecosystem.

A pitch process that rewards quality thinking, ethical practice and genuine problem solving would therefore sit within a wider industry culture that values professional contribution rather than treating agency ideas as commodities.

Agencies understandably need to prove that they can solve a prospective client’s problem. Clients, on the other hand, need enough information to make an informed decision about which agency should handle their business.

Some others averred that the  challenge is determining where that line should be drawn. They noted that, pitch can legitimately test an agency’s thinking, strategic approach, creativity and understanding of the brief.

However,  these experts said when agencies are expected to produce fully developed campaigns, detailed strategies, extensive research and execution-ready ideas before any commercial relationship exists, questions around ownership and compensation become difficult to ignore.

They opined that the  emerging industry position therefore appears less focused on abolishing pitches and more on reforming the culture surrounding them. That could mean fewer agencies being invited to compete, clearer briefs, defined evaluation criteria, greater transparency in decision making, stronger protection of intellectual property and appropriate compensation where clients require substantial speculative work.

Again, some others argued that it could also mean agencies becoming more selective about the pitches they enter. For agencies, refusing every pitch is neither practical nor necessarily desirable.

Meanwhile, competitive presentations remain an important route to winning new business. However, the growing argument is that agencies should assess the commercial and strategic value of participating before committing substantial resources.

Therefore, the issue is ultimately about value exchange. Clients need agencies that can bring fresh thinking, strategic clarity and creative solutions to business challenges.

In other words, agencies, in turn, need a pitch environment that recognises the professional value of the people, ideas and intellectual resources they deploy.

As the voices of these experts  converge from different points, one message becomes increasingly difficult to ignore: pitching should remain a means of establishing the right agency-client partnership, not a mechanism through which agencies are compelled to surrender their most valuable thinking for free.