Pitch Builder

There is never enough time to prepare for a new business pitch. WARC's Pitch Builder will give you a head start by pulling together relevant information to review, gather insights from, and inform the pitching team. Whether it is learning about the 4Cs (Client, Competition, Category, Consumer), thinking about tactics for a specific marketing strategy, or your media strategy, WARC has you covered. Use the shortcuts on this page to find the inspiration you need for a winning brief and presentation.

Tip: Remember to save the content you need to your 'Notes & Folders' (you can access this in the Your WARC tab when you are logged-in).

The Client and Its Competition

Search for brand information: Find out what the prospective client and its competitors have been up to. The best place to start is a word search. Enter the name of any brand you want more information on.

 

Tip: To search for multiple brands at once, put 'OR' in between different brand names in the search box.

Assess brand performance: You can also see if the brand and its competitors have done especially noteworthy work. Use the WARC Rankings, which ranks the world's best campaigns, companies and brands.

In the Table Builder, click on the options for Brands, the relevant category, location (if you wish) and get a list of all the brands included in the WARC 100 database. Check out what they have been doing effectively and consider how the same techniques could be uniquely applied to your creative insight and pitch.

The Category

Search for your product type: WARC is full of research, insights and examples from your brand's category. Find shortcuts to articles and research about the category you're working on via WARC's industry Topic Pages.

Use a keyword search to find more on the specific type of product you're working on:

 

Review category-level information: Select a category from the following list to see relevant content

 

You can also visit our Company Profiles page to find Euromonitor analysis of leading brands in most categories. Read these strategic evaluations, SWOT and competitive analyses for big name companies in the sector most relevant to you.

Find advertising spend/sales benchmarks by category for the US.

Draw on recent examples: Case studies are a great way to find insights and nuggets of information that have driven successful marketing activity in a category. You can use them to draw lessons of what worked for others, and what kinds of results they drove, to use in your own pitch. Find recent case studies from a category or sub-category via the Topic Page (above) or by using our Case Finder.

The Consumer

Review information on your target audience: WARC is full of research, insights and examples tagged to specific consumer groups. Find shortcuts to information about the target audience for the pitch you're working on via WARC's Topic Pages.

Select your consumer group:

 

Draw on recent examples: You can also use Case Studies to identify specific insights into consumer groups that drove effective work. Visit the Case Finder and search using the Target Audiences filter. You can use this collection of top-performing cases to gather what worked best and what can help create strategic direction for use in the pitch.

The Marketing Strategy

Review information on your specific marketing challenge: WARC has a range of Topic Pages on key objectives such as launching or relaunching a brand, building loyalty or customer acquisition. Find research, guidance and examples on these pages.

Select your marketing objective:

 

Draw on recent examples: Check out how others have successfully tackled the marketing objective relevant to your pitch using the Case Finder. Just search using the Campaign Objectives filter. You can use this collection of top-performing cases to gather what worked best and what can help create strategic direction for use in the pitch.

Media mix

Review information on your required channels: Check out the best way to use media types that might be right for your campaign idea or are important to the pitch request. Find the most important and latest successful approaches on any media type using WARC's Topic Pages.

Select your media channel:

 

Or visit our Topic Page on Integration to see the latest thinking and research on cross-channel campaigns.

Draw on recent examples: Alternatively, use the Case Finder and filter by Media & Channels to get the latest examples of effective use of specific media.

You can also use the Case Finder to check out what media types and allocation your prospective client has used in the past – just type the brand name into the keyword box. This will often show which media channels the client has employed.

Inspiration: If you plan to use social media, WARC has an impressive, exclusive case database from the WARC Prize for Social Strategy. Check out WARC's Social Prize database and Seriously Social report for an analysis of the most effective practices.

To see cases highlighting the most effective uses of media strategy, review WARC's exclusive database from the WARC Prize for Connection Strategy.

Keeping up to date

Make sure you are notified when new content comes on WARC that is relevant for your pitch. Go to Topic Updates and update your selections to receive weekly emails for the relevant target audience, category, objective and media. Choose selections for Your Brands to make sure you receive email alerts when new content tagged to the Client or its Competition is added to the site.

In the same area, sign up for WARC News, if you haven't already, for the latest in what the biggest and most successful brands are doing to address the most serious marketing issues of the day.

Ask us for help

Remember to call your CSM if you need help. As you refine your pitch ideas and presentation deck or proceed through the pitch steps, questions may come up regarding your approach and recommendations. Remember WARC can help you find evidence to support your thinking and give added credibility.